The extremes of America’s culture of excess were on display this past weekend, with the madness of holiday shopping. But do people really need all that stuff?

That’s the question some students at Michigan State University set out to answer.  Earlier this year a group of them at the East Lansing campus decided to live a more minimal and sustainable lifestyle.

They filmed the experience. The film and project, called Thrive With Less, started as a capstone for a documentary course.

Josh Michels is one of the student filmmakers. He pitched the idea of producing a film that explores what a minimalist lifestyle looks like in an excess-driven culture. The filmmakers originally planned to feature two families, but as the project progressed they decided to turn the cameras on themselves.

Great Lakes Echo’s Emanuele Berry talked with Colin Marshall and Josh Michels, both documenters and subjects in the film. In this interview that originally aired on Impact 89FM, Colin explained that to stop living excessively the crew set challenges.

 Documentary trailer: