Introduction: The Peep Project

Like the invention of TV, Peep Culture promises to change our society in ways that we can still only guess at. Peep Me: the doc follows Hal on his quest to understand “peep”, why people reveal the intimate details of their lives online and on TV. Are we committing suicide with our privacy?  Are we moving into a pan-opticon society where our actions are judged and governed by our “friends” and spectators?  We’re chasing the dream of celebrity and turning ourselves into “cewebrities” – but what happens when your life, your very humanity, is turned into entertainment product? Are we really democratizing celebrity and creating new online communities – or hawking our souls on ebay?

The Backstory

We’ve worked in the documentary field for years, but recently we had the unusual experience of producing a reality television series called Groomed. Like a lot of stuff out there it was based on the personal makeover theme – in our case we put slobby, uncouth men through “Gentleman’s Bootcamp”. We thought it would be difficult to find men willing to subject themselves to this kind of public scrutiny…but we needn’t have worried. It got us wondering what motivated people to actively seek notoriety through public confession, splay themselves open for our manipulation and possible contempt, and how it had become such a phenomenon on TV and then the internet.

Our line of enquiry introduced us to Toronto author and alternative culture guru, Hal Niedzveicki, who was just starting to work on his book The Peep Diaries. Hal’s plan for research was to leap from the “ivory tower” as an analytic observer and plunge himself directly into “peep”, experiencing what it’s like first hand to confess his secrets on reality TV, open his private life to 24 hour video surveillance and all other means of popular exhibitionism now routinely practiced by the general public.

So we thought – why not make a documentary about it? After all, they’re about as “peep” as you can get. Think Capturing the Friedmans, Supersize Me or Grizzly Man, where personal stories and home video footage blend into the perfect form of peep entertainment.

The result was The Peep Project, which includes the book, the doc and this website.  We’ll be starting production on the doc in May 2009 and we’ll be including lots of live video of the process. Find out more about how you can get involved.

chocolate box entertainment

Chocolate Box Entertainment is the yummy fusion of two award winning producers – Jeannette Loakman and Sally Blake. Together we’ve got 20 years of television experience. We’ve hosted chat shows, produced current affairs, programmed television stations, commissioned as well as written, produced and directed a number of award winning films.
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Doc production to start in May