First Person — Season 1, Episode 3: Stairway to Heaven
Documentary, News • 26 min • 2 seasons, 19 episodes • ★ 8.3/10
Episode synopsis
A conversation with Temple Grandin. She is a university professor, a diagnosed autistic, and has designed 1/3 of the slaughterhouses in the United States. Temple Grandin understands and relates more easily to cattle than to people. She's renowned for her design "stairway to heaven," a curving, high-wall ramp system that utilises optical illusions to lead livestock calmly from the pen to the bolt gun and ultimately to a humane death.
About First Person
First Person was an American TV series produced and directed by Errol Morris. The show engaged a varied group of individuals from civil advocates to criminals. Interviews were conducted with "The Interrotron", a device similar to a teleprompter: Errol and his subject each sit facing a camera. The image of each person's face is then projected onto a two-way mirror positioned in front of the lens of the other's camera. Instead of looking at a blank lens, then, both Morris and his subject are looking directly at a human face. Morris believes that the machine encourages monologue in the interview process, while also encouraging the interviewees to "express themselves to camera".