Summary Of The Film 'Gas Land'

Natural gas drilling is becoming a major profit maker for a multitude of companies. In response to being offered one hundred thousand dollars to sell his land for hydraulic fracturing, Josh Fox, a native Pennsylvania documentary filmmaker, begins to do his own research into the drilling industry. With the help of people from across the county, Fox is able to obtain first hand repercussions of the natural gas drilling on water supplies, overall health, animals, life after fracking, and the lack of faith within communities state governments. Using the documentary, Gas Land, produced by Josh Fox, I will look into the overall message of the documentary, the methodologies and research methods used, the empirical data presented, along with the ethics …show more content…
By looking at the implications of the fracking industry as well as interviewing those who are directly involved in the contamination of their water we are presented with a variety of negative side effects of drilling for natural gasses. By looking at the qualitative side the viewer is able to experience first hand the look, smell, and taste that soon resulted in side effects for local residents. This is important to the study because Fox needed proof as to the effects of the drilling. He did so by conducting countless interviewees who had glasses, bottles and bins of contaminated water to show what the unnatural water supply looked like. Fox used a variety of research methods such as: field experiments, correlation between illness and the water supply, observations, and self-reports of the people being interviewed. The field experiment was a constant throughout the documentary as we watched Fox travel to different locations to see the same effects across the United States. By going out into the field, Fox interviewed many people suffering from illness that they had not had until they were exposed to the chemical ridden water supplies that occurred when fracking started near their home. The documentary started out at Fox’s his family home and soon traveled to neighboring towns to see the effects first hand. Along his way, he conducts structured observations of those interviewed, sometimes without showing faces, and was able to account for the same outcomes of fracking across the United States. He observed the effects of the corrupted water supply on the land, endangered animals, families, and lifestyles that were in danger because of the water supply. While interviewing, self-reporting from the people being interviewed was constant and laid the foundation for the entire documentary. Throughout the documentary the interviewing