Folayan, Davis and their cinematographer Lucas Alvarado Farrar (who had been one of Folayan's college classmates at Columbia University) began work on the project in 2014 when Folayan and Farrar traveled to Ferguson, Missouri during the protests and riots that followed police officer Darren Wilson's killing of Michael Brown. Davis, a St. Louis-based artist, was already at work documenting the events. Folayan expected to do so via print journalism, but was quickly struck by a sharp contrast between the depictions appearing in the newsmedia and what she was experiencing in person. Feeling "we couldn't keep up with the news cycle and maintain justice to what we were seeing", she decided instead to pursue a film project.