This TED Talk features filmmaker Dan Bell, recorded live at TEDx Mid-Atlantic, 2016.

In the last couple of years, I have produced what I call the Dead Mall series, 32 short films and

counting about Dead Malls. Now, for those of you who are not familiar with what a dead mall is,

it's basically a shopping mall that has fallen into hard times. So it's either has few shops

and fewer shoppers, or it's abandoned and crumbling into ruin.

No sale at pennies.

I started producing this series in early 2015.

After going through kind of a dark period in my life

where I just didn't want to create films anymore.

I put my camera away and I just stopped. So in, in 2015, I decided to make a short film about the

Owings Mills Mall. Owings Mills Mall opened in 1986. I should know because I was there on opening day.

I was there with my family, along with every other family in Baltimore,

and you had to drive around for 45 minutes just to find a parking spot.

So if you can imagine, that's not happening at the malls today.

My first mall job that I had as a teenager

was at a sporting goods store called Herman's World of Sports.

Maybe you remember, Herman's World of Sports.

Do you guys remember that?

Yeah.

So I worked in a ladies' shoe store. I worked in a leather goods store,

and I also worked in a video store. And not being one who was very fond of the retail arts, I got fired from every single job.

In between these low-paying retail jobs, I did what any normal teenager did in the 1990s. I shoplifted. I'm just kidding. I hung out with my

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