Steven Middleton, founder of State Run Media Productions LLC, is a documentarian that documents social, imaginative, ethnographic, and eccentric stories about Appalachia and the American South. When filming, he becomes highly involved with the subjects — sleeping, ingesting, and breathing with those he is focusing on, exceeding the divide between observer and subject. His films have been featured in film festivals internationally, and broadcast on Kentucky PBS affiliate Kentucky Educational Television (KET). Winning first place in the short documentary category at the 2010 Appalachian Film Festival in Huntington, WV.