On paper, the issue of data centers can be dry, unrelatable, and, beyond the white boxes on a map, invisible. We wanted to break this down. So we visited people living in the heart of Virginia’s “data center alley” who say that the constant hum of data centers impacts their health. We flew drones above and sent reporters inside these secretive server farms to see for ourselves how they function, how much power they need, and how they use water to cool their computers. We commissioned satellite imagery to show the evolving landscape, designed graphics to elucidate complex issues, and used interviews, documents, and hosted segments to pull viewers through a narrative with relatable stakes. In one evocative moment, we stripped back the droning of a data center to reveal masked notes of birdsong. The result is a 31-minute feature documentary that brought the stakes of the AI-fueled explosion of data centers to life with visual clarity for 7 million viewers.
