Nelson George’s Facebook: ‘Left Unsaid’ Online Series Premieres Today

Nelson George has had an amazing career as a journalist,  a screenwriter and producer and now he’s an online content provider with a Web series based on something familiar to most of us, Facebook. Left Unsaid premieres today after being well-received at the American Black Film Festival in Miami last week.

The website synopsis of the story reads,

“Left Unsaid begins with a woman using Facebook to invite a large group of women to her new Brooklyn apartment for Sunday brunch.”

If only it were that simple and the complexity of the story is foreshadowed in another statement from the synopsis.

“While technology drives much of the talk, it is often buried within conversations about motherhood, race, class, gentrification, music, and, of course, love & sex.”

Online conversations sometimes never amount to much more than words typed on a page, and Left Unsaid does an amazing job of demonstrating what happens when those conversations move offline.

George has segmented his story into 19 easily digestible chapters with the assistance of a brilliant team of co-creators, including filmmaker Nicole Nelch (The Hip Hop Project Documentary, Life Support and Good Hair), sound designer Laura Sinott, and editor Matt Ruskin. And the ensemble cast is equally as smart with the notable presence of Chyna Layne (Asia), who received recognition for her role in Lee Daniels’ Precious.

Left Unsaid can be accessed from a standalone site that is clean in its design and construction. For all of you who hate Flash (waving hand), you’ll be pleased to know that this is not a Flash site and you can view it from your iPad. Nelson George has an iPad and the only way I know this is because he messaged me from it. So it only makes sense that he’d produce something that can be viewed from his device of choice.

If there is any one thing problematic about the site it would be the inability for the user to turn off the soundtrack to watch video footage. Don’t attempt to watch Chapter 1 until the music has finished. There is enough content to read as you listen. And if it’s any consolation the song sung by Bridget Barkan, Dear Stranger, is hot.

Left Unsaid is not some Internet chick flick, it’s far from it. It’s a social commentary on a variety topics that can be found right on your Facebook homepage or maybe just mine. The brevity of each chapter was a remarkable choice given that the Internet has shortened our attention spans. And it almost replicates the homepage experience enabling the viewer to pick up the bigger bytes of information without belaboring the minutiae.

Nelson George will be answering questions for Black Web 2.0  about how he decided to use the social network Facebook as the foundation for this series. If you have questions, leave them in the comment section and we will ask him to respond.

[UPDATE]

Left Unsaid‘s Web designer, Jelena Vukotic, contacted me to share that the site had been tested on every browser but the one I used on a PC, Chrome. She recommends that Firefox, Safari or IE be used to optimize your experience on the site.

Photo by Jelena Vukotic

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See all posts by Robin Caldwell.