Making a Scene in Documentary Film: Iconic Filmmakers Discuss What Works and Why 2022014286, 2022014287, 9781032184838, 9781032184814, 9781003254768

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MAKING A SCENE IN DOCUMENTARY FILM

This collection of iconic interviews helps demystify the documentary filmmaking process by deconstructing the most relevant and important scenes in some of today’s most wellknown documentary films. It offers concrete, real-world examples of the situations and decisions that filmmakers navigate. We go behind the scenes with the creators to learn the methodologies and approaches these directors, cinematographers, editors, and sound recordists have taken to bring these amazing documentaries to life. What makes a great scene? Why are they so important in the construction of a great film? The interviews included offer excellent insights from the directors of the awardwinning The Truffle Hunters, My Octopus Teacher, Collective, Knock Down the House, Dick Johnson Is Dead, and Trapped; the cinematographer of RBG, Julia, and Fauci; the editor of Time; and sound recordist of Tiger King. Award-winning documentary filmmaker and esteemed Sundance advisor Maxine Trump goes in-depth with each filmmaker, asking about their creative process. Why did these scenes make such a deep impression on both the filmmakers and their audience? Was it the cinematic style, the dynamic dialogue, the magic of observational filmmaking, or a surprising turning point? This technical but creative and accessible resource is suitable for documentary filmmakers, aspiring directors, producers, editors, and cinematographers of non-fiction film. Each interview offers a fresh perspective to the emerging or professional filmmaker and audience alike. Maxine Trump has won multiple BDA awards as a director for her work on numerous

commercial projects for Network TV and agency clients. She went on to direct documentaries for Sundance, TNT, BBC, Discovery, PBS, etc. Her previous feature film Musicwood was a New York Times Critics’ pick, festival award winner and played on TV and in theaters around the world. Her latest film, To Kid or Not to Kid, was released in theaters and on TV worldwide to critical acclaim. She is a Sundance Institute Advisor, a visiting lecturer at New York Film Academy, University of the Arts London and Yale, and a documentary consultant for emerging filmmakers.

MAKING A SCENE IN DOCUMENTARY FILM Iconic Filmmakers Discuss What Works and Why

Maxine Trump

Cover image: Photo 1. Kirsten Johnson with her father and cinematographer JP Wakayama in the film Dick Johnson Is Dead Photo 2. Gabriel Rhodes and Garrett Bradley photo by Jen Fairchild, courtesy of Sundance Institute. Used by permission First published 2023 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Maxine Trump The right of Maxine Trump to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Trump, Maxine, author. Title: Making a scene in documentary film : iconic filmmakers discuss what works and why / Maxine Trump. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022014286 (print) | LCCN 2022014287 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032184838 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032184814 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003254768 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Documentary films‐‐Production and direction. | Motion picture producers and directors‐‐Interviews. Classification: LCC PN1995.9.D6 T783 2023 (print) | LCC PN1995.9.D6 (ebook) | DDC 070.1/8‐‐dc23/eng/20220602 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022014286 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022014287 ISBN: 978-1-032-18483-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-18481-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-25476-8 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003254768 Typeset in Bembo by MPS Limited, Dehradun

CONTENTS

Foreword 1 Introduction—Scenes, Styles, and Genres

vii 1

2 Observational—The Truffle Hunters

17

3 Interview-Led—Trapped

39

4 Hybrid and Performative—Dick Johnson Is Dead

52

5 Poetic and Character-Led—Time

72

6 Archive—RBG

92

7 Natural History Genre—My Octopus Teacher

112

8 Competition Genre—Knock Down the House

129

9 Investigative Genre—Collective

148

10 Crime Drama Series—Tiger King

164

vi Contents

Addendum—Film List by Style and Genre Acknowledgments Index

178 188 190

FOREWORD

My earliest memory of documentary film is from the 1980s, when I was around 7 years old (and most certainly had no idea what a documentary was), and the biggest pop star on the planet had an album out that also spawned a pioneering music video. Almost like a religion, I rented this VHS tape at my local video shop every weekend, but it turned out my favorite part wasn’t the music video itself, it was the short film at the end of the tape, the likes of which I had never seen before. It was a “making-of” film, a behind-the-scenes glimpse at what went into creating the music video. Through intimate scenes of my pop idol rehearsing with his young and equally nervous co-star, to following the make-up and costume teams designing each character’s look, to observing the choreography process in a studio with all sorts of dancers, to meeting fans on the street, who were straining to see even a glimmer of their favorite star too, it felt revelatory. This short film did not just lift the curtain on a few secrets of film production, it provided a uniquely personal insight into what otherwise seemed like an untouchable phenomenon. It made the impossible feel familiar. This power I find particular to cinema, and especially documentary, of allowing us some measure of “walking in someone else’s shoes,” if even for a moment, and possibly opening our hearts and minds to a perspective we might never otherwise have access to. We might find this kind of connection through any number of films, from quiet observational portraits to dramatic true crime thrillers, in spaces that feel like they could be next door or in someplace completely foreign; the point isn’t necessarily how a film mimics one’s life, it is how it makes you think and feel as an individual in recognition of the great interconnected world that we live in. Thinking back on this first experience I had seeing a documentary, and how it inadvertently inspired me to be a filmmaker, I realize that my interest as a fan

viii Foreword

inevitably evolved into a greater appreciation for the form and style of the film itself—What makes a film surprising? Why did the filmmakers take that approach? How did they pull off that scene? By examining such choices, we film lovers can gain a greater appreciation for what goes into making the films that move us so profoundly, what distinguishes the mere “flavor of the moment” from the films that actually get under our skin and keep us thinking for years to come. And furthermore, we intrepid filmmakers can take inspiration from understanding these choices and applying those insights to our own filmmaking. For beyond mere curiosity about a subject, a filmmaker thinks deeply and deliberately about how and why they make the cinematic decisions that result in their particular film. Certainly, a good film could be made out of pure curiosity, perhaps inspired by something you find particularly beautiful, but for me, truly unique films that stand the test of time come from a more thoughtful approach whereby the collaborators on a film consider not only the story they seek to tell, but the specific component parts, tools, and practices they choose to employ. The “intrepidness” I speak of does not necessarily rely on borrowing strategies or copying elements from other films, nor does it exactly aspire to a level of preparation that resists experimentation and improvisation. It is but a way to think about an overall awareness and engagement with a filmmaking of intentionality. It is the mark of purpose beyond just showcasing the pretty. So it is with a keen appetite that I take in the lessons offered here by Maxine Trump and the notable group of filmmakers she has enlisted to explore the myriad nuances and challenges of documentary filmmaking today. What follows in this bravura selection of conversations is a veritable trove of intelligence, offering us a telling window into the filmmaking process and the creative choices made by the filmmakers themselves. It is resounding proof of the thoughtfulness of great filmmaking and the merit of films that truly have something to say. As a brilliant filmmaker herself, Maxine allows us to navigate the topics at hand in the most practical of ways, making sure not to veer too far off into only the conceptual, but rather keeping us grounded in a real-world understanding of why these things matter. By taking a close look at the building blocks of a film, coupled with personal insights from the actual builders of those films, we have the potent opportunity to get to the heart of great storytelling, to the power of human connection itself. Lynn True Producer, director and editor of In Transit, Summer Pasture, and more

1 INTRODUCTION—SCENES, STYLES, AND GENRES

There were two reasons that led me to develop this book: Unique teaching moments with my students and how I learnt filmmaking by examining the work of others. It all came down to the importance of scenes. What scenes do for story and how to carve them out of real life? We know documentary films don’t just happen because you turn on a camera, and documentary film is so much more than interviews but how can our work be benefited by our intention with our films? We will spend time exploring the narrative moments that move our stories forward, and these are provided generally by story beats in scenes. Consider this book’s conversations as a series of intimate chats and a deeper investigation into those essential film moments. These are interviews with filmmakers that include highlights from their award-winning films. Most often they will feature directors, but we’ll also include editors, directors of photography, and sound recordists too. Each conversation will revolve around such questions as how to recognize dynamic action, how scenes are captured, built, placed, and what impact do they have on our story. I miss the old DVD extras with those great directors’ commentaries. Spending an afternoon watching and gathering tips, and learning those behind-thescene secrets, inspired me with tips and tricks I now use for my own career. What better way to find out about how a film was made than by having an in-depth conversation with the crew? We’ll not only delve into scene analysis but we’ll talk about their chosen style of filmmaking and why their favorite scenes work within that framework. There is a purpose to our process, with how we plan, shoot, or edit, but how do these initial ideas come about? The same methods can be applied to short documentaries too. Often my students are making short films and one class that I teach in particular stands out for me: it involves an interactive game that helps provide concrete examples of DOI: 10.4324/9781003254768-1

2 Introduction—Scenes, Styles, and Genres

scene progressions in stories. It’s a way to bring scenes to life. Students call out the different scene breaks in films and then we analyze what the story beats in those scenes do for the story and how the audience is motivated to want more. Essentially, how the film has been written (more on that later). I want to replicate this practical exercise here to some extent. It’s truly wonderful to see the lightbulb turn on for my students when they begin to understand these building blocks of story. Grappling with what information is revealed in story beats, that then build on and bounce off of each other to bring their films to a satisfactory conclusion, is fun to examine. I felt that if these classes were having such an impact on my students (and me), maybe other documentary lovers, or filmmakers, would find it interesting too. I know they’re my favorite classes to teach. Students and clients often tell me they’ve never had film structure spelt out like this before and I love that I have the opportunity to walk through this deeper analysis here with you. They’re often unaware of just how much time is spent crafting the story. But I don’t just teach this exercise, I incorporate this analysis into my own filmmaking practice. When I find a film that influences me, I want to understand how the film is constructed into scenes and what story beats are included that made such an impression. In each chapter, we will use an exploration of the filmmaker’s chosen style or genre first. That ensures that we include as many different techniques as possible, trying to get to exactly why scenes make their films so effective. I hope you find the interviews with each filmmaker as helpful as I did. Each interview has been edited for length. Once the book was finished, I was able to take a step back and see a similarity between all the chapters. There was an intentionality that each filmmaker had with their films, whether they found it as they shot, after they crafted some scenes or via the limits imposed by the shoots. Pippa Ehrlich not wearing a wetsuit in the freezing water for My Octopus Teacher, the crew traveling in a little van full of meat in The Truffle Hunters, or Alexander Nanau employing his own team of reporters to get access to the newspaper offices in Collective. The filmmakers found their own unique approach to make their films that enabled certain scenes to be captured. I think it is that intention that is helpful for us filmmakers to consider before we shoot our next films. I believe these are some of the reasons that these films are incredibly successful and why you’ll find the chapters so instructive. I want to thank each filmmaker for giving their time and insights so generously.

Scenes People often differentiate between what they call “narrative” films and “documentaries” but I prefer “fiction” versus “non-fiction.” Both categories are films, and docs make use of narratives too; we are all in the story business. However, one difference is that as documentary makers we don’t have to follow prescriptive screenplays like our fiction cousins. With documentaries, we “write” our films in the edit. Unlike fiction, we have a more extensive freedom in scene structure at that stage. We can list all of our scenes and write out our story beats onto index cards

Introduction—Scenes, Styles, and Genres 3

and metaphorically (or literally) throw them in the air and see where they land. Sometimes doing this we find magical juxtapositions in the story that we would never have found otherwise. But documentary makers are still in the business of constructing stories and Alexander Nanau talks about writing his films in the chapter on Collective. Drama is story. Documentaries are stories. As a filmmaker you may have learnt already: individual shots make scenes, scenes make sequences, and sequences make acts. In the classic narrative structure (which has existed since the days of Aristotle, through to Shakespeare, Du Maurier and today, Aaron Sorkin and Ava Duvernay), the story often is broken into three acts, with a beginning, a middle leading to a climax, and the descending action in the final scenes. Much more analysis about rudimentary film structure was covered in my first book, The Documentary Filmmakers’ Roadmap. There has been a lot written about classic film structure but little about documentary scenes and here we’re going to concentrate on those small building blocks of story. Scenes are typically location specific, so if you change location in your film you’re in a new scene. But that’s quite simplistic. Often scene changes will be thematic, so if a different subject is introduced, it’s a new scene. Each scene often delivers its own story arc (through its beats) in just a small number of shots with its own beginning, middle, and end. If you’ve read about film structure you’ll have heard of story beats. I learnt from the fantastic documentary author and academic Michael Rabiger that a story beat is the basic unit of any scene containing dramatic interchange. This means, essentially, something happens, it’s a moment of change, building tension and pressure in the scene, that releases you into a new theme/location and therefore a new scene. Aron Sorkin believes a story beat is a moment that propels the story forward and compels the viewer to take stock of what could happen next. In simple terms, story beats are the pressures on your characters. Or another way to think about beats in scenes is when one emotion shifts to another emotion and the action shifts in response. That explanation isn’t mine but it’s one of my favorites. In my classes, we analyze the feeling at the beginning of the scene and then at the end. What content have we watched that makes us feel something new emotionally by the end of the scene? What has happened to our characters that has changed in relation to what came before? What clues have we been given about an antagonist we’ve just met? What motivates us to want the next scene? Have we been left with more questions we need answered? Has what we know or what we think we know been upended in some way? Is there a “will-they or won’t-they” cliffhanger? Or just simply have we learnt something new and surprising? I know that’s a lot but try applying these questions to your own work and see what you find. I find this practice very helpful as it reveals to me if any story beats even exist at certain points in my story. If they don’t then I probably don’t have a scene. At the early stage of plotting your story, you’ll be looking for one beat for every scene. These beats are what you’ll put on those index cards. You’ll have the beginnings of ideas right at the start of production, intentions for scenes to shoot at least. But these then grow as you make your film until you’ll have a stack of index cards. Those are the ones that you might end up throwing in the air in the

4 Introduction—Scenes, Styles, and Genres

edit. Needless to say the scenes will get more developed and evolve as you move through the filmmaking process. Here is a very rudimentary breakdown of possible story beats that could be scenes in your films. When you break down films to analyze, you’ll find a lot of these beats exist in successful films.

Act 1 Set up—characters and their goal. Inciting incident that starts the journey of the action. Main conflict (or struggle with opposing forces). A first turning point ends the act.

Act 2 Escalation of the complications, character struggles with obstacles that prevent them from realizing their goal. Character revelation surprise. Basic conflicts—can provide suspense or escalating tension. What are the interactions along the way? Is there empathy, anger, hope, humor, or joy? Emotion. Scenes get shorter, stakes get higher, and intensify the situation to point of climax.

Act 3 Falling action—central character resolves story (not always successfully) in an emotionally satisfying way. The possible consequence. How the audience last sees your character can alter the impact of the entire film.

We’re often taught to make films by sticking to this three-act structure, but even though you may mirror this classical style, you won’t mirror any other film’s specific scenes. You have your own individual story, unlike any other. Each scene will be unique and powerful, built from these types of beats. You may use some of the beats above, but they won’t be exactly as I’ve listed them and nor should they. Films shouldn’t follow exact templates; that would be boring. This is an example of some beats; maybe you have more, maybe fewer, but you will have some of them. Generally, if you find a story beat you’ll be able to create a scene, as long as you’ve captured the shots to create that unit of story. And that’s why it’s so helpful to hear how other filmmakers captured these great moments, understanding scenes at a molecular level. When you construct a film with the escalating tension of the structure of scenes reacting to each other, you can avoid the chronological boring retelling of a story as a list “and then this happened, and then this happened.” Instead, we try

Introduction—Scenes, Styles, and Genres 5

to motivate each successive scene, narratively saying “but” this happened (surprise) or “therefore” this happened as a consequence. The different tones of your scenes will form wonderful undulations of emotions, like a roller coaster ride, leaving the audience deeply invested but not exactly sure what’s happening next or where they’ll end up. The three act structure can provide a method to make you feel secure that the story will still work when you experiment with moving scenes around. An especially effective beat is when a character is brought dramatically closer to, or further from, their goal and the character has to possibly rethink their journey or change course. We call these beats “turning points.” What could cause these turning points? Does the character think of a different strategy, literally taking a different turn to avoid some of the obstacles, or maybe we’re introduced to a new character who gets the protagonist closer to their goal. Interaction causes reaction and therefore action and the possibility for drama. In my latest film, about my decision to not have children, it has an incredibly hopeful beat in a scene with my husband. In the last third of Act 2, my husband tells me he’s thinking of having a vasectomy. This couldn’t get me much closer to my goal of not having children than my husband thinking of having a vasectomy. Talk about a turning point! But scenes and story beats don’t have to be as big as someone getting a vasectomy. They can be as small as a dog finding a mushroom in the The Truffle Hunters chapter. Or a woman finding honey at the end of a long trek in the Macedonian countryside in one of my favorite films, Honeyland. Filmmakers make us feel. It is how and what is delivered in a film’s scenes that makes this more or less successful. You’ve probably heard the term “inciting incident” (I list it in the diagram above), essentially meaning: what has happened to make the character start their journey now, at this specific point in time, to try to make a change or reach their goal causing them to act. Action makes drama. In Kirsten Johnson’s film, Dick Johnson Is Dead, she started filming when her father’s dementia had significantly progressed so she was moving him out of his office and her childhood home to protect him. A very active and emotional scene with stakes that add tension. What about tension as a story beat? This doesn’t have to be overly dramatic. Johnson provides tension in scenes of her father eating cake. We’ve been told he had a heart attack earlier in his life after eating a little too much of his favorite chocolate cake. It sets the audience up to worry every time we see him take another slice in the film. Easy and simple tension building in a scene. Every slice of cake that he reaches for is a beat that raises the stakes. Then finally, how does your film end? Has your character learnt something or been transformed in some way to feel like a climax? In the competition film, Kings of Pastry, the main character we follow often loses. As documentary makers, we’re not in the Hollywood feel good business, and sometimes the loss in documentary is even more dramatic for the audience; it’s real life after all. The reason the documentary series Cheer is so successful is that sometimes you’re routing for the

6 Introduction—Scenes, Styles, and Genres

person you know probably won’t make it, they have the biggest hill (or story arc) to climb and their persistence is incredibly enjoyable to watch. Do we all have to follow a three-act structure including scenes that have all those beats I’ve listed? Not at all. It’s just a methodology, a way to guide us to be used as a prompt, to give us a helping hand when we hit those artistic road blocks. Labels can be confining and I don’t want labels to limit you. We talk in the book about the overlapping of genres often being an exciting method of storytelling. Think of how Yance Ford’s Strong Island is so very different from Stanley Nelson’s Attica but they might be categorized as a similar genre if you had to just list one. Many successful films could be deemed as breaking the rules. Kedi’s (2016) director was told she shouldn’t make a film about cats that has no story; the director of Faya Dayi (2021) was similarly asked, where is the character arch in her film? But who sets these rules? We as filmmakers are advancing and exploring new methods of storytelling all the time and that’s what’s exciting. But let’s confidently offer up our creative visions, and I believe knowing what’s been before or how others have advanced the documentary style can give us great tools. A filmmaker might eventually take the three-act structure and break it apart, advance it and experiment with it. But where do you start? I was an art major at college, so I often give an analogy of an artist learning to paint. We spent many hours drawing a still life or nude model before advancing into futurist and abstract paintings. There’s even a Japanese term for this that I learnt recently, Shuhari, the stages to learn mastery. Or maybe, as the Austrian poet Rilke describes, “The point of life is to fail and fail at greater things.” We learn and we learn and we continue to master. There’s a great story about Picasso showing he could paint a grain of wheat so realistically that a cockerel tried to eat it. When asked why he didn’t paint like that regularly, he said, “I don’t paint for chickens.” Who knows if that really happened but I like the sentiment. And much like Picasso, the genius in this medium is when your gut guides you and you follow your own unique vision. After all, scientists are now calling our gut the body’s “second brain.” The editor of the wonderful film Beba (2022), Isabel Freeman talked to me about using music to help guide her gut instincts in her editing process. This resulted in a rhythm and pacing that some called “accordion-like,” for this super inventive, coming-of-age portrait. It’s experimental in it’s approach and is a great film to study if your goal is to make a more poetic film. This kind of boundary-pushing will become clear in our chapter focused on Gabriel Rhodes, the editor of Garrett Bradley’s documentary Time. The film is wonderfully rule-bending and non-conformist because scenes are not developed as we’ve been taught to understand them but are left as fragments. It is a truly inventive narrative device. Similarly, the chapter on The Truffle Hunters shows the great patience required when the directors try and capture an observational scene like a natural history cinematographer waiting for the perfect action to move into the perfect light to shoot. Each chapter offers something new to learn. It is an exciting time in the world of documentaries. There is so much experimentation in documentary making and the time has never been better to dive in

Introduction—Scenes, Styles, and Genres 7

depth into the diversity and breadth of these films; to discover what documentaries can do, and how the filmmakers do it; to encourage, excite, and show emerging filmmakers and an audience alike how cinematic documentaries are made, how they became the films they are. There isn’t a better way to express this than by answering that age-old question, “How the hell did they do that?”

So why look at documentary styles and genres? We know scenes are important but what can affect our approach to capturing them? We can begin to answer this question and expect to find answers when we consider the style of filmmaking the director has chosen. The style of observational filmmaking, for example, is working with very different material than an archival film, or an interview film, but most styles use “scenes” as building blocks to tell their stories or make their arguments. The style is a filmmaking approach that is unique to documentary. The documentary method or “style” chosen to tell the story is how the film is made; genres are what the film contains. Each chapter and interview in this book will examine an individual film in light of its style. Most styles will be covered, all genres won’t: this would be an incredibly long book if every documentary genre had a chapter. Just take a look at the film list at the end of the book. You can find documentaries on almost any subject; it truly is an exciting for the medium. So in the first chapters of the book we will start to look at films by style and then move into a survey of some popular genres by the end of the book.

Style Now more than at any other time our lives are being edited. Just think of all of the photos we now take, and share or not share. We as filmmakers are trying to control life, recording the lives of ordinary people as an artwork. The style we chose is our creative endeavor. How will you make your film? Do we want to spend months with our characters, living with them almost every day, capturing scenes of action unfolding, typically filming in a “fly-on-the-wall” approach? Has the action all happened in the past and you have a treasure trove of archive? Or can you only get short amounts of time with your main characters to interview them in their office during the day? What is your approach? The poetic film Ascension (2021), directed by Jessica Kingdon, is described as an impressionistic portrait of China’s industrial supply chain that reveals the country’s growing class divide. Kingdon talked of using at least 50 locations in China and they could pivot easily as a crew if they weren’t given access to a place they had in mind. This is a very different approach from the interview/character-led film Trapped by Dawn Porter that we include in the book. The location of the clinics that could perform abortions in Trapped was of paramount importance for the observational scenes shot with patients and interviews with the doctors and clinic workers.

8 Introduction—Scenes, Styles, and Genres

This unique methodology we use to construct our films is referred to in some academic circles as “modes” or the “form” part of our films. You’ll never need to write to a funder or streamer when you pitch your film and mention the term “mode,” so I use “style” or approach here, instead. Commissioners and funders may ask you what style or approach you might be taking. The documentary modes were originally conceptualized by documentary theorist Bill Nichols. Nichols made a great introduction to this work when he began his examination of documentaries; it’s deep analysis and please read his book. But I’m going to simplify his theory and add my own observations because I want this discussion to be used in a very practical manner, a simple read-and-do book. You will get a grasp of styles available to you to make your own films or to watch and enjoy others. The styles and associated films are to be used to widen your film horizon in the hope of helping stimulate ideas. Prompting filmmakers to analyze and consider the best method to tell their story as it directly affects how to shoot your scenes in production. In this book, we include chapters on each “style” of filmmaking. Many films use overlapping styles, for example, archive and interview-led or observational and interview. I’ve chosen great film examples of each approach and made it clear as to which we are highlighting and why they are different. In no way is my list exhaustive and experimentation is happening all the time. In the following list, I have adapted Nichols’s naming conventions, modernizing or grouping them and putting them in terms that are understood and used on set or in pitch sessions today. • • • • • • • •

Observational Hybrid/Experimental/Participatory Poetic Archive Performative Essay (please see the book The Documentary Filmmakers’ Roadmap for chapter on this style) Plot-based or character-led Interview-led

Let’s not forget animation as a style of filmmaking too; it just generally involves bigger budgets and there have been amazing animated documentaries. Or longitudinal films, that follow a story over a long period, often years, revisiting characters again and again. Or immersive, VR, or experiential live films. VR also includes traditonal methods of storytelling, just filmed and edited in a very different way. And what about participatory or collaborative films. How are you collecting your stories? Even if the method of the making the film is unique, generally the production will often still revolve around scenes. Here’s a short introduction to the different film styles.

Introduction—Scenes, Styles, and Genres 9

Observational films follow stories with no interviews or narration but rather filmed observations of what is happening in front of the camera, as some call a flyon-the-wall style of filmmaking. This has been called direct cinema but in reality, filmmakers have an effect on characters just by our cameras being there and our edit and shot decisions do reveal a point of view. However, the observational style makes us feel very present in the characters’ lives and often provide very cinematic scenes. You’re not being told how to feel by an interviewee describing an incident but rather watching the action play out and the audience can decide for themselves. It can take hard work and tenacity to ingratiate yourself into a community to be trusted in this way to get this type of access but some of the most impactful films have been made using the Observational style. Often this term has been used interchangeably with the Vérité style of filmmaking, but dependent on where you work or what you’ve been taught, Vérité can mean quite a different style, and I won’t debate this term here. Just be aware that often observational scenes may be called Vérité on set and by many filmmakers, critics, and festivals alike. Hybrid/Experimental style is so wide open; there are many ways films can be made. This is an exploding area which might steer us toward a new way of thinking about the differences in fiction and non-fiction. Films that fall into this Hybrid category can include scenes of fiction often including actors playing roles. Sometimes these are recreations or re-enactments of events that happened or totally scripted scenes, where actors deliver lines that I like to call Docudrama. This feels somewhat clearer in definition to the general term Hybrid. Using actors in documentaries can be difficult, and it’s a technique that needs a strong vision to work. Many of us are familiar with documentaries that feature images of moody and blurred silhouettes with no dialogue spoken except the voice-over from the current interview describing the scene. You could argue that Hybrid and Experimental should be split into two categories. Some documentaries are going way beyond this method of using actors, and creating fictional scenes that play out in a more fantastical and stylistic way. See our chapter on Dick Johnson Is Dead. Think of them not so much as recreation, but fantasy and dream worlds, fairytales or horror. Participatory films often use scenes or shots recorded by the characters themselves. Their very involvement in the production of the film is literally what makes it. The Territory (2022) is a fantastic example and this is an exploding and exciting style to watch out for. We make sure to include in many of the book chapters, discussions about filmmaker responsibility, collaboration, authorship, point of view, and safety of characters (and filmmaking team). The Doc Society organization have produced a great guide to act as a form of risk assessment in preproduction to make us aware of any harm we could cause our characters but also how to share ownership of our films. The Poetic approach has mostly been used to describe inventive films that don’t involve an obvious narrative structure. Non‐linear storytelling that doesn’t depend on the narrative story arc that most of us filmmakers lean on to help tell an effective story. These are bold films that aren’t common but when made well can harness a great amount of attention as they’re so inventive. These films don’t have interviews, often capturing footage that may seem at first to have no connection at all except for

10 Introduction—Scenes, Styles, and Genres

a time and a place. The filmmakers can take years to establish an approach and find this unique voice. It can take some examination of film magic to understand what makes them so powerful. Film scores can often play a big role in the pace, rhythm, and language of these films. Another thing to note is that the rhythm of poetry is a useful tool for all films not just this style. There’s a reason Werner Hertzog hands out a poetry reading list when he teaches documentary filmmaking. Plot-based dramas tend to involve many characters and the drama comes from the pressures exerted on them from the environment that they’re living or working in. However, the most popular style of documentary filmmaking follows one or two characters in what’s termed character-led films. You’ll hear it said, find a good character and you’ll find conflict. Find conflict and you’ll find a good character. We spend a lot of time looking for amazing characters in the same way fiction films cast for actors. These characters generally have a goal, journey, or pursuit which drives the story forward in scenes of action. Much has been written about the story structure of the hero’s journey which can be helpful to read. But whichever you choose, similar story beats can be applied to character and plotbased films. Most films fall into one or other of these categories. Archive, you could argue this style is the documentary form’s legacy. Unfortunately, in the past that legacy has stunted some approaches to documentary film but archive is now being used in exceptionally creative ways. For example, the archive films directed by Asif Kapadia, Amy (2015) and Senna (2011), where little to no live action footage was filmed, a feat of creativity in the edit to make such an impactful film only using archive. Music films have used mixed media or highly stylized split screens, graphics and animation using archive and incredible music. Thinking especially of the music documentaries The Velvet Underground (2021) or Montage of Heck (2015), but budgets were large for those masterful films. So what about the use of audio? Notes on Blindness and Fire of Love have been super creative with this medium, Fire of Love (2022) being heavily influence by the Frence New Wave and Notes on Blindness (2016) using audio diaries as the spine of the film. This is exciting and inspiring and you could write a book on this style alone and the different ways, various films utilize archive material. Taking the time to hunt through libraries, watch personal tapes and listen to audio material can reveal astonishing stories to which many recent films can attest. The Performative style of documentary making includes the filmmaker on screen. It could be a personal film or an investigation. Both are driven by the want of the filmmaker, whether finding out how to deal with the illness of a family member or an investigation into doping with drugs in competitive sports. These films wouldn’t have been made without the filmmaker’s presence in the film that caused events to happen to start this journey. A disruption and/or creation of new events so to speak. The presence of the filmmaker is felt and heard by the audience, unashamedly and deliberately, and so very different to how observational films are made. The filmmaker as a character in their own film, on their chosen subject, will determine the tone and style of the film. This style comes under many genres, investigative, comedy, personal, or competition.

Introduction—Scenes, Styles, and Genres 11

Essay films don’t have the structure of utilizing a character’s journey to reach a goal but rather they examine a question or central theme and often they include interviews. I wrote extensively on essay films in my last book as they can be the hardest style of documentary to make effectively. They often use narration, great graphics, or well-scored soundtracks and sound design. They lean on those stylistic choices instead of great characters’ stories that are unfolding and leading to a climax. Therefore this is a style that can often spend a lot of the budget in post-production and scheduling this work can make the post process lengthier. You might be researching, shooting, and editing at the same time to find the voice of the film. Because it’s very common to be asked about the characters in our films, “Essay” films can require an inventiveness and the creation of a strong proof of concept to accompany our pitch when talking to funders and executives, and generally to help firm up your vision. Interview-led, is probably the most common documentary film style as it can be much less costly to make a film using talking head interviews. I have included this film style last as it can be the least cinematic for an audience to enjoy and it can heavily rely on the interview dialogue to tell the story rather than scenes of action unfolding. A talking head can engage an audience less successfully, as we’re being told how to feel and aren’t able to watch a scene of dynamic shots to decide how to experience the film for ourselves. This style is often used when the story has happened in the past or when vital information hasn’t been captured in a scene of action. However there have been many great interview films: 13th, Attica, Tina, and the ones I include in the book I consider to be some of the best. The interviews in these films provide startling information and the editing is incredibly creative. The director may need to spend some time in preproduction considering how to light, how to interview, choose locations and the best editor, all questions to consider that can improve the quality of these films. And these “Films” generally aren’t interview only, they are merged with graphics or archive, or other scenes of information, often with great music edits to make an audience have a memorable experience. Our films are entertainment after all, otherwise all we’ve done is capture a lecture on tape. I don’t want to give the impression there are no crossovers of styles. Indeed, most documentaries are crossovers, combining a number of approaches. The famous 1961 French documentary Chronicle of a Summer has been so feted because it seems to include almost every style of documentary making and switching between them throughout the film. It’s really worth watching and examining this truly inventive film. As very few films fit into one style, what I hope this book will do is give the emerging filmmaker examples of many approaches to the form. This is to excite both the audience and ignite the filmmaker alike, about the ways a documentary can be made. To stimulate creative ideas for how to tell our stories and thus capture our scenes. I know this type of deep analysis has helped me immeasurably in my filmmaking career and the time I take now in pre production to think about the style is essential for me as I continue to make more films.

12 Introduction—Scenes, Styles, and Genres

Genres The styles we’ve just examined are unique to documentary filmmaking. Genre is not. Go to any streaming channel and they will typically have a list of 15–20 fiction film genres, while just listing one “documentary” genre. Since documentaries are growing in number and complexity, “documentary” is entirely too simple and inaccurate a classification. It is misleading to box in our films this way. It limits our work and from the rich list at the end of the book you can see how vast our films stretch by type. Blake Synder, the author of the ubiquitous book on screenwriting, Save the Cat, believes each film genre has its own rules, history, and expectations from an audience. In fiction, genres have very specific requirements. For example, an Action Film is associated with types of spectacle such as explosions, chases, and combat. Science fiction typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts like advanced technology, time travel, or extraterrestrial life. Westerns involve characters in inhospitable landscapes and center on heroic individualism, or a moral quest in their community. Samurai Films are very closely related to Westerns. But documentaries have genres too: what about the Mountain films of Germany that years ago were the documentary alternative to the fiction genre of Westerns? Historian Eric Barnouw first talked about documentary genres in his book Documentary: A History of the Nonfiction Film, listed in many film school syllabi and my husband’s Documentary 101 class at college. Many styles and genres that Barnouw discusses are still very much in vogue today. Hybrid was a term used to describe the Archive films of the Thorndikes, a married couple who began making films in the early 1950s. Read his book if you’re interested in the history of documentary filmmaking–it’s fascinating. The chapters are listed by evolution of documentary styles and genres. Documentary genres are growing, sometimes been adapted or changed. There have been amazing strides in new technology as camera got lighter, cheaper and access to equipment got easier. This has meant many people have opportunities to experiment and invent new forms or cover new subjects. Many more documentaries are being made and need a classification deserving of that work and they’re now much more firmly set in the popular cinematic landscape. Many documentaries earn as much at the box office as our fiction-feature cousins and the list of documentary genres is substantial and growing, fact. Genres are helpful, they let the audience know what a film is and, perhaps more importantly, why they want to see it. For myself, I know if a film is an action and adventure documentary, I’ll definitely be interested in watching it. But ignore audience for a minute, classifying our own films also facilitates conversation and analysis. It helps us find films that will be influential to our own work. By analyzing great work, we can find new creative methodologies that provide us with helpful tips we may not have noticed before. Alexander Nanau, in his chapter, talks about his research into other directors’ work for his film Collective, which helped him solve the creative problems he was experiencing.

Introduction—Scenes, Styles, and Genres 13

Consider also how we talk about our films to funders; knowing what other types of films are out there helps us knowledgeably communicate about our own work. The author and academic Daniel Chandler asks whether genres are descriptive or prescriptive. Are we sometimes fitting films into a box for the sake of the box? We don’t want to be prescriptive here at all; make the film you want to make that could be genre-defying (see Kirsten Johnson’s chapter). But the genre/style we choose will define how we film. If style is form and genre is content, then it makes sense that scenes are affected by both. Examining genres allows us to ask certain focused questions about our film production. How you approach filming your scenes will be different and dependent on which genre it is. For example, are we looking for scenes of tension or increasing stakes in a high-octane Heist film or will the drama be more tender struggles in Coming of Age stories, for example in Rich Hill (2014). Are you using a fast shutter speed in an action film or languishing in the over-saturated light of Florida in the romantic film Some Kind of Heaven. What do you want out of the film? What do the characters want? Is it purely to be enjoyed, or is it covering a social issue so you want it to make an impact at a different level? Are you following a fast-moving competition? Or is this purely an essay/third-person doc, examining a subject with no apparent climax at the end? Is it investigatory, biopic, archive or live action, etc.? Do you have time and the inclination or money for a longitudinal film that can take years? What’s your access to your characters, will you be living nearby, or are they many miles away? A lot right? But you have this huge canvas to choose from. These multitudinous possibilities aren’t meant to overwhelm you, but to inspire you. With tenacity, a little luck and some talent, it is possible to make a great film. And it is these sorts of questions that will alter how you create scenes. As a filmmaker, I’ve experienced many of the circumstances described above, asking myself the same questions. My first film Musicwood was an eco-thriller. There was a lot of tension set to a back drop of a beautiful rain forest. One scene was of a Native American tree ceremony honoring a forest that was about to be clear cut. Capturing the reaction shots of all the key characters in attendance was key; it was important to express conflict that was simmering in the background as you hear the ceremonial drum beat. Every character present at the ceremony had different goals for the forest. Not just the loggers, the activists, and the famous guitar CEOs, but the Native American corporation was also in conflict with tribal members too. The oldgrowth logging had few limits or protection for wildlife and the devastation was upsetting for those tribal members that lived in the small villages nearby. It was tense, which you would expect in an eco-thriller. I’ve listed below documentary genres that have many successful films associated with them. This is not an arbitrary list, but one I have constructed after my 15 years of working in the documentary field, as a director, professor, consultant, and film-festival screener. I have also gathered the input of over a dozen filmmakers, film festival directors, academics, and editors who have considered this chapter and provided

14 Introduction—Scenes, Styles, and Genres

input. But I haven’t seen every documentary film ever made and the list by its nature will continue to grow. Here is a short list. I have mirrored many of the fiction genres that already exist to make it more easily understood for a broader audience, while also adding genres specific to documentary. This gives a real sense of the breadth of films made. Some reflect the content in their very name: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Action and Adventure Biopic (portrait) BIPOC Cause Drama (often called Social Issue; we could list Economic Injustice, Environmental, Health, Women’s Rights, Food Security etc.) Comedy Coming of Age (teen drama) Competition Films (including sports) Crime Series Disabled Fairytale Family Drama (this doesn’t correspond to fiction’s family viewing G rating) Heist Historical Investigative LGBTQIA+ Natural History (and animal) Personal Films Political Dramas Thriller War

To make sure representation is paramount in our discussions I also note in the film list at the back of this book films made by LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, or Disabled filmmakers. I’ll highlight just five of the most popular documentary genres below and I feature successful films emblematic of each one in the book. Similar to how fiction genres are classified, I note what is often included in these films and provide a short precis of each genre. Over the last few decades, many documentaries were solely associated with Historical or Social Issue films, which I prefer to call Cause Dramas. If it was a documentary, the thinking often went, it had to have an issue or was historical, filled with archive, talking heads, or a pointed narration. Many Cause Dramas have made real change, with impact campaigns attached to them and agendas to make concrete shifts in public opinion or changed laws within government. This is a defining characteristic of this genre. Today, with the plethora of content out

Introduction—Scenes, Styles, and Genres 15

there, we have to ask the question why will people want to watch a film about a difficult subject? And to answer that question creatively in the making of our films. This genre of film is often led by a mission to give a voice to the voiceless. This legacy for documentaries has been powerful for the changes Cause Dramas have made. Our work often fills the hole that fiction doesn’t cover, as we excel in social activism, from environmental, politics, racism, BIPOC, social inequality, economic injustice, disability, LGBTQIA+, women’s and human rights and so many more issues that I haven’t listed. But let’s be clear, not all films need to champion a cause. Some bring awareness purely by being made in a compelling manner, and some can make us laugh as well as cry and motivate us to action. Competition Films are much more common in the documentary world than fiction. Competition films are filled with action and often feelgood momentum. A competition has an inbuilt story: a goal, stakes, a climax. We enjoy watching real characters persist at their goals against all the odds. The driving force here behind the drama is the underlying action and want of the character to compete. All have built-in stakes as the will-they or won’t-they succeed is a great story device. What we learn about fortitude and human endeavor in these films is a wonderful insight into what drives humans to compete. There are many examples of this genre in the addendum film list at the back of the book. Eric Barnouw in his book on the history of documentary would have called Investigative Films the Reporter or Prosecutor genre. These have been in existence since the World Wars and it’s true many of these films involve reporters’ work or covered war crimes and were at that time even used in criminal trials. Reporters’ investigations can often lead to exciting visual stories, initial articles inspire many of these films to be made, or even made by reporters-turned-filmmakers. But as Alex Nanau (Collective) quite rightly states in his chapter, we are filmmakers not journalists and there is a difference. In these films we do need to make sure we’re reporting facts accurately; this is important to insure our work is taken seriously and to protect our livelihoods and make sure we aren’t sued. But we are creative visual storytellers, writing with the camera so to speak, therefore our films don’t have to be saturated in facts. Investigative thrillers have been made using each style we have already discussed in the book: they can be performative with the filmmaker on camera, or they can be made with interview and archive. In the Collective book chapter the director uses observational filmmaking techniques. But what they all have in common is a central question that the filmmaker and often the community at large wants answered; this is the dominant theme of this genre. The protagonist and antagonist often are very obvious, the filmmakers using the reporters in many instances to dictate the point of view of the film. The themes can be intriguing, sometimes political or have a “fight the power” message to their story. There is an abundance of Crime Drama non-fiction series that have been made; I’m sure we can all attest to finding these very easily on our streaming services. It is one genre that has become exceptionally popular both in fiction and nonfiction film and TV. Some of these films and series have gone on to actually solve crimes or

16 Introduction—Scenes, Styles, and Genres

rather get people in and out of jail by providing further evidence for new trials. Some use private investigators and research teams and provide new video evidence. There is satisfaction for the human psyche when a person does wrong and they get caught. As the criminology professor Scott Bonn would say, we’re witnessing fear in a controlled environment, it can allow us to live out some of our greatest fears by seeing it happen to other people on screen. To me it can feel redemptive; women who are often physically powerless when a crime is committed, can see justice happen in a crime drama. Many of the most famous crime series, The Staircase, Making a Murderer, and Don’t F**k With Cats were about women or made by women, or featured women solving cases. One of the series in fact inspired many young women to go out and become private investigators. What this genre does involve is a type of code-breaking, working on puzzles, mysteries and the satisfaction for an audience of solving the crime even before the detectives do on screen. The Natural History genre as we know it was blown apart by the film we feature in the book. But My Octopus Teacher still contains the quintessential elements of what is included in this genre. An escape to a world bigger than ourselves. A world that exists outside of our everyday problems. Whatever happens in the daily struggles of our small lives, song birds will still migrate, waterfalls will still flow and whales will swim thousands of miles to give birth in the same place they have for centuries. As long as humans don’t completely devastate the planet these films remind us that nature heals. We’re learning about new worlds and behaviors and recognizing even though we seek control of our small worlds we can cede most control to the planet. We can’t control nature. Escapism, surprising beauty, and adventure are often central themes of this genre. In my last book, I chose to break down the film Cartel Land, examining the whole film by each individual scene. In this Action film, there are guns, high-speed car chases all happening in real time and with no stunts; everything you are watching is real life. Matthew Heineman put himself in harm’s way under much duress to get the incredible access and capture the stakes and tension that action films deliver. It’s a film about drug cartels the like of which we have never seen before or since. There are few action documentary films made and Cartel Land is most definitely an action film, a documentary action film. These thrillers have a particular pathos and rhythm to the film using high-stake scenes and tension in the construction of their stories. And definitely begs the audience to ask, is this real? We also cover fairytales, personal films, and portrait docs too, in the book but we chose to examine those films through the lens of the style of filmmaking first, genre second. The above list is not exhaustive: Romance, Spy Thrillers, Westerns, and Musicals—although lesser known in the documentary world, there have been some great docs made in these outlier genres. These rare documentary genres can afford filmmakers opportunities to make a film that stands out. Why aren’t there more comedy docs for example? We need to laugh and be entertained too. Looking at where there are opportunities to develop exciting work can have its advantages. Filmmakers take note, I know I am.

2 OBSERVATIONAL—THE TRUFFLE HUNTERS

Style: Observational, plot-based drama Genre: Fairytale Interview: Directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, film The Truffle Hunters

Director Michael Dweck. FIGURE 2.2 Director Gregory Kershaw. Photo credit: Cecilia Luppi Dweck Photo credit: Clément Morin

FIGURE 2.1

The Truffle Hunters is an enchanting documentary about a threatened way of life. The bond between man and dog is laid bare as both work together combing the northern Italian forests to search for the rare culinary delicacy of truffles. This anthropological film sits uniquely under the charming banner of a Fairytale genre DOI: 10.4324/9781003254768-2

18 Observational—The Truffle Hunters

but more unusually (because of how the film was made) in the observational style of a plot-based drama. The filmmakers would describe their approach as vérité, using the observational fly-on-the-wall style of filmmaking. Observational means a film that doesn’t use interviews for storytelling (refer back to the introduction for the background to this term) but rather the filmmakers are immersing themselves in the world of their characters and following a way of life as an observer. The chapter on the film Collective is another great example of this style of filmmaking. Observational is a term often used to describe a fluid style of filmmaking, with the camera following the characters’ uninterrupted actions as scenes play out in real life. Here, quite unusually, the filmmakers would wait for the action to come to them. The Truffle Hunters is not a fly-on-the-wall film as we’ve come to know them, and this is what is exciting to examine. Generally, this style of filmmaking requires the characters to become very acquainted with the presence of the camera. Of course, the mere presence of a crew can change people’s actions. Think of one of the most feted observational films, the Maysles brothers’ Grey Gardens, which is on every film school’s watch list. You can feel the characters acting for the camera, young Edie often dancing and flirting with the Maysles brothers to get their attention. Even though in the beautifully lit and what could feel like staged scenes in the The Truffle Hunters, the men (and their dogs) don’t feel like they’re acting at all, they’re not and let’s examine how and why. The directors talk of how little the characters cared about the camera’s presence—none of their characters had even ever been to a cinema; it’s a world they know little about. That might sound like it would make the filmmaking easier, but the directing duo spent years getting to know the men and women that took part so they wouldn’t feel like strangers and be welcomed into their homes. It took that long to build trust, they filmed for weeks at a time over a three-year period, going back and forth between Italy and the filmmakers’ homes in Europe and America. The directors would also prepare beforehand by lighting scenes. This was unusual and ground-breaking, as in many observational films lighting setups are rarely used. Rather cinematographers use available light as it would be otherwise impossible to follow action in vérité scenes, with characters moving in and out of areas. And this is what has made this film so unique. Lighting was used and set up in a way fiction filmmakers might on a set (not using a large crew for a lighting department, however). The directors risking but hoping the action would fall in a period of light or shadow or in some fantastical way to produce the beautiful images they hoped to capture. They weren’t directing actors to hit their marks and land in the light but waiting and waiting. It makes me think of the patience of wildlife cinematographers, how they watch and observe animal behaviour for hours.

Observational—The Truffle Hunters

19

The second style is a plot-based drama. The film follows a small number of key characters in an incredibly bold style of filmmaking centered in a unique location. Yes, the film is about food, and the search for the prized truffles, but so much more. The environment plays a huge role in why these characters live these lives in the place they live them. The pressures they experience because of their life’s work in Northern Italy. It isn’t following a journey of any “one” of the individuals’ story, but rather how or whether their way of life can survive. We follow a group of characters almost as if they are one central protagonist, in a collective sense, all with the same goal. More common character-led films are different in style because there are distinct individual actions that the film follows as a character tries to get nearer to their goal. So those films choose to center on one or two central characters, which is more common in documentaries. Not all multi-character films are vérité/observational; many have interviews and we will go on and discuss interview-led films later. The Truffle Hunters also has no cutaways. Think on that a minute when you think of making a film. No cutaways, meaning no chance for the editor to compress time by showing ephemera (or B roll) of the characters’ world to truncate moments. Pictures on a wall, for example, or, in this case, possibly a close-up of a dog curled at their feet. Director Gregory Kershaw talks about how the editor couldn’t believe they had so little footage; there was only one hard drive and only approximately 100 shots in the film. Scenes are sometimes just a minute long but took two or three hours of the camera rolling to capture. This is an extremely unusual method of making a documentary film, or any film for that matter and why I chose this film to analyze. Every shot is a master shot. How do we construct scenes when there are only 100 shots in the entire film? The directors said this took time and experimentation to get right but they wanted to shoot the film like a fairytale and that is exactly how you feel when you watch the film. Fairytale is a rare documentary genre so when we see one that works so well, it is worth diving into exactly how the filmmakers have made it so compelling. It is a fantastical film. Other observational films: Honeyland, America, The Babushkas of Chernobyl, Collective. Other plot-based, multi-character films: The Work, Fyre Festival, American Factory, Crime and Punishment, The Invisible War.

Introduction I am going to set the stage for this interview in a different way from the rest of the chapters. I was smiling as I was typing up my notes as there is so much joy and wonder to be found in this film.

20 Observational—The Truffle Hunters

Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw lived in the same building in Manhattan, New York City. Possibly serendipitous, Kershaw as a cinematographer went on to work on Dweck’s first documentary (about race car driving in Long Island). But there were other chance events that occurred. They both individually traveled and became fascinated by a rarefied world in Northern Italy, on separate holidays, but magically, at a similar time. Surrounded by mountains, Piedmont is an area that drew them in, seemingly untouched by the modern world of technology and globalization. They decided to go back together for two weeks to try and start a possible film. Often, as with many filmmakers, they thought it would take less time, a month to be exact, to film with truffle hunters. But once they knew they wanted to follow truffle foraging it took a year just to find out who the real truffle hunters were. On that journey they began to understand why and what drew them to this world. They didn’t start with a story in mind; they were drawn to the people because their world played out like a fairytale. It was like nothing they’d ever experienced before. It wasn’t just a magical location, everything in the world of a truffle hunter seemed hidden. Where the truffle hunters hunt, where they sell their rare cache once they find them, and who they sell them to. The duo smartly didn’t take any cameras with them on their first forays (Dweck is also a photographer) into the towns and countryside but rather spent the time building relationships, taking time to understand the “feeling” of this spectacular world. There is no doubt that this film is a sensory piece of art, not easy to achieve in a film. They wanted the sounds to be central alongside capturing the mystical elements too. Going into the forest alone with truffle hunters and their dogs at night, or sitting in the kitchen while they ate food, having conversations over wine, in the light of the magical rooms … they wanted to work out how to translate the tastes and smells to cinema too. The directors talk about wanting people to learn how to see again with those very static shots, like turning a page in this closed off, rarefied world. To slow down, observe, immersing all of their senses into one shot. Almost feeling it, smelling it, seeing it, and hearing it. And because of this, they spent a lot of time on sound design. The white truffle is magical; it’s not a mushroom, it’s a fungus that grows underground, and can’t be cultivated, it has eluded science. There are many theories about energy lines in the forest that enables this to happen. Its growth has something to do with oak roots, and possibly thunderstorms but with lightning too. All the right elements have to be present to make the fungi grow, and it only grows in this region. Gregory Kershaw has said others think it has to do with warlocks. It does feel like the film is a magical adventure to find golden treasures in times past … After all, the truffle is almost the price of gold, which you see spectacularly play out in one scene. At first, Dweck and Kershaw followed seven truffle hunters. We watch scenes of 85-year-old men walking in the mud for miles in these forests. The directors

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also didn’t speak the language and at times didn’t have a translator. In this area of Italy, they speak a dialect of German, French, and Italian. The directors not understanding the language, walking with equipment, following these characters who would walk 15–20 miles on any given night, took a dedication and confidence in their story to a whole other level. And then there are the dogs. The relationship between man and beast is beyond the usual; we’re not totally sure in the film who leads who. After all, it takes three years to train a truffle dog and they have to be gifted with the same obsession as their masters for the hunt of the truffles. It is the love the masters have for their dogs that makes for incredibly emotional scenes in the film. The dogs were integral to this story and led to cameras and mics being adapted for them to wear, so at times we’re watching the dogs’ point of view, which makes for fun viewing. The directors captured a legacy. The older men are active, they experience community in the old-fashioned way, they know everyone, talk to everyone and there are traditions, sometimes for the fun of having the traditions. There should be a name for that, an Italian name for having traditions for the sake of tradition. Why sell a truffle at 3 am in a side alley under the cover of darkness, it’s not illegal? Even a woman, who had lived for 30 years across the street from where the action took place, didn’t know about those dealings going on under her window in the early hours of the morning. It’s almost as if the directors had to experience this process for themselves, give themselves over to it, and let their original intentions for the shoots drop away. The intensive time spent in that world of one week back home in the United States, three weeks in Italy, through the whole “hunting season,” September through January paid off. When one character finally found a truffle, he led the directors back to his cabin and shaved the truffle then and there and served it to them; they were given his prize to eat. And then when they did start shooting time took on a different meaning and that is true of the region and community in which they filmed. Sometimes the directors would only capture one shot a day or sometimes none. Unheard of in filmmaking, a fiction film director would have a nervous breakdown I’m sure. They’d often wait for 6–7 hours for the light to hit the right spot. The directors’ approach would be to have an idea for the day but it could evolve or change completely. And it couldn’t just be a pretty shot but rather they would ask themselves how would the shot fit into a story structure. At first, they shot coverage of B roll only to realize they didn’t want that at all. So they completely changed their initial approach. It took some experimentation but Dweck’s ambition for the film, of a fairytale, like flicking through a storybook, is exactly what was accomplished. They achieved this spectacularly in their wide still frames, but it took time. The pace and the rhythm of the film is totally different from so much that we experience today. But they mastered it and as you watch the film you do find yourself falling into the same pace of the truffle hunters too. But the film doesn’t drag, far from it, and it is this mastery that we will discuss in the interview.

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Interview Maxine Trump: This book is about diving deep into the creation of scenes so I’m going to jump right into my favorite scenes with Sergio (one of the truffle hunters). It’s about seven minutes into the film. We’ve seen three master shots before with Sergio, let’s call this the introduction to Sergio’s goal scene. There is a shot from inside the car as he lets his dogs out, then we move to a group shot of men talking about looking for truffles and how hard it is. Sergio is in this crowd, then we cut to Sergio in the bath washing the dog. It sets up the character so perfectly, he not only loves his dog, he is his companion, his comfort, and his colleague. This was very early in the film but how early on was he able to feel comfortable enough to give you that access, to the bath especially? Michael Dweck: We spent a lot of time with Sergio and I think this is one of the last shots that we did with him, I mean he’s a very private person. And most of the time we saw him outside of his home in the woods, he’d be meeting us somewhere on the side of a road. It’s really hard to keep up with Sergio because he’s always moving. At the time I think he was 67 and the thing with Sergio is if it’s truffle hunting season he’s in that zone for those three months. So it’s really difficult to keep track of him. And if you want to spend time with him you have to do it kind of at his own pace. We kept asking him about his home life with the dogs and whenever you mentioned the dogs to him he gets very emotional. He literally cries when you’re talking about his dog. But I think it was the third year we were with him that he finally invited us into his home. Gregory Kershaw: In general people in this region and age group in particular were very easy to film with. I mean there were a lot of challenges we had to overcome to get into these communities and find out even who the truffle hunters were. It did take four months before we began filming. But I guess the counterpoint would be that the previous film that we worked on, The Last Race, we filmed in Long Island in the United States. And generally, the people were younger than the people that we were filming with in Italy. But, I think the one major difference is that in the US people are hooked into the media ecosystem that consume reality TV shows. And so in that film when we turned the camera on, people would start kind of playing out these characters, as if they were in a reality TV show. It took us ages to get beyond that. And we ended up having to shoot them with these really long telephoto zoom lenses so they would completely forget about us. It was completely the opposite filming in Italy. I think a lot of that is just because they don’t have digital media in their lives, they don’t watch movies, they don’t watch television. And so when we turn the camera on, it was this kind of amazing experience, because they

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just kind of forgot about us almost immediately. I haven’t really experienced that before. And their personalities just came through. What you see on the camera is really what we experienced when we started exploring. This is why we made the film in the first place, we’re just kind of so in awe of these people that we got the chance to follow around the woods. MD: Some of the characters wanted us to really pay the dues, to be in the woods and journey with them. Like Sergio, the first time we went with him truffle hunting he was taking us down a cliff that was really vertical, with our equipment. He was running down and we were barely walking down. And he came back to get our equipment and he said, “You guys are way too slow, I’m losing light.” So he came up, grabbed the camera, ran down, grabbed the tripod, ran down. The opening shot of the film, that people think is a drone shot, is not, it’s us on the opposite cliff, filming him. We had a monstrous zoom lens, zooming in at first it looks like an abstract painting. MT: He was helping you with carrying the equipment? MD: Yeah, that wasn’t supposed to be the idea. We asked him not to but he just grabbed it because we were struggling to get down. It was raining, it was muddy, it seemed a little precarious. MT: And no luxury of having a second camera somewhere. MD: No, we didn’t have one of those. GK: That might be one of the advantages of coming into film a place where we started as outsiders. It was a community that once you’re in it’s a very warm community, but it’s a community that keeps their secrets. We wanted to get to know the place before we filmed but it was also just by necessity. I think that may be one of the reasons that when we did finally turn on the camera it just felt so seamless. It didn’t cause a disruption in their lives. And we were able to capture the scenes the way that we did in the film. MT: You’d proved yourselves and paid your dues. But then the payoff was great. We don’t always know what’s coming as filmmakers do we, we sort of have to be believers that it’s going to work out. MD: Yeah, we didn’t have a story going into this. We just said there’s something really interesting that we want to know more about so let’s just throw ourselves in there. They were really nice to us, but also we talked to them on their terms. We couldn’t just talk like we do in the States, or the UK, when you kind of sit down with somebody, and you tell them what you want. We could try to tell them but it wasn’t going to happen. They would respond by

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saying, have some wine and I’m going to show you the five pictures in our family that are important to us going back a couple of generations, our wedding pictures, a painting of our house, let me show you around the farm. I don’t think we ever, in any of the first two or three meetings, ever brought up what we had in mind. It was not appropriate. If we tried it was typically just shut down. Come back on Friday. We’re like, well, we’re here now. Well, I have to go pick the walnuts. It’s Monday. It’s a long time away. GK: We think we learned that lesson the first time that was explained to us. This was very early on in the project before we had financing. We were told that there was somebody in Italy who might be interested in helping support the film. And so we had somebody make an introduction for us. It was a lunch, we ate, we had a coffee, and then we explained what we were looking for. The lunch kind of ended abruptly after that. And the person that organized lunch, he said, “You don’t just come out with it and ask, you have lunch with them. And then you get to know them.” But we’re like, this was a meeting about financing. That’s what we thought we were there to do. It’s like, No, you don’t ask them. We learned from that meeting that those were the regional norms. We realized that this was a sign about how we should work with the people that we were filming with too, to build a friendship and earn that trust. And out of that trust came the intimacy that allowed us to make the film. MT: What I love about the film is the secrets you mention. They do things a certain way because that is just how they do things. And it’s a wonderful tradition and long may it continue. MD: We couldn’t figure it out. When we were there they were telling us you have to meet at three o’clock in the morning, in the shadows of a church. And it’s freezing out and we’re saying, really, we can’t do it at noon, like on a sunny day? They just say that’s just how it is. And we’d meet there and it’d be these old guys in trench coats and rain hats. You know, scurrying around these little alleyways dealing truffles and then a car pulls up. Someone opens a hatchback, they scurry over and smell the truffles, car leaves, deals over and nothing happened except, you know, we’re left out. So we’re trying to figure out how do we approach this secretive huddled group because we’re obviously outsiders, and we mistakenly say, “Anybody selling Truffles here?” Nobody wanted to talk to us after that they thought we had something to do with the tax department or something. MT: I’d like to talk about the relationships you built with the priests, the doctor and the mayor. They almost become the interviewer in some of your scenes. I know they helped get the access for you, but when did you realize you could use them in this way?

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GK: It really comes down to the time that we spent with the truffle hunters, just understanding their lives, what they did on a daily basis, who they interacted with, and what their concerns were. We saw the patterns of their lives and we learned enough to anticipate what might happen. Then when something new happened we developed an instinct for how it might fit in the story we were trying to tell. We would know when things were going to happen and we would be there to film it. Like when somebody might be going to the priest, we would get there early, we would spend maybe just two hours kind of hanging out before anybody even arrived, just looking at the space. And we might even go there the day before if we knew something was going to happen. It was never just rolling the camera as so often happens in a documentary, where things are happening and you’re reacting to them. There are a lot of beautiful things that can come out of making a documentary like that, where you’re following things and reacting. But we tried to get to know the world just enough and know every space we were going to film in. If we saw something happen we wouldn’t just roll the camera we would trust that it was going to happen again, maybe not in the exact same way but maybe in a different form. We missed a lot I’m sure but it wasn’t a news event. It was the lives of farmers, truffle hunters, they do the same thing every day, they have these rituals. Everyday they eat lunch at the same time, they go into the fields at the same time, they go into the market at the same time, they go to church at the same time. We saw those rhythms, we understood it and so we could be ahead of it when we took out the camera, or we tried to at least. MD: They confided in the priest, we filmed other truffle hunters also talking to their priests, it’s that generation that’s really close to the church. It took a while for the priest to invite us to film these meetings. We didn’t know what Carlo (truffle hunter in the priest scene) was going to talk to the priest about. We thought as it was Christmas time, that he was going to give him a Christmas gift. It was traditional for truffle hunters to give an offering to the priest because a lot of the prayers have to do with weather or for the truffle hunter to have enough strength to keep up with the dog. Or that their dog’s sense of smell stays sharp and they don’t take advantage of the truffle hunter. Our objective was that we want the audience to believe what they were seeing and that’s really the style chosen by the filmmaker. MT: In this scene of interactions with the priest at about 20 minutes into the film, the story beat reinforces the goal and the struggles for the characters. The dog is as important as its master. The sense of smell of the dog was the major tool of the trade, much like a fisherman and the shepherd would pray for good weather. The religious blessings and tradition makes the priest a character that’s an enabler to the protagonist too, to help him reach his goal.

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I felt the emotion in that scene with the priest or rather master shot; which is pretty much one and the same thing in your film, the action of the scene happens in all these wide shots. It’s so unique. You have a lot of characters. Sometimes when you drop a character from a film it can break your heart. How did you decide which characters to keep or who had the biggest story arc? MD: Aldo was an opera singer, it really hurt to drop him. We spent years with him but a lot of them look alike that’s the problem. Because they all kind of wear the same clothes in the woods. They were all around the same age. So there’s a lot of confusion with characters. GK: We probably have another film with all the footage that didn’t make it in, footage that we love and characters that we love that were really interesting. It’s just the demands of piecing these together into a narrative with all these separate discernible stories that forced us into making these very, very gutwrenching decisions. MD: Especially in an edit with so few shots, there are 107 shots in the whole film. So it was difficult to move one little piece. MT: There are certain scenes that are pivotal to the storytelling. A scene at about 8.5 minutes into the film introduces the struggle to find the locations of truffles and how this knowledge is taken to the grave with some of the truffle hunters because they’re so protective of this vulnerable tradition. The scene is with Aurelio and Carlo in the restaurant, it sets up the world so perfectly, the goal for everyone to find these fungi and the beautiful game they play and conflict between characters. We always want these story beats early in our films so the audience can feel well placed in the story they’re following. Carlo (younger truffle hunter) wants to have these secrets passed on to him because Aurelio doesn’t have children, he doesn’t have apprentices only his dogs and he’s getting old. Did you know that Carlo was going to talk to him about this? GK: That scene actually happened because of our translator. She was with Aurelio, the truffle hunter (and the dog Berber’s owner). And this guy Carlo, he’s a younger truffle hunter who’s very involved politically in the local community. And he called because he had heard about our film and wanted to know more about it. And then he heard on the phone that Letizia, our translator, was with Aurelio. He was so amazed because Aurelio is just this mythical figure in this community. He’s a really well-known truffle hunter. And he, Carlo started asking them all these questions, and Aurelio really just didn’t want to have anything to do with it. I mean I guess it was probably a lot like how the scene actually played out. And so the call

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ended and Carlo later called Letizia back and said, I’d really love to meet Aurelio, I just want to ask him about truffle hunting. She told us about it and we knew we had to film it. So we meet at a restaurant and we set up the camera and we let them go. And you know that every scene that you see, it’s just a sliver of what we actually filmed, we’d run the camera for two hours, three hours at a time in some of the cases. So they talked about a lot of different things but he really wanted to find Aurelio’s spots, because that’s what they’re all guarding. But it’s not just a spot, it’s knowing when a spot is going to produce truffles at what time of year. But that conversation was amazing because Carlo wouldn’t give up and there was no way he was gonna get that out of Aurelio. MT: Talk about being there at the perfect time, the translator and Aurelio. Was the translator known in the town? MD: Not in the town, but she’s from Torino. But she would sometimes drop the name of the town and village she was from which helped. But she also understood the personality of Piedmontese, which responds well to a bit of pandering. It’s probably like a lot of dialects, but this one in particular is like a wrestling match. A typical thing would be you’d knock on Aurelio’s door when he said come Friday at two o’clock to film. And then he’s busy. He’s trimming a tree on a ladder, like up in the air sometimes with a chainsaw when we arrive. And he says, “No, no, I’m busy come back in a week” and Letizia would just say, “Okay, I understand you’re just too old, we’re gonna go to Carlo who’s four years older than you and we’re gonna film with him for the week.” MD: Aurelio says, “No, no, no, look at me. Look at me, I can run, I can dance.” You know, he was a dancer. He used to work in a nightclub. And all of a sudden he’s ready to go. “Let’s go Berber (the dog). Come on.” MT: So the translator was really worth her weight in gold. MD: She had to be charming, that helped a lot. GK: When we first started the project we were just looking for a translator and somebody recommended her. I think she was the first person that we talked to and she was wonderful. And we quickly realized that she was sort of essential to our project. And she became a co-producer. She had never worked in film before, her full name is Letizia Guglielmino. It was really the three of us going out every day, we usually had a sound person with us. And that was the team, we made the film and we kept a very small footprint. And I think that was another one of the reasons why we were able to get the kind of intimacy that you see in the film.

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MD: Because they didn’t see us as a film crew they saw us as a bunch of buddies coming to their place. We drove a van they’d laugh at because it said in Italian “the friendly blue van” in massive letters on the side, everybody’s saying can you park down the hill it’s so ugly, we don’t want it outside the house. But I think we became friends, we’d show up in the morning to help them with whatever they were doing and hang around and they didn’t think we’d ever come back. And then we just kept coming back day after day. We also lived above a butcher. So we’d take raw meat with us, that helped a lot too, raw fresh meat is a big deal. So we’d always have refrigerated raw meat. During the holidays we’d have Italian cake. We’d have a lot of those. And then we’d have local wine, that worked. We thought we’d present a gift to them the first time but then they’d give us stuff back thinking it was like a barter deal. They’d give us a case of pomegranates or persimmons that were really overripe in a van with a lot of camera equipment. MT: So as this book is about scenes I’m going to ask about Nina’s (dog) owner, Angelo (with the wonderful long beard). The scene of him typing at about 36 minutes into the film. He’s talking to himself, but he’s talking to you right? He doesn’t want to be a truffle hunter anymore, he’s very serious about the threat to the land. It’s escalating or building on from the obstacles earlier in the film. Which is great as this is how we build our stories, we look for these moments in our films. You managed to have the camera shoot through the window. Tell us a little bit about how you set up that scene. GK: I don’t know when he’s sitting at home by himself, if he’s screaming as he’s typing, although I wouldn’t totally doubt it. MD: Other people in the town know who he is, they’ve heard of him because he’s protecting a really good truffle forest on his property. He doesn’t want people hunting on it. You’re allowed if you’re friend of his but of course only if you ask his permission, and you’re not allowed to sell from the harvest. But he told us he writes and reads a lot because if you look at that shot he’s surrounded with books. He says he has every book of classics and he literally surrounds himself physically in his kitchen with books. I think we had asked about that typewriter, and he told us he wrote poetry and songs and I think that was just part of it. He just started to get into a trance, and just starts typing, and just spewing, it’ll go on for hours that way. GK: I guess he was aware that we were there but to tell you about the scene we have to tell you more about Angelo. He’s kind of everything that he was in the film and more. He was a poet, he’s written songs, he was a trapeze artist, he’s traveled the world. He keeps this villa in the absolute middle of

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nowhere. You have to go down a long dirt road and then you have to walk down this long path to get to it. There are early scenes in the film of him chopping wood, and driving his tractor through his magical forest surrounded by an explosion of color. We would go into this world and it felt like time stopped or it was moving at a different speed. Because the next thing you know we’d be there for the whole day and sometimes we wouldn’t have shot anything. There’s this cast of characters coming in and out of his land, the farmer next door will come in and they’ll have coffee and whine and complain about the world. It’s a recurring theme and that’s actually how we met him. We were introduced by somebody we had just met, somebody who’d become a good friend of the film. And he said, “I know you’re looking for truffle hunters I know one.” He set up this dinner at a nice restaurant, Angelo came like an hour late. He just sat down at the table and he just started spewing everything that was wrong with truffle hunting, everything that was wrong with the world. We didn’t get two words in for 40 minutes and then he just got up and left. We thought okay we need to film this. So that typewriter was probably one of the earliest things that we filmed with him, in the first year, it was really early on in the process because we didn’t film that much that year. We just knew that he wrote letters, we said we want to film you type and we spent a little time lighting that area. It’s just Mike and I doing all the lighting and camera. So a small, little lighting setup actually takes a really long time for us because we’re lugging everything out of the van ourselves. We’re also not just doing that, we’re still directing and participating in the world. So we stopped to have coffee, maybe wine, although I don’t know if that should go in the book. MT: People will understand you may have drunk some wine. MD: Angelo, he makes his own wine with no cork. GK: That was probably my favorite place to be in all of those places. I loved being there. MT: Can I talk a little about sound? I love how both of you have talked about capturing the senses and the forest not being quiet and how important it was for you to capture those sounds. It’s hard for a sound person when you’re running after characters and trying to capture everything. Were you building up a relationship with a sound person that was very flexible, they presumably had to be very flexible in more ways than one. You mentioned one of the sound people holding onto Carlo’s (one of the truffle hunters) arm so he wouldn’t run off without you following.

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MD: That’s very true, he didn’t do a good job of it. Carlo did get away. MT: For sound people it’s a very different way of working compared to fiction.

Carlo Gondola and sound person Matia Strang and directors. Photo credit: Letizia Guglielmino

FIGURE 2.3

MD: We worked with two sound people. At first we had Mirko Guerra, then he had to go onto a longer project. Then we ended up working with Matia Strang. What’s interesting about Matia is that he was into challenges, which was great for a sound person. We’d say, well, we’re gonna have a bunch of dogs in a Jeep, driving 50 miles per hour, we want to be able to hear the dogs breathing on the glass, we want to be able to hear the truffle hunter in the front, we want to hear the tires moving in the mud. And he’d be the kind of person who’d disappear, go home, come back the next morning with a plan. He’d have these rigs with different microphones that he would try. We were very conscious from the very beginning about sound, and we would talk to our sound designer, Steven Urata, who worked at Skywalker. Fortunately, we were invited to a Sundance lab for a week where we got to experiment with some scenes of the film. He ended up being our sound designer, and we were consulting with him during the process because we

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knew sound was going to be important. We wanted to immerse the audience in the subjective experience of this place. That was our objective. So our goal during production was to try to construct an audio library of location-specific sound samples wherever we could. A lot of times we would send Matia in early before we got there, or we’d leave him behind. He even would capture different types of wind through different types of trees. We had microphones on the dogs too, little tiny microphones, sometimes by their legs, sometimes by their nose, we attached a little camera to their head. The truffle hunter would go out with the dogs for two or three hours and we couldn’t be following them with a recorder, they didn’t want us to see where they were going. So we had to create ways to capture that. But we were always looking for new ways to capture sound in a way that we could bring the richness of this place, and the authenticity of this place, to the final mix. MT: I love that we can talk about recognizing the importance of sound, which leads me to a question. It’s concerning the same sequence of shots, from earlier, that end with the shot of Sergio in the bath. You have Sergio opening the trunk for the dogs and then you cut to a group of men, a group of hunters with their dogs. The shot of the group is wide. Did you get the sound of the conversation from the dogs in that scene? Or were you putting a lavalier mic on anybody? GK: I think actually that whole conversation was from a boom. I remember that because we were tucked in this little ravine shooting and it was really kind of precarious to get the sound person in there. MD: We didn’t know they were going to come along, you’re not supposed to ever meet a truffle hunter in the woods. It’s a no no if you see footprints or tire tracks and they’re fresh. That was pretty surprising that they were there that day. MT: Because the truffle hunter would have cornered that area for only their own search. MD: Yeah, exactly, you’re meant to leave if someone is there before you. GK: We had been following Sergio into the woods when we stumbled upon these people. After the conversation splits up, Sergio is gone and we were talking to the taller of the two in the group. He goes, it’s been a really tough year for truffles, we haven’t found any. And then he opens his pocket, and he shows us a big truffle. It was an amazing way, right from the beginning, to show the deception in the story. MD: You know, you can smell that lying. The lying is part of the story which makes it so interesting and fun and exciting. Nobody tells anybody the truth when it comes to truffles, nobody.

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They don’t tell the truth to their wives, to their children, to their best friends. They never admit they found a truffle anywhere. We found two guys—I think they were both named Aldo. They were in their late eighties. We asked how long they had been friends, and they said 82 years and that they’re both truffle hunters. They sit there and have coffee at the same time every morning after their truffle hunt. We asked if they ever tell each other the truth about their truffles. “Never!” they replied. MT: Amazing. I’m going back to the visuals now. So you talk about Caravaggio, Titian being influences, and I was thinking, Vermeer and some of the Dutch painters, because you’re using so much light from the window. But how many scenes were you able to stage at the window. GK: I think all those references that you mentioned, are apt, but before we started out we didn’t have a lookbook and say we want it to look like this Caravaggio, or a Vermeer. These are references that we’re intimately familiar with, whether it’s those painters, whether it’s films we’ve seen, they’re in our head, and there are things that Michael and I talked about a lot. But we were never trying to emulate any particular style consciously, maybe unconsciously. We were drawn to things but it was always just trying to respond to what we were experiencing, what was in front of us at the moment, or looking for ways to frame that, to capture the feeling of the place. I guess it’s like, when you take a picture with your iPhone, and you show someone and say, that was what that was like, all those things are true, but it doesn’t really capture what that moment felt like. And that’s really I think what we did as filmmakers. We really waited and searched for the images, that don’t just work, but actually captured the feeling of the world to us. The film is very flat, if you look at all the images you’re almost always enclosed by walls. And that’s a very deliberate choice. There are lots of big, beautiful, vast images of rolling hills in the area and we didn’t shoot those, there’s maybe just one shot, everything’s kind of closed off. That’s how the world felt to us. It felt like it was wrapping around us. It felt warm, felt like a storybook. These are things that we’ve figured out how to articulate because we’ve had to talk about the film. But I don’t think it was while we were making it. And we would say, this feels like the world and this doesn’t. And that’s what we ended up shooting. MT: I can’t believe I didn’t even notice that I wasn’t seeing the mountains of Italy. A picture book, of course, that is totally how it feels.

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GK: The Alps are always in the background in this area, it’s an incredibly beautiful area. We tried to find the unexpected places of beauty in this area, and not the most obvious. MD: That world told us what the film should be. Initially, we tried different styles of filmmaking and it just wasn’t working. We just kind of gave it a break and just spent more time there to see what happened. Eventually, the world told us to slow down and look, to start observing this world in a different way. And that’s when we came to that point where we’d walk into someone’s home and we’d see that everything was absolutely beautiful, it’s just a really perfect setting for their lives. It felt to us that there was no other way of doing it. Like Angelo is making chicken soup and he had just gotten a fresh chicken from outside. And he brings it into his house, it’s a musty dark kitchen with stone floors, you stare at the setting, and realize this could be a still life painting. MT: I mean, no surprise that you’re a photographer and cinematographer first and viewing through that lens, literally. Let’s maybe jump to the humor, because the humor is wonderful. It made me think of the Italian director Nanni Moretti’s films. MD: We’re not laughing at them we’re just kind of experiencing the joy. Like when Carlo was with the doctor (at 16 minutes into the film). That was a pretty serious injury, he went down a hill and got smacked in the head with a branch at three o’clock in the morning. He goes to the doctor, he’s basically telling him he runs much faster than the deer when the doctor tells him maybe slow down at 87 years old. But basically the conversation prior to that is just, you’re a doctor, you fix me up. I’m a truffle hunter, I’m gonna be out of here soon. So just you do your job and I’ll do my job. But to us there’s humor that comes out organically, we weren’t poking fun at them. Kind of like the scene of Sergio in the bathtub with his dog, you know, blow drying his dog’s fur. That’s just the love he has for his dog, it’s a family member and to the outside world, of course, it’s kind of awesome. MT: It’s great that you again get access to the doctor’s appointment, you said you had a relationship with the doctor too. That’s an early character moment in the film, you’re introducing us to not only these old men, but look at what this life gives them, vitality, energy, a goal to keep going. It’s a wonderful secret to how to live your life, a surprising story beat. Audiences love being surprised. At 87 he’s running faster than a deer. The elixir for life. You’ve made a film together before and you’re both established artists. How hard was it to bring people along? Because it’s expensive, you’re there for three seasons. You come home for a week then go back for three weeks. Did you shoot sample scenes?

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MD: So we had shot for a season, we put together a trailer then we were invited to Catalyst (Sundance program) and everything started from there. GK: We spent a lot of time creating a trailer that really ultimately captured something different. It was very indicative of what the film ended up being. We spent a lot of time creating an application, it wasn’t just talking about the project, it was really about capturing the feeling of the project and this world. That extended to the way we wrote about it, the tone of the film. It was also a really helpful process for focusing our work as we moved along, because that was all after the first year of filming. It informed us, it laid a base for us to build on for everything else that we shot later. MD: The objective with the writing was to immerse people into this world, the people viewing the applications, because we knew that there were probably filmmakers that might have had more experience than we had, there were some films also that were heavy, it’s a social impact program that we didn’t have at that point either. Greg was talking about immersing people into a magical world that we thought was quite unique. MT: I think that’s what a lot of filmmakers miss, that trick of really capturing the essence of how the film’s going to be and I think applications can end up being like a mission statement or about an issue. But what’s the film, what’s the story or what are you seeing on screen? MD: Writing is really important. Greg’s an incredible writer; he uses his pencil as a weapon. MT: It’s a powerful phrase, pens being the weapon. I’m in a similar world to you, I don’t tell many people I’m an environmental filmmaker, but my films have that essence. What was so beautiful about your film is that you got people to care about this world, and then raised money for the land protection. Showing the challenges to this world in the entertainment of the film first and that makes them care. MD: Something we didn’t expect was this conservation program that came out of the film from basically just our love of this place. Because we just saw how easy it was to clear cut a forest, it didn’t take very long to take the old oak trees and just shred them. So we raised quite a bit of money and we’re working with a nonprofit on the ground, which one of our truffle hunters manages. And so we’ve already protected about 55 acres of land that’s there, the land is purchased. MT: When we’re in production we try and go in and not effect the world or characters we’re filming with, but it’s impossible. There’s always something anthropologically that can affect these people’s lives, have you seen any results of that?

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MD: If you mean the land, it will be very difficult to find these areas. We don’t even know where the spots are, even if we did we’d need a dog that we’d have to train ourselves personally, to be able to find the truffles. That would take like five or six years to figure out so it’s not possible. And some characters are hard to reach. We got to Angelo’s house and he has an old phone but it’s unplugged from the wall. And we say, “I don’t understand, why don’t you have a phone that we can call. We have to always call this guy to reach you, who’s a very busy man who works in the government. We have to call him and say, can you do me a favor? Can you drive half an hour to Angelo’s house to see if he’s home? But he’s like, okay, in my lunchtime, I will go and try.” But when we get to Angelo’s house, he says, “If you tell me when you’re going to call, I’ll plug it in.” Greg is like, okay, that makes total sense. MT: Oh, wonderful. So let’s get back to my favorite scene and we’ve got to end with your favorite scenes. I can’t decide whether it’s Carlo in the bedroom, putting his jacket on and then jumping out the window, right at the end of the film, an hour and ten minutes in. I feel that would have taken some time to be allowed to be in the bedroom. I’m kind of amazed but it felt so natural and yet there’s a camera there. Or it’s the amazing shots of the truffle on the cushion, shooting through the legs onto the table at the auction, at about one hour into the film. I love that it’s filmed as if the fungi is a celebrity which it is, of course. Again it adds this beautiful lightness to the film and it feels like a climax, as if the largest truffle was found by one of our characters. It’s a celebration, it’s big, as is the fungi. MD: We were both in the bedroom for that shot with Carlo in that scene. And then the auction lasts maybe just four minutes once a year. And it’s $100,000 truffle. The truffle auction scene was being filmed for live TV. So they said whatever you do, don’t be in the shot. GK: The event gets going and everybody’s looking at the truffle. But behind the truffle they have these Italian celebrities that are hosting the event. So there’s a very famous actress on one side, a very famous actor on the other and they’re getting the crowd riled up. And then we’re shooting the camera through their legs as they’re standing there. MD: They’re kind of bumping the camera out the way and we kept pushing them back the other way because they’re blocking the shot. GK: To get that shot we’d done our research and watched all the videos of the truffle auctions in previous years, we knew what it looked like and then we went to the space before the event happened, we scoped it out. We

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just had this idea of showing it from the opposite perspective that you would expect. All the cameras were on the celebrities with the truffle. And we wanted to show the truffle so we explained to them what we wanted to do and they said, yeah, at your own risk. In our second year of shooting, we went there and we filmed it and we didn’t really get the shot. MD: They were pushing us around all over the place. GK: The camera was bouncing, it looked similar to what’s in the final film but it wasn’t right, it wasn’t perfect. If we were shooting a narrative film we would set everybody up and do it again and tell them to behave differently. But you can’t do that in a documentary. So we waited a whole year. And we went back and we did it again because it had to be the right frame. In this film all the frames they’re paintings. We found in the edit if there’s just a little bump in one of the frames it immediately takes you out of it. So we just had to have the right frame without getting bumped. GK: The first year we shot the auction we got invited to a really nice dinner afterward. The second time that didn’t happen. MT: Hopefully the celebrities weren’t bumping you out of the way the second time. So what have been your favorite scenes? MD: We didn’t realize the closeness that any of them had with their dogs. Until we started to see the GoPro footage and the doggy cam, and heard the conversations between the owner and dog, and they were intimate conversations. Aurelio was talking about dying, he wanted to take some time over who he could find to look after Berber. They really care for their dogs. The first time that he invited us into his home, which is the shot that’s on the poster is when he’s busy preparing lunch. He was talking a lot about Christmas, he kept talking saying, I’m gonna make it really special for you this year Berber. He and the dog would eat at the table from ceramic plates. The first time he invited us for lunch he didn’t ask us to sit down, but Berber would sit down and he was served first. Berber got the good stuff, we got a carrot. I think what we realized seeing the emotion that he had toward his dog, that he felt he would be leaving soon. Aurelio was planning that, he kept trying to meet different people in the town. He met different women he thought could take care of Berber almost interviewing them casually, not saying, look, I’m dying, but we knew because he kept talking to Berber about it. He was a virile man still doing everything he normally would, chopping wood, fixing his car, repairing his house, you see him hammering the sign above his doors in one shot. And he did pass away, soon after the filming ended.

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FIGURE 2.4

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Aurelio and his dog Berber. Photo credit: Go Gigi Go Productions

MT: It’s wonderful to have captured that relationship. And where is Berber now? MD: Berber is with the mayor of the town. Believe me, we keep tabs on his three dogs: he had Berber, Biscuit, and Charlie. And they had a really unique relationship. There are a lot of details in the film that you have to watch a lot of times to notice. MT: It provides the emotion of the film, hard to get us to care about expensive fungi, but you care about those relationships so much, especially when Sergio is crying at the end due to the poisoning of the dogs. A heartbreaking scene. MD: Yes that scene of the poisoning is what we heard the first time. That scene went on for a long time, we see only a little piece of it in the film. He describes in detail what’s happening to the dogs that’s really difficult to listen to, it’s a huge struggle for them, it’s very real. MT: You start with Sergio and you end with Sergio, the full circle of the film, important I think when you’re telling a story with a lot of characters. The full life cycle for one of his dogs too. I’m getting emotional now. And Gregory, what about you? GK: The scene that always stands out for me and it’s hard to say a favorite but you mentioned it earlier. What proved to be one of the more meaningful scenes of Carlo and Maria eating dinner together before he jumps out of the window.

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We discovered a lot in the editing room when we finally got translations. She’s saying, you’re getting old, it’s time to start winding down your life and slowing down. And he says, what if this is just the beginning. And Mike and I, we saw those translations together and it was wow Carlo, he just captured the whole film. That’s the whole story that we’re trying to tell, it just came out of his mouth, it was exciting. We learned a lot from it and that was early on in the editing process, we were still figuring out the story, and trying to articulate the essence of the story and that gave us a clue as to what that might be. MT: Was that in the first year? When did you capture that scene? GK: No, that was later. Right? MD: Yeah, because they were comfortable in their home with us. But I remember that led to another conversation. I mean, she was thinking because he was 87, almost 88. She was saying, well, we can’t go on. He’s like, well, if God wants us to go on, we go on. And not soon after that was the meeting with the priest. And he was actually asking the priest about the afterlife. It was a big conversation with the priest, they were laughing, there was joy, and whispering. He asked, “I want to know that I can keep going” and the priest said, “Of course, you’ve been so great, treating your dogs and being generous to the world. So of course you’re gonna travel in the afterlife.” And Carlo was joyful after that.

3 INTERVIEW-LED—TRAPPED

Style: Interview-led and observational Genre: Cause Drama/Social Issue, BIPOC Interview: Director Dawn Porter, film Trapped

FIGURE 3.1

Director Dawn Porter. Photo credit: Henny Garfunkel

Trapped, in simple terms, is an incredibly relevant film about the right to have an abortion procedure in the United States. It is a Cause Drama (social issue film) on Women’s Rights and sexual health care. Director Dawn Porter found amazing characters working in extreme environments to make the most emotional impact. Doctors and clinic workers had no choice but to put themselves in harm’s way to DOI: 10.4324/9781003254768-3

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deliver abortion treatment in US states that contained (at the time) just three abortion clinics. Trapped plays out in real time, capturing the very real struggle and fight for these clinics to stay open. The stakes and tension increase steadily throughout the film as the doctors discuss death threats they receive regularly, which makes for an impactful film. Emotional, tense, and heroic. So is it drama? Yes. Powerful? Absolutely. Trapped is an interview-led film that also utilizes the observational style of documentary making. It’s also plot-based as it isn’t focused on one person’s life story or historical event, but follows a number of characters with external pressures and struggles due to the environment they’re working in and which is outside of their control. This film delivers great scenes of action as there is a current story unfolding and Dawn Porter marries these moments with interviews to provide further context, a very popular approach utlized by many filmmakers. Many other Cause Dramas are made as a combination of interview-led and archive footage, which is generally the case when things have happened in the past, for example, Attica or The Invisible War, but Porter’s film was very much in the present. Many issue films have made real change both at the political and local level and had powerful impact campaigns and impact producers attached to them. This isn’t unheard of in the fiction world too, but documentaries definitely lead the way in this genre, hence the name “cause” drama. This is important work and many directors in the documentary space have made films that have changed people’s lives, but with that also comes responsibility. So not only will we concentrate on scene dynamics in this chapter but this will also lead to discussions about characters at risk. When working with a character that receives death threats, how do we handle that as documentary makers, putting such a person in the spotlight? We talk to Dawn Porter about the strong POV of the film toward abortion care and services. Do we have to give balance in a film? What follows is an interview about character responsibility, the interview-led/observational style of filmmaking and documentary ethics. It leads to a rich and inspiring discussion about a film that made a huge impact on the audience and documentary field alike. Other Women’s Rights films, observational/interview-led: Vessel, After Tiller, To Kid or Not to Kid, Writing With Fire. Other BIPOC—Beba, Gideon’s Army, Minding the Gap, Strong Island, I Am Not Your Negro, Hale County This Morning This Evening, Through a Lens Darkly.

Introduction Trapped goes to the front lines of the controversial battle waged over the so-called TRAP laws—Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers—which are designed to restrict access to abortion in the United States. Told through the eyes of doctors, clinic owners, and staff in Alabama and Texas who are fighting to keep their facilities open,

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the film reveals the impact of hundreds of new and needless laws passed to restrict access. These have resulted in the closure of many clinics, closing off important access to sexual health care and abortions for many women at risk. The film follows the dayto-day struggles of the last of the clinics that remain open. Dawn Porter is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work has appeared on HBO, PBS, Discovery, and Netflix among many others. Most recently she co-directed with Asif Kapadia, the documentary series which focuses on both mental illness and mental well-being, called The Me You Can’t See. Other projects include documentaries on John Lewis (John Lewis: Good Trouble) and Obama (The Way I See It and The Promise of My Brother’s Keeper) and many more. This is a hard chapter to write not only because Dawn Porter is such an incredibly prolific filmmaker but because of having to choose which of her films to focus on. I found myself smiling and laughing watching the biographical docs on Pete Souza (The Way I See It) and John Lewis. And shouting at the screen in Trapped and wanting to go and support the characters in Gideon’s Army and surprisingly writing down some of the mental health quotes from the series The Me You Can’t See. The series surrounding mental health and wellness is a pertinent topic for cause drama documentary makers when the stories we feature often involve tragedy or an issue that can have mental health repercussions. As well as our characters, participants, and collaborators, we as filmmakers can hold onto some of this trauma as well as carry a responsibility in telling these stories. We don’t yet have the professional societies that represent and protect us in the same way as do psychologists, psychiatrists, or journalists, to help support our work. But this is slowly beginning to be addressed. Dawn Porter has dealt with tough subjects in her early films that I still remember so clearly even after having watched them years ago. She has filmed difficult stories with an empathy and emotion that stays with you. Delving into her first films can offer inspirational stories for us filmmakers, much can be learnt about access, about building trust, about how your experience and background can be a real benefit. And how to work with collaborators. One of these early films, Trapped, explores laws regulating abortion that are, as a subject, still unfortunately as pertinent today as they were when the film was made. It won the special jury social-impact prize at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival in addition to a Peabody and numerous other awards. The film follows the characters on the front lines of the battle to keep abortion safe and legal for millions of American women. When the film came out in 2016, already more than half of the clinics in Texas had closed, the handful remaining in Alabama were struggling, and only one remained in Mississippi. In 2022, due to the new ruling by the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, states can now enforce their own laws governing abortions. Many states immediately put abortion bans in place in the United States. Not only women who seek procedures but those that help and treat those women can go to prison if they provide abortion care. The clinics we see in the film will close if they haven’t already.

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Interview Maxine Trump: Trapped is an indigent story like your first film, giving voice to the extremely poor or those that lack access to basic resources, like healthcare. How did you hold back your strong POV about reproductive justice which continues to be such a political issue in the United States today. How did you manage to not include some more of the stats or a stronger POV? I’m just watching it again shouting at the screen asking, “who’s helping the mothers?” It’s such a great film that even after all these years it still gets me to emote like that. Dawn Porter: Because I thought the statistics and facts are there and people aren’t reading them. We debated that a lot and we went back and forth quite a bit about it. But the bigger thing was to give both a perspective of this battle for the doctors and to give the women a voice. It was hard to get the women to talk obviously, but the decision-making process for the women has been sanitized, as if it’s not excruciating for some of them. And so I wanted to be in that place with them. And the harder thing actually, was that I had never been in an abortion clinic. I’m pro-choice, but it’s a very different thing to be in a clinic where you know procedures are happening. And at one point, the doctor and the patient said, you can be in the room while this happens if you want. The first time, I was like, I can’t do it, I don’t want to, which was so interesting to me. Here I am marching in the streets and everything and then I respond like that. So what is that? And what of the culture wars have seeped into my consciousness. Then my camera guy was like I’ll go in there and he filmed the procedure, not graphically or anything. He filmed her eyes, her hands, the doctor. First of all, it takes five minutes and isn’t graphic. The camera guy comes out and he goes, that ain’t no baby. And it was so interesting because I was realizing how much the anti-choice rhetoric and framing had even pierced my psyche. I was afraid of what I was going to see, was it going to be gory? I mean, it’s a period at that point, it’s not even visible to the naked eye. So that was a really good lesson for me in empathy for people. And also by then I was resolved to stay in that clinic. The other thing about Trapped is the world is reversed. Outside is sunny and blue and beautiful and verdant but that’s where all the danger is, where the people are screaming, telling people arriving they’re going to hell. But inside is warm and loving and medical care. So I wanted to show the inside and out and how they’re actually reversed. Like what you see is not what is actually happening. MT: Such a great approach to the film, with the contrasting scenes, very powerful. DP: Inside even though it’s a nondescript medical office, it is safety and care. And I felt that being in those rooms that’s where I felt safe. Outside

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people were screaming at me, they were writing down our license plates, we were told to check under the car for bombs. If they knew our cameras were there, they would step up their harassment of the clinic workers. We would have to time our coming and going and I could never drive in the car with Dr. Parker because of course that would then put him at risk. Then there was another issue, I was coming off my last film where everyone was beloved. In Gideon’s Army, everybody thought a film about criminal justice was great. Then I start working on a film about abortion doctors in the south and it’s a conversation killer. Even in the north people didn’t want to talk about it, so it was different. I had to decide if someone asks what I’m working on, am I gonna go there, because I don’t know how they feel about it. I had one cameraperson who I love, say they couldn’t work on it. He was anti-choice. And so it was definitely a thing. MT: An action scene that was so great about 30 minutes into the film is about internal conflict for a character which is a great story beat. It’s so important as it shows in very real time the conflict the staff have in treating patients. June is telling a patient “I don’t want to give you this paperwork or advice but the state is telling me I have to” and Dr. Parker is counseling another patient telling them an abortion “it’s no more risky than a pregnancy.” And then other subliminal things that you included, like the scene with June in her home in Montgomery, AL, when she was doing her taxes. It’s approximately the ninth scene in the film. You make us fall in love with June as she talks about the fact she loves where she lives even though she thinks it’s a third-world country. You show her struggling trying to make all of the new paperwork, about the rules and regulations, make sense when it doesn’t. She’s doing all her taxes and payroll and she hasn’t paid herself a check for months. It’s a great sidebar scene to show her very real obstacles which are important. We love her persistence, we believe in her goal and root for her as an audience. Can you talk about the times when you’ve made a scene happen, meaning you’ve created it, like filming in June’s house? Because I think a lot of people still think you just roll your camera and action will happen. DP: I spent time with the staff without cameras at first, just seeing how the clinics worked and from that I could plan shoots. June is in charge of compliance with the regulations, so how do I show that? One day without cameras I asked her what the huge binders were in her office and she started telling me. So I just asked her if she would go through them. Also asking

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those kinds of questions tells you what kind of storyteller your character is. She’s a very good storyteller. It also showed me how much knowledge she had about those regulations, it’s game over if she didn’t comply with any of them. She’s the kind of character where you’ve just got to give them a little push, and then they’ll just run. I also wanted to get out of the clinic because if she’s in the clinic, she would need to be doing this or that. So if you could get her at home, she could really be focused on answering the questions. And she could tell me what she had basically been doing at the office. So it was more about placing her where she could give us the full story. Sometimes you’ve got to get it the first time with characters because people aren’t good at repeating, she was just a very natural storyteller who is also super crazy smart. So where you are placing somebody is important. Are they going to be distracted? John Lewis was like that, I couldn’t film him at work because if he saw a constituent drop by the office he would have to say hello. Even if it was somebody he didn’t know because he knew people would make pilgrimages to his office. He didn’t want to disappoint anybody. Then at home he would say his house is messy, he was distracted. So that’s why we ended up putting him in a theater because there he gave us several hours. We had a funny moment with that scene with June at her home. John Oliver did a whole show about abortion restrictions and his producer called me and said he’d like to use our movie, but he said I have to fact-check everything. And I was like, have at it. So we gave him a transcript, gave them the movie. And he went through it like a reporter with a fine-tooth comb. And I really welcomed that because I thought, this is a kind of movie, if we’ve messed something up, it’s gonna get destroyed. And all of this hard work is for nothing. MT: I mean, what a meta thing, John Oliver fact-checking. You didn’t have to disguise the voices in the film. Can you talk about finding people willing to talk to you about something so private. DP: The most effective thing was to have either a nurse or the clinic owners come out (or the doctor) and say to everybody, I’m not sure if you know, there are all these laws that are affecting the clinic. We have a camera crew here and they’re looking for people who are willing to tell their story. You can tell them if you don’t want your face shown, or if you want your voice to be disguised. And if people said yes, they either were like, you can show my face, or my voice is fine. But we didn’t ask twice. They made the announcement and I said anybody who has questions please come up to me. There was a funny moment, a father with a daughter which was very rare, he was nodding. I was like, great he’s gonna talk I’m going to get a dad. And then I asked and he’s like, oh, no. MT: What were other important scenes to capture for you?

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DP: There are a bunch of things in that film that were really moving to me. I realized at the very end, our last day of shooting, that I had been avoiding asking Dr. Parker about his fear, with his dangerous work and the threats they received. And so I asked him about wearing a (bullet proof) vest. And by this time we’d been filming for a couple of years and he was like, I don’t wear a vest and he said it very deliberately and carefully. He said they shot Dr. Tiller in the head so a vest isn’t really going to give me any more safety. I don’t want to have the anti-choice contingent occupy that much space in my mind. And I was crying when he said this, he wasn’t crying. And I realized I had not been asking him that question because at that point I cared for him. MT: This is at about time code 01:02:00 in the film. It’s an incredibly tense scene, it almost felt like the climax of the film for me as it is so tense. In the scenes leading to this one, the film had been building to the day that a major antichoice protest might happen. In the beginning we see shots of barricades being put up to protect the clinic, the Doctor is in his hotel room and in interview we hear him say very adamantly “people have been killed doing this work, I don’t wear a vest.” You gave it to us at this point to make an impact because it was such a shocking reveal and adding an on-the-edge-ofyour-seat moment for the audience. The stakes are high, as Dr. Parker puts his life at risk everyday but especially risky on this day of the large protest. Then we see there is police presence at the clinic and inside the clinic, and teams in the clinic are praying as we hear protestors outside. The clinic owner tells the doctor how much she loves him (everyone that is pro-choice watching also loves him by now, he’s the hero, the protagonist), the audience wants to make sure he’s protected too. And the end of the scene is even more powerful, but I want to talk about that a bit later. DP: So the film’s finished and we get into Sundance. Two weeks before the screening a killer goes into a Colorado clinic and murders four people and I thought I’m telling people he doesn’t wear a vest. I panicked and I called Dr. Parker and he hadn’t seen the film yet. And I said, I never do this but I have that line in the film do you want me to take that out, I’ll do whatever it takes? I will go to Sundance, I will re-edit the film, we will re-color, we’ll do all of it, I don’t care. And he said I knew what I was saying to you, I knew I was saying it on camera. I wanted them to know I’m not gonna live in fear. So we kept it in and I thought what have I done? Have I given them a roadmap to kill him? One of the only abortion doctors in the entire area of South Alabama. MT: It just gives me chills hearing that. And I love hearing the responsibility you take on. That’s definitely going to be in the book because we as filmmakers are handling fire sometimes and we can be responsible for people’s lives. But is he doing well?

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DP: Yeah, he’s great still in Alabama. So the owner of the clinic in Montgomery passed away as she had cancer, June died this year. So the clinic is closed there. There’s no one to take that over. But he works with the other doctors, so right now there are two clinics (at the time of the interview Roe had not been overturned). MT: So you mentioned some of the moments that were important to you. I’m gonna mention a couple of scenes that I’d love you to break down a little bit. But do you have some favorites? DP: I actually love the sprinkler scene. It’s not easy to find light moments in this story. MT: It’s about 50 minutes into the film. The scene begins with archive about a judge who supports pro-life protestors. At this point in the film you’re moving towards the end of Act 2. As tension builds, the “will they or won’t they succeed” in their goal of the clinics staying open is an incredibly strong motivating question to keep the audience engaged. Then we cut to the protestors and a shot of June, the clinic owner in her office with a remote control. She’s using it to turn on a sprinkler outside the clinic that would drench some of the protestors if they stood too close to the entrance. It’s a wonderful end to the scene. Such a wonderful innocent way to defend themselves and a real story arch in that scene. You start the scene feeling one way and end it feeling another. DP: I love the scene with the young woman who is slightly out of focus, that was the first time I shot anything and I was by myself. That was the other battle during that film, we didn’t have any money, it was torture. We would get a little money and then we raced down there. So I was like forget it, I’m just gonna teach myself how to shoot and do sound. So I was by myself in the clinic. There are people there waiting for a procedure or their first visit, they don’t want to be there and they definitely don’t want to have some lady saying can I interview you? So I got a lot of “No, thank you.” So I asked probably 20 people, and then this girl said, “Yeah, I’ll do it. I’ll talk to you.” So I was so excited but I’d never recorded sound by myself. MT: The pressure when you finally get the one important character and you’re alone. DP: So I was kind of fumbling and she sits down, and she gives us a beautiful statement. And then I was like, could you do that again? … but she did it. And then I remember some reviewer called it inartful lensing and I was like, that was me, but did you hear what she said? That was what was important. MT: It is those lines that make the film isn’t it. It’s an amazing scene.

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DP: That’s the scene with the grandma at 52 minutes in, as the young woman appears on camera with Miss Cally (nurse). I was there for three days asking people, feeling like shit, feeling like I’m piling on to people. And this amazing young woman let us do that. MT: We have a sound section in this book and I remember you saying, and I couldn’t reinforce this more, that sound is so much more important than the visual. And that took me a long time to understand because I’m an art major but it was the come-to-Jesus moment for me. DP: Yep, that is not the place to save money. MT: In that scene in the film we were just talking about, it also shows the contradictions of what a church should preach. Preceding it Dr. Parker is in church, we hear the stats of 1 in 3 women will have an abortion. Then the film cuts to a woman crying in an abortion clinic, and the clinic worker praying over her. It was so brave that this young girl didn’t mind being on camera. Her grandma’s line “you won’t be the last person to have an abortion” was wonderful. And the young girl talks about having to forgive herself. This scene really expresses the warmth and care inside the clinic and the contrast to what comes immediately afterward, in the next shots, makes you sit up and take notice. DP: One of the first things I learned about the doctor is how important church was to him. And so I kept thinking about how to show that and then he invited me for Easter. The clinic workers really loved him, and they knew he was away from home so they would invite him for Easter too. That was a year into filming and they had seen us working in the clinic, so they knew we could be respectful in church. In this day and age we’re getting really one-dimensional views of the South and religion and Dr. Parker is the antithesis of that stereotype. He would say, I think Jesus wants me to provide health care and that’s his interpretation of his faith. And so it was really important for me to show that for all of them. When they were really stressed, that’s what they would do, they would pray for strength for themselves and for safety. They’re such a strong group of people. MT: The contrast was great because then you go almost immediately into Operation Save America in the other white church. It was a great way to leave the question for the audience of which church preaching is best. These clashes in these two scenes are a great surprise for the audience. We try not to have the same types of scenes one after the other, to keep an audience engaged. This was amazing access to this second church. In your first film Gideon’s Army, you also got great access to court rooms, which isn’t easy either, which I was blown away by. Can you talk about getting this access?

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DP: With my first film Gideon’s Army, it did help that I was a lawyer, I practiced law for seven years altogether. In federal court there’s a whole system of rules and it’s much harder to get cameras in, but in state court it depends on the judge. I had a really great mentor at my law firm and he always said to me, you have to look at the whole state and the local jurisdiction and see if there’s any guidance or bans on cameras. So always look at your individual judge and see if they have written about this. So lo and behold the judge that I was really interested in for Gideon’s Army had a whole order about how you get access to his courtroom. I flew down to Georgia and I had to argue the motion to the judge who was a conservative judge, but he made a ruling on the record that said he thought it was in the best interest of the people to see what happened in a courtroom. The prosecutor was opposed to it of course. Initially, the order allowed one camera and sound, so we did that. Part of what you do to get access is show people you’ll be respectful. Also knowing where you are. We were in the south, we were in Alabama a very red state and I had two Southern male white camera guys who are very lovely, very friendly people. And so in this case it was better for them to ask, rather than me, when we’d like to get another angle, and can we put a camera here? And by the time it ended, year three, I think we had three cameras in the court. We had a microphone on the judge’s desk, and a microphone on the defense table. In every film you’re building your reputation. I don’t know if anybody called the judge and asked, “How was it working with her?” but I do know if somebody watches that movie they’ll think he’s treated fairly. MT: I think you did a great job. I actually remember sitting there thinking, he comes across quite well. DP: Documentaries should add to understanding, I don’t think they should be polemics. The other thing that I was taught at my time at ABC News was you always give somebody who you might disagree with their best shot, give them their best argument and explain that you may come from a different perspective, but you’re going to let them make their case the best way that they can. And I really use that in my documentary work. MT: In the white church scene in Trapped presumably you were saying the same thing to be able to get access. It’s almost 56 minutes into the film. It’s building to the climax of the film which you would expect being so near to the end. The scene starts with the clinic owners and doctors sitting together and they talk about a big organization, a known terrorist organization coming

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to protest outside the clinics. It’s a very important scene because it really places you directly inside the battle the abortion providers have to fight. Then you cut to a white church. Where they’re talking about a rally for Operation Save America with shocking emotional language and a call and response from the minister to the congregation from the pulpit. The minister saying, “The assurance no babies are being murdered in heaven, can I have an amen.” DP: Chris, the same guy who filmed Gideon’s Army, filmed that church scene. His mother is an evangelical Christian and while he’s not, he’s like, those are my people. So I wasn’t there that shoot day, just because I lived in New Jersey, and the shoot was in Alabama, Chris lives in Alabama. So it was very easy for him to go over there. And sometimes less is more and best in a situation. So just sending one guy and one producer, to ask them a couple of questions and not include me, can work well. MT: Some emerging filmmakers don’t always understand that it’s not manipulative the fact you’re not going down there, this is just the best for the environment. DP: There are some places where it’s better for someone else to be the face of things. Sometimes you’ll be in a situation where the subject really loves the producer, be it gender or race or anything, and they just feel like they’ve connected. And then I’m happy to sit back because the ultimate goal is making the subject feel comfortable, and getting to their deeper thoughts. That’s who should be asking the questions. So I will always ask my cinematographers, are you curious about anything when I’m done with my questions. It’s good for you to see what somebody else wants answered because often that’s what the audience wants to know. I think in making films we have to think about uncomfortable things, I can’t get rid of all the stereotypes people have but I can acknowledge that they’re there and I can sometimes interrupt them, and that’s not manipulative. It’s just acknowledging there’s a world in which people assume x about people, and so x may be true but why y is also true. So how do we get people to see beyond the stereotypes to get them to connect with your character? MT: You’re so right. You are changing people’s perceptions, all good art should be offering a different way of seeing. DP: And understand what filters they’re bringing, and that’s including myself, what filters am I bringing to this person? And let me just check those and sometimes you do it well and sometimes you don’t do it enough. It’s a constant conversation in your mind.

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MT: I want to ask you about a scene near the end of the film. There’s a big debate in the clinic as to whether they can carry on doing all the procedures that day with the possibility of the anti-choice protest coming to the clinic. It’s a hugely emotional scene. We see Dr. Parker and he’s talking to camera about a 14-year-old girl who was gang raped by three men and a girl, and he’s saying, she’s never had a pelvic exam before and they have no sedatives. Did that happen on that same day or did you put that toward the end because you knew that would be so emotive? We’re at TC 01:02:00 in the film and I want to ask because sometimes people don’t understand that chronology can be experimented with as long as it’s not suggesting cause and effect. DP: No, that was actually one of our first shoots. That’s why you’ll see Dr. Parker is much more talkative, taking us through what’s happening because he was still kind of teaching us the ropes about what he does. For example, this is how I talk to my patient, this is what’s about to happen. Whereas later he knew we knew so he wouldn’t narrate as much. But yes putting that later, when you have your sea legs, so to speak. The audience needed to spend some time in the clinic and get the rhythm of the clinic to understand the impact. If you came at people with that heavy information right away they would still be thinking about that and you would miss the next ten minutes of the movie. A film needs maybe 20 minutes to settle the audience into whatever world you’ve invited them into. You need to give signposts to your audience to give them time to understand the rhythm of your movie. So that didn’t work right off the top. MT: What are some of your favorite scenes in somebody else’s film? I know that’s a really hard question, but I can actually think about a few of mine. DP: Um, gosh, that is hard. Because I have a lot. I really loved Morgan’s Mr. Rogers (Won’t You Be My Neighbor) and Cameraperson by Kirsten Johnson. MT: Cameraperson’s Kirsten Johnson is also a contributor to this book. DP: People don’t realize the cameraperson’s energy is so important for your shoots. And I’m in some ways a frustrated cameraperson but it wouldn’t work for me with the kind of interviews I do, I couldn’t be behind the camera. But I have that desire to show you what I want to see. If I need a particular thing, I will make sure the cameraperson knows what I want. The best camera experiences for me are when I have figured out how to vocalize what’s in my head to the cameraperson. But then I talk to them about the feeling I am aiming for too so we’ll look at some frames. For the people I’ve worked with a lot I just tell

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them to push in to a tighter shot when they feel the emotional need for it, and I give them that freedom to do that. I really loved the focusing of attention on the cameraperson in Kirsten’s film, and on all the millions of decisions she has to make. And then the other thing, which was so cool, she used a scene from Trapped. And she used an interview that we did, and I had forgotten some of the footage that she had. It was such a special shoot when we interviewed this young woman, she was the one where we just showed the hands and she didn’t want her face shown. The crew was female, female sound, female camera, and a female director. And right afterward, she cried, I cried, we all cried, and I thought I heard the camera click off. I leaned into the young woman and spoke to her. And I forgot that moment because it wouldn’t work for my film, I’m not in my film but it worked for Cameraperson. You hear us talking to her and saying she cannot think less of herself because of what she’s doing. And that’s part of the experience too. Just seeing how difficult it can be because nobody ever gets to see that. Seeing how patient the camera and crew, all of us have to be to get what we get, people think we just follow real life. And it’s like no, there’s a lot of thought that goes into this.

4 HYBRID AND PERFORMATIVE—DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD

Style: Hybrid, experimental, and performative Genre: Personal, comedy Interview: Director Kirsten Johnson, film Dick Johnson Is Dead

FIGURE 4.1

Director Kirsten Johnson. Photo credit: Boris Torres

Dick Johnson Is Dead straddles many film genres: personal, comedy, LGBTQIA+. The fiction world would probably say art house; it’s a fantastic multi-genre boundary-breaking film. It’s being discussed in the book not only because of those genres but because of the unique style of filmmaking, that combines hybrid, experimental, and performative elements. DOI: 10.4324/9781003254768-4

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Humor is so often forgotten in documentaries, which is an opportunity missed I believe especially when it can offer so much potential for great stories. The comedy genre often uses hubris as a central theme and character motivation, which is definitely true for the director Kirsten Johnson’s goal to fictionally kill her dad again and again to enable her to deal with his dementia diagnosis. Comedy can be a wonderful way to engage an audience in a serious subject. It helps to remember the act of “performing” as a director in your own film to understand the style of performative filmmaking. Kirsten Johnson was conscious of her role but it doesn’t feel anything like a performance. Yes Johnson is in her film; but that intimacy can bring an audience to a subject that might otherwise be difficult to connect with. This personal genre is specific to non-fiction films, as it relies on the portrayal of a true, not fictional, character. It was a delight to hear Johnson talk about how readily her father agreed to be involved in the film as her central character, and also how she wanted to create an experimental film that was truly genre-busting. She uses a hybrid style of fictional filmmaking in scenes imagined and created, alongside interviews with her father, but it is her own personal journey and dealing with grief that leads this story. My interview with Johnson goes in depth to examine how she created the very powerful but also fun scenes about dementia. We also discuss the ethics of making her father role play the act of dying many times. It takes a powerful director with a strong vision (and team) to master this type of film. Johnson talks about her first vision for the film and how it it had to change during the production to become the film it is now. A film that takes us through an incredible range of emotions as an audience. A great measure of success. Other comedy films: Finders Keepers, King of Kong, Anvil, Hands on a Hard Body, American Movie. Other personal films: Dear Zachary, Hooligan Sparrow, Shirkers, The Other Side of Everything, Beba. Other hybrid: The Arbor, Kate Plays Christine, Wisconsin Death Trap. Experimental: 306 Hollywood, Tchoupitoulas, The Sweetest Sound, The Act of Killing. Other LGBTQIA+ films: Welcome to Chechnya, Tickled, The Overnighters, Strong Island, Memories of a Penitent Heart. Immersive, VR, or experiential live films: 32 Sounds is an aural feast and sensory pleasure played through headphones like a silent disco.

Introduction Kirsten Johnson has worked in the documentary field for 30 years, most notably until the last few years as a cinematographer. Her work with directors led to her much-lauded film Cameraperson in 2016. I’ve heard Johnson talk in person and even

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met her dad, the star of her most recent, wonderfully quirky and heartfelt film Dick Johnson Is Dead. The only reason I mention meeting her father is that I didn’t know at the time he was the star of her next film, and I just thought wow, how lovely that her father was supporting her, coming to these events. This support is made very obvious by the tenderness shown between father and daughter in this incredibly poignant film and very probably the only reason it could be made. But this film is anything but cloying, in this hybrid/experimental, personal, comedy film. Kirsten Johnson is gracious with sharing her knowledge and one of the most thoughtful filmmakers I’ve had the pleasure to meet. You get a sense of this in her film too; the authenticity of who she is and what she’s about shines through. And this is important for this film. She takes her father into places I could never have imagined being able to do with my own family, but you eventually come to understand why. The film starts with a funeral scene, which is shocking and incredible; I’m sure if you’ve seen the film you’ve thought that too. This scene, undoubtedly deliberately, provides an edginess and foreboding to the film from the very beginning; comedy after all involves shock. But Johnson also spends time with the small moments that are just as effective. We’re told in the film that Dick Johnson ate many pieces of cake before having a serious heart attack. Yet shots of him eating cake are peppered throughout the film, not just revealing character but adding tension. This “anything can happen” for a father with dementia is very real for a daughter (anyone who has experience with dementia knows this firsthand). It is that type of story beat that keeps audiences engaged, asking what happens next, even if it is just eating cake. It took three years for the film to be made, up until the film was delivered for Sundance 2020 and it all started with a dream. It isn’t so uncommon for us filmmakers to dream up scenes. Matt Heineman dreamt up a scene in Cartel Land of the furtive crystal meth-making in the desert, filmed under the shadow of darkness. The origin story of Dick Johnson Is Dead was Johnson’s dream of a man she didn’t recognize getting up out of a coffin saying “I’m Dick Johnson and I’m not dead yet.” This spawned the idea of filming her dad’s funeral while he was alive. Her dad loves to laugh; he was the inspiration for this film but obviously setting up a funeral to celebrate someone’s life, while they’re still alive, takes dark humor to a whole other level. Our backgrounds as filmmakers often lead us to make the films we make. That could be our childhood, momentous events, our life experiences or culture. Kirsten Johnson comes from a religious background; her family were part of the Seventh Day Adventist religion and she was obsessed with heaven as a kid. At church services Johnson would often imagine what she’d do if she could go up on stage; in adulthood she finally turned the church into her playground. It is these experiences that you can see play out dramatically in her film. Even her religious teaching about end of days and people rising from the dead plays out in the very opening scenes. In previous interviews Johnson has talked about the mix of documentary and fantasy in the film, and how that approach came about. After an early edit of the

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film everything seemed to her to be so bland, khaki and flat. If you ever meet Kirsten Johnson you’ll notice that her style is color and exuberance; her clothes and shoes can attest to that (we once bonded over both wearing gold shoes). And when her production team suggested to her that maybe there’s enough dying scenes in the film, couldn’t we do something more celebratory instead, she went all out. So it’s not just our cultural backgrounds; it can be a matter of taste, unique vision, and sense of play too. These all definitely led Johnson to create the very stylized fictional scenes we see in her film.

FIGURE 4.2

Shot of fantasy scene. Photo credit: Marta Bida

Johnson, being an incredibly inclusive director, canvassed all the crew, all the film departments, about what they thought about death and what they thought could be funny. She cites the focus puller doing some of the toughest work working with a non-actor in the fictional scenes. And slo-mo perfectly enabled moments of delight to be extended in those scenes, of her dad smiling, of his feet being miraculously cured. Fun, humor, happiness—you’re taken on a true roller coaster ride in this film. A film all about death but finding moments of unexpected joy and this is what makes it so powerful. In this chapter we talk about the ethics of making this film. And if you still feel conflicted about that first funeral scene, all of her dad’s friends were in on the joke; they knew he wasn’t dead and his Pastor said he even felt he owed it to Dick to take part. And those agreements to be involved were smartly captured on

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camera early in the film. It wasn’t actually her dad in the open casket on stage; it was the magic of cinema. And Ray, the friend who is crying uncontrollably at the funeral? He felt his scene made the film, and he’s not wrong. Once you understand why the film was made, the whole intention of a daughter not wanting her dad to die, you soon lose yourself in the make-believe. Kirsten Johnson undoubtedly will fail to keep her dad alive (at the time of writing he very much still is). This film, with it’s magical fantasy, as well as capturing the Johnson legacy, I believe, makes film history. It is my utmost pleasure to be able to interview Kirsten Johnson about such a personal, powerful, and magical film.

Interview Maxine Trump: I love how you believe that if there was endless money for us documentary makers, genre wouldn’t exist at all, it would be an explosion of form and experimentation. I understand that you really dislike genres and believe we should break out from them. I totally agree but this book begins from that place of categorization as a launching pad. Why is there always only ever one category for documentaries in the listings when you choose to watch films? It’s an exciting time for documentaries because there is so much experimentation with the form yet we can’t always find those films to watch. Kirsten Johnson: I hear you saying the thing that I often wonder about, why is fiction filmmaking valued more than documentary filmmaking? And it sounds like you’re trying to make some kind of a case for respecting documentary filmmaking more than it has been valued in the past. MT: When I show clips of the multitude of different types of documentaries people are like, oh wow. So it’s using that as a way in, to look at everything you can explore and consider when making films. KJ: I do think about the ways in which documentary film is differently valued than fiction film, by the marketplace, as well as by the journalism that covers film. I think in some ways it’s not surprising that people are unaware of how much breadth there is in documentary filmmaking. So often the content is so incredibly powerful, it’s life and death stakes, in a personal revelatory way or investigative journalism. I think it might have to do with the kind of affective relationship that happens to a human when they engage with a documentary film. It engages our senses so powerfully that we feel as if we have experienced the thing that we are watching. MT: I totally agree. KJ: And I think one of the deep challenges of documentary is the decoupling from that experience. When you are very moved by something you have

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encountered in a documentary, you now know about this thing, that it exists for real out there. Are you going to do anything about that or not? I think that’s a lot for many people to handle. It’s a radically different experience to watch Anthony Hopkins, knowing that he can actually take care of himself in real life, than to watch a film about my father who actually has dementia. MT: Well, yes, but no. KJ: When you watch a documentary about the criminal justice system, for example, and you see a 16 year old who’s been imprisoned unjustly, that kid is still in prison when you get out of the movie theater, and to not do anything about that, that’s hard. With a fiction film it’s a riveting story of someone who is unjustly accused. We won’t necessarily feel that we have to do the work of dismantling the whole criminal justice system after watching. We might feel transformed by it and are touched by it but it’s not the radical provocation to us that a documentary can be. MT: So do you think the audience feels a responsibility? KJ: I think this is the challenge many people who are involved in documentary start to feel. Whether they’re programmers or commissioning editors or those kinds of people who are watching documentaries in such quantity. With such a diversity of urgency and need around human rights and injustice, at a certain point they can’t absorb the magnitude of it all. All they can afford to think about it is whether the story will sell or not. MT: I don’t think every film you make has to have a social issue agenda. I tell my students it can be purely for enjoyment sake. KJ: And they believe you? MT: They kind of go, ah, ok. I deliberately make my classes as fun as possible. That’s why so many people love your film, it deals with such a difficult issue but with laughter and tears and that’s when you win, right? You’re taking people there but they’re also leaving with this joy. It’s masterful. KJ: I’m curious why and how you got to the place of teaching with humor. MT: Well, we’re going a bit off topic. KJ: I always end up interviewing. MT: I started my career in BBC comedy, and it’s never let me go. KJ: That’s great.

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MT: I remember your friend Michael Moore saying we’re creating entertainment. We’re expecting people to pay money to go to the cinema, to watch our documentaries. I used to make pro bono documentaries for Greenpeace and I think about Greenpeace staff as my audience. I’m expecting people to turn on a tough documentary after saving whales all day, what’s making them want to watch? Why do they want to watch something incredibly hard that mirrors what they’ve been doing all day. It’s just a thought bomb. KJ: How interesting that that’s where you came from, comedy as a starting place. I just got to comedy out of desperation. MT: You’ve obviously been brought up by a guy that likes comedy too. KJ: Yes. MT: So I’m going to ask you questions now and start with some of the tech stuff because this book is really going to get deep and dirty about scenes. One of your very first scenes in the film is your dad falling down the stairs. I love how you set it up with the foreshadowing of his toes (Johnson’s father was born with deformed toes and would rarely show them to anyone) which pays off later. I read that your father didn’t feel the scene worked on first viewing. Not because he was humiliated but because he felt his leg didn’t look right when he landed, that you should twist his leg more. You couldn’t shoot the film scene again with a stunt person as the house was sold. You added blood and twisted his leg in VFX. Did you do some of the VFX early on so you could put that in sample scenes when you were initially trying to get the film off the ground? KJ: That’s such a great scene to choose to do a deep dive on because it does involve a huge amount of filming out of order. I went back and got that toe shot as a pickup after the house was already sold, putting the same carpet under the chair, etc. MT: Thank you for being honest about that. KJ: Part of this film was to use any cinematic tool at our disposal. The whole act of the film was an act of wishful thinking. I was really aware that this film was an experiment, and that it was going to require a leap of faith from funders because we wouldn’t be able to know what it was going to be until very, very late in the game. That much of the film would stay in the realm of the imagination until we were able to execute it. We knew from the beginning that we wanted to use VFX, that we wanted to use stunt performers, that we wanted to use large scale production. But we also knew that we couldn’t afford just to mess around when we didn’t know what we needed.

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It was going to be an elaborate dance with a team of collaborators who understood that things were holding the place for something that would come later. “Holding”—profound when you think the film is about anticipatory grief, which is holding the place of grief until it becomes actual grief. I find cinema so profound, as I do think it’s an enactment of human experience on a psychological level, on a level of consciousness, on an existential level. I had the experience of grieving my mother’s death in advance of her death and I knew that was going to happen with my father as well. So to create a cinema process in which it would not be the movie yet, but it would be getting closer and closer to what the movie was going to be. We couldn’t imagine what it would feel like in the same way you can’t imagine what you’re going to feel like when your parent actually dies, even if you’ve been imagining it for seven years. MT: You talk about the film existing in the space between alive and dead and that is dementia. It was totally planned to play with cinema language and how we “make” films, I think you even used the analogy of literally taking it and breaking it apart, as film otherwise is artifice. Breaking the fourth wall was deliberate in bringing the audience inside. We often see the sound person and you directing, these all feel, unusually, a part of the smooth flow of the film.

Kirsten Johnson directing with cinematographer JP Wakayama and her father on the ground. Photo credit: Marta Bida

FIGURE 4.3

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KJ: Finding a way to work with an incredibly, emotionally difficult, situation might only be possible when you have very trusted colleagues to work with. This is where the many years of filmmaking that I’ve been involved with came to my aid. It was true of all of the collaborators; we’re all really experienced. Katy Chevigny, Marilyn Ness, and Maureen Ryan all have produced a lot of films, Nels Bangerter has edited a lot of films, and Pete Horner has sound mixed a lot of films. I’ve shot a lot of personal documentaries for people and so that experience really helped us to intellectualize the process before we could enact it. MT: I know you’ve talked about working with Pete Horner, going in and out of the sound mix while making the film. Working in this abstract way, were there ever any expectations from funders at any point to see some stuff? KJ: No, as I started to say, before not answering your question. I knew we needed someone who trusted us almost all the way to the end. And I was concerned that one of the more traditional ways of funding films, getting a little grant here, a little grant there, that was not going to function very well with this film. Because it wasn’t going to look like much for a long time. The initial concept was we’re going to keep making this movie until Dad really dies, for real. So in that world, it was out of our control and I was imagining this might be a seven year long process. In some ways I had a wish to make a fiction film, I think, because I had a wish for a father who would be capable of going to the North Pole, going to West Africa, going to Hong Kong. That was the wish. So after my previous film Cameraperson received an incredibly warm response I got a call from a fiction production company that I really admired. I was asked what I was working on next? And I said I’ve got this crazy idea that we’re going to kill my dad over and over again, working with stunt people. The producer who had called me laughed really hard and said “Did you know that I produced one of the Jackass movies?” I was freaking out because here’s this fabulous producer who’s taking me seriously as a director, and she produced a Jackass movie, and that film was a huge inspiration, so are you kidding me? So she says I want you to come and pitch it to the company because you’re hilarious. So me and Marilyn Ness flew out to LA. MT: I just got chills and this has happened years ago. KJ: And I was like hallelujah, maybe I’m finally making the big time. And then we started to plan the filming of the funeral, trying to figure out how that’s going to function. But basically, they gave us a development budget to film the whole funeral. I really was worried that it wasn’t going to look fictional enough, that it wasn’t going to have high enough production values for them. But we filmed all of that and then we took it and showed it to them. They

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liked it but everything was starting to shift internally at the production company, and all of a sudden they came to me and said we can’t do the film and you have to return the money to us. So you can imagine that was slightly devastating. MT: That was an integral scene as proof of concept, so I can imagine that was scary. When you’ve spent the money how can they ask for it back? KJ: I think that we knew when we signed the contract that there was risk involved. The producer left because the company was going in such a different direction. But that same producer got us the pitch at Netflix and really pushed the project. We walked into Netflix and pitched it to Lisa Nishimura and Jason Spingarn-Koff. Lisa’s so smart—she immediately picked up on the universalism of the project. She loved my dad and thought he was gonna knock it out of the park. So then Netflix came all in. And I do think there were absolutely long periods of time when they must have been saying did we really pay money for this? Because that’s when my father’s dementia caught up to us. So I was talking this big game about all the things we were going to do, they gave us a budget that could have paid for that, and then … MT: I remember you talking about the dream of taking your dad to Hong Kong. KJ: And then my dad is no longer capable of doing that so “How are we gonna make a great, amazing movie if all the man is capable of doing is tripping over?” MT: But you did it. KJ: I had to deliver a movie and so had to keep moving. Thank goodness it was completely funded in advance, because it already took me a minute as it was. MT: We should be talking about mental health more in documentary making. The title itself, your dad called reaction formation (Dick Johnson worked as a psychiatrist for many years. Reaction formation is the fixation of an idea, or desire that is opposite to a feared unconscious impulse, you do the worst thing because you want the opposite to happen.) How did you keep sane? KJ: People talk about this in simplistic terms, they say that we get lost in filmmaking or we escape, or we protect ourselves behind the lens. I think the truth is that there is a multitude of realities with which we can engage as humans. MT: It takes us away for awhile.

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KJ: Yeah, I think how one keeps one’s sanity, making films is that there is creative engagement and imaginative energy, that comes out of trying to envision a film. It’s a crazy puzzle to try to put together. So if we were to go back to the scene of my father’s toes and then when he falls down the stairs, you do not get more primal than that. It is sort of the separation and identity formation of my life. My childhood memory of seeing my father’s toes is so strong. It is my realization that he is not exactly who I thought he was, that there is more to him than I know. It is the moment that shifts the idealization of my father. I love my dad so much, my dad loves me so much and then I see his toes, and I’m like, whoa, there are things about him that are hidden from me. As a young child, I had imagined myself as an artist and imagined that something that would be meaningful for me, to photograph, would be my father’s toes. At the same time, I had the thought I’d never be brave enough to do that. MT: Wow. You upped the stakes for yourself filming a very close relationship in really emotional moments. Stakes are great dramatic story beats and these scenes are nail-biting at times. You talked about filming these intense moments, having confidence that something unexpected would happen. And that was Scene 1, Act 1. KJ: That idea came back to me when we were making the film and I was like, my goodness, am I doing it? That scene of my dad’s toes against that carpet is exactly the place where I would have seen them for the first time when I was a child. MT: I can relate exactly to what you were just saying about a scene in my own film that I had imagined I would never ever get to film in my life, about my scars. And then here we are, it’s also my opening scene. Funny that. I think younger emerging filmmakers don’t necessarily know that their films can be creation rather than just observation. Your imagination has been so woven throughout this whole film, creating scenes from scratch. KJ: The key word is allowed. What’s allowed … honestly, if the documentary landscape was almost entirely filled with observational films I would be thrilled. Documentaries that are now in the ecosystem are a combination of interviews plus archival material. Very few are actually truly observational films. The sort of extraordinary magical quality of truly observational films is profound. What Alexander Nanau (Collective) does is brilliant. Observational needs defense. Because it’s unknowable until it happens. It takes time. MT: Absolutely.

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KJ: And it’s very humble. I think all of the people funding documentaries now want us to know what’s going to happen in our films. They want it to be done quickly. And they want it attached to known people, attached to commodity. It would be interesting for you to look at the films you’ve included in the book and notice which deal with stories that are already passed? And how many deal with the actual present or with the imaginative future? And I bet you would find that most are looking backward. Side Note: Of the nine films in the book, one film deals with the past, My Octopus Teacher. RBG at the time was past and present, as was Time. All the others are current stories and maybe why I picked them: The Truffle Hunters, Trapped, Tiger King, Collective, Knock Down the House. Only Johnson’s film deals with the future. KJ: What category would you put me in? MT: Hybrid, experimental, comedy, personal/performative films. KJ: What film is not an experiment? What film is not a hybrid? Those are like straw names. MT: I don’t think all documentaries are experimental, some are formulaic and don’t have fictional hybrid elements. So to get back to my questions for you. Even when filming an observational film or scenes, you have an intention quite often, there are story beats or you talk about stakes and make sure there was tension. You knew moving out of the family home you have lived in for 50 years and packing up your dad’s office, and filming that, would raise the stakes. Then you’ve said the next step would be to question how can your father die in relation to those big moments. Tension keeps an audience invested in story because it makes them want to know what happens next. You knew that but you were also open to experimenting. I’m going to describe the two scenes surrounding your dad driving and look at how they worked together. You have a scene 16.5 minutes into the film. Your dad is in his office with the superintendent of the building, they’re talking about the film and him dying multiple times, the superintendent says “My father died by drowning.” That adds emotion to the scene, you couldn’t plan for that and that’s the beauty of documentary. Then your dad talks about your mum’s Alzheimer’s being a long goodbye, as he packs up the office and leaves for the final time. The scene ends brilliantly with the voicemail on his phone saying the office is closed. Then your dad is in a fictional car driving; we hear your voice-over mentioning that both you and your brother were not recognizing your dad’s increased impairment. You’d been there before with your mum and then we hear a car crash. As an audience we’re jolted by the shock.

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Cut to the next scene (Scene 8, time code TC 00:21:41) and you start very smartly in the house with your dad saying you didn’t tell me you were selling the car, you hug him as he cries and says “I know how Mom must have felt.” It’s a great sequence of scenes, how everything ties together.

Dick Johnson and crew in fictional scene driving his car. Photo credit: Kirsten Johnson

FIGURE 4.4

KJ: I was trying to figure out how does fiction cinema language graft to documentary language. Where I did have a strong idea is that when you have something really emotional that happens, like the scene of my father weeping over the loss of his car, that if it could bump up against something that is fictional, then that’s really gonna mess with you. I was right about that, like Dad and the stairs, him falling down. This has to be real? Wait, this isn’t real? That tension. I was convinced that was going to work because of my experience with observational documentary. There was a real sense that everyone trusted me when I wanted to film something but that everyone understood that I might not know why. To help we put in place a wise council, which was a weekly conversation with me, Marilyn, Katy, and Maureen. And they were the sounding board around whether we had earned the right to release production funds for an imaginative idea. I would keep sort of fighting for it and they had to protect me, to help me uncover that sort of inarticulate desire, and support me, and

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then also push me on it. From the beginning I knew it had to be a comedy, I had a sense of what dementia is and felt I needed a super-strong offset to that. So early on I had the initial idea Dad is going to die at the end of every scene. Now, that’s a lack of experience with dramatic structure. You don’t end every scene in the same way, people will stop watching that almost immediately. And I will say that was our lack of experience with fiction writing. We would have called that into question way earlier if we’d understood that. But we held on to that for a super long time. That’s a stupid dramatic idea. MT: Because where’s the motivation for the next scene? KJ: Very quickly, in those council room sessions, they started asking why does my dad have to die every time? Why do you want to kill him again? And I kept saying, I don’t know. But the need in me was comedy and the model was Groundhog Day. And it was sort of like, the repetition is going to do something, I don’t know what, I don’t completely understand how it works. MT: But there is humor in the repetition of your dad dying, because who’s ever done that? KJ: So you can understand that between all of these worlds of cinematic language we were both expressing lots of experience and lack of experience. And even that, I would say, is part of what makes the film emotional for people. Symbolic, because the fact is we’re grown humans but when our parents start experiencing dementia, or die, it is like becoming a new human. We are completely inexperienced, overwhelmed and we behave in ways we never expected to behave. It’s so out of our control. People recognize the emotional exposure because living with grief is being extremely exposed. I was exposed in Cameraperson and it served me. It didn’t humiliate me, it brought me love and recognition. And so in some ways I trusted this experience to do the same thing. MT: I love that Cameraperson taught you that you could reveal things about yourself. Are there any other tips like that for making performative/personal films? How did you measure that? KJ: I don’t think you can do it in real time, I think you have to do it with perspective and with trusted collaborators. You do not have enough perspective on your own but you can get it over time in the edit process. But I also think you have to act in relation to your own actual need, not trying to hypothesize what the needs of others will be. There is no question

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in my mind that I couldn’t have made either of these films if my mum hadn’t died. MT: There are so many people now becoming very involved in their own films. I mean who isn’t involved in their own films? You credited a cameraperson for the shoots of your voice-over (VO) scenes in the wardrobe. The very final scene of the film, you repeat like a mantra “All I can say is Dick Johnson is Dead … and long live Dick Johnson.” It’s a gorgeous moment because then you leave the closet and your dad is outside and you have a big hug. I’m going to give some context to my question about writng the voiceover. An hour and five minutes into the film, against a symbolic shot of snow and a faded image of your dad’s face, you start telling him in audio how he got up in the night to visit an imaginary patient in the lobby of your building. You then go straight into this very anxious scene at Halloween. It starts sweetly with all the family dressed up and then changes emotion when your dad thinks he got lost and was alone. The tension is ratcheted up because we’re getting toward the end of Act 2. You end the scene in VO telling us how he again left the apartment at 3 am. In real life it was at this time you started to realize you couldn’t take care of your dad. So you were at a place of deep sadness when you wrote your voice-over, you talked about it being the hardest part of the filmmaking. Maybe a stupid question to ask, but the fiction scenes must have been hard to direct, so this came as a surprise. KJ: Thank you for doing so much research in preparation for this. I spent a lot of time trying to write voice-over for Cameraperson and I never found a voice that I was comfortable with. I guess poets understand this in some way that none of the rest of us do. You can’t start with a distilled substance. I think many of us get overwhelmed when we try to make things and then others tell us to reduce it even more, we get really defensive because it’s still just getting started, putting the ingredients in. How do you boil down a relationship of a lifetime into 100 words? It’s like writing an obituary, which occurred to me at a certain point. Most of us just fall back on this rote, reflexive thing because it’s too hard to say anything meaningful. So some things will go unspoken. MT: Did Nels (editor) or Maureen (producer) give you prompts? How did that happen? KJ: Nels and I totally did it together. I would write big long paragraphs and then he would return with a terse three sentences. And I would say but I need this and he’d say, but that’s already in the film. I do understand if

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someone’s getting the info somewhere else they don’t need it repeated. I’m always surprised when we talk about the project now because he talks about us actively co-writing and what a great writer I was. And I’m like, “You wrote the whole thing!” He was doing the distilling work. MT: So talking about collaboration and the cameraperson you credited in your wardrobe, which leads to the bigger question of how did you choose the method of switching out the cameras? When was it that you decided to film and when was it your cameraperson? Especially in the funeral scene, that tops and tails the film. KJ: As a cameraperson I’m very loose, and intuitive, and I follow things when they’re happening. I tried a couple of times to film myself putting the camera on the tripod and it was always out of focus because I’m not interested in that kind of controlled precision. I’m interested in being in a dynamic relationship with the person that I’m filming. So I’ve learned I’m not really capable of filming myself, because I can’t see myself to respond to myself. So in this project clearly I needed to be in it. In the case of filming my father and creating a portrait of myself by putting the camera down and hugging my father off camera, I know that will work. When I was filming the footage that I filmed for Cameraperson, I was not aware that it would be about me. So it’s very un-self-aware and unselfconscious. So we were already skeptical of how performative this would be. And there were times that I overstepped that, and thought you’re really trying too hard there. We also knew there were times for the people involved that it would be best for me not to have a camera in my hands, for the funeral especially. We had very strict categories of when I had the camera, and when I didn’t. So I greeted everyone at the church door when they came to the funeral without a camera, to help them feel safe to have time to talk to them. But then once the service started I had a camera. And then at the very end the camera was taken away from me so I could re-enter the family. But I think I became more and more comfortable with my vulnerability in front of the camera as the project went on. MT: Like all characters. Also I didn’t realize that the ambulance scene was staged. At time code 01:16:00, the scene begins with a text card of the date, then the iPhone camera on the ground in an ambulance which was such a smart way of suggesting no one wanted to film this. But it gives the motivation for the funeral scene you just mentioned, a reason for being and a climax to the film. There were lots of fictional elements in the film; the truck speeding past your dad when he gets in the car, which adds knife-edge moments.

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KJ: Exactly. The scenes in the closet were completely constructed, I actually did all the voice recordings in the closet but those are different from what you see filmed. What you see filmed is a re-creation. Because I had done so many iterations of the VO I became more and more comfortable with myself as a performer. MT: So what’s your favorite scene in the film? KJ: Honestly, just what makes me weep. There’s this great William Steig drawing of a bottle of perfume that has a stopper on top that’s the head of a man and a woman—as if the bottle contains the perfume of both essences together. And I feel like, by the skin of our teeth, we got my father like perfume in a bottle, that the essence of him is throughout the film. I just am so grateful that he’s alive in the film, that’s just the best for me. MT: With everyone else I’m interviewing, I definitely could pick out a few examples of scenes as my favorites. I can’t with your film as there’s so much to think on. But let me ask you this, with all of your other films that you’ve worked on, investigatory films, films with Laura Poitras, Kirky Dick, etc. Is there anything that you remember really taking away from your experience on those films? I can remember certain scenes in certain people’s films that I will never forget. KJ: There’s no question that Michael Moore is the person who taught me to turn the camera on earlier and turn it off later. I learned from the difficulties of filming with him because I remember very strongly standing on the corner in Washington, DC, as politicians were running away from him. And him saying, I feel like I’m in high school. The thing about Michael he’s willing to stay in the space that is profoundly uncomfortable to be in. Where there’s profound hostility, or dislike or contempt, being aimed at you and the camera. Either people want to kill you or they’re running away from you and he’ll just stay. So I learned all you have to do is stay. MT: Wow. KJ: I have learned the most from probably Laura Poitras. In a big situation like trying to understand surveillance and intelligence gathering, she’ll search for the person living at the center of the highest pressure point of that story. It’s not the newspaper reporter writing the article, it’s not Julian Assange who created this provocation. No, it’s this person I couldn’t even imagine, who works inside an intelligence agency who’s deciding to leak the information. She’s trying to be with the person in real time, the person who is having the most emotional experience. So it’s not someone talking about something, it’s someone living through something.

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There was profound discomfort in making Dick Johnson Is Dead. I care about racism, class conflict, and systems of oppression. I don’t want to make a movie about my own father who’s one of the most privileged people on the planet. It felt obscene making this movie and yet what am I actually living through? What is the highest degree of pressure in my life? The thing I cannot cope with, actually it’s this thing. Now does that mean we should all make movies about what we’re going through, and what’s the most challenging for us, all the time? MT: Extractive filmmaking is a term being discussed in the documentary field but it mainly relates to cultural backgrounds. Related to colononial themes, of filmmakers taking what we need, possibly causing devastation and leaving, with no responsibility for what we’ve done. It can relate to people in distress and you talk about how you continually questioned what you should be doing with your father in regards to filming, etc. Your responsibility to him but with the irreverence and indignity of filmmaking. Can you manage to hold on to his dignity and be mischievous together? You have a scene in the film when you talk to his caregiver Marta and also you make sure to include your dad saying it’s fine. That first scene placing your dad at the bottom of the stairs, you said you felt shame. Your choice to make this film was full of contradictions, about whether you should do it.

Dick Johnson on set with make-up person Krystal Feher. Photo credit: Kirsten Johnson

FIGURE 4.5

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I often use your example of three wants which made a deep impression on me when I first heard you speak about filmmaking. The want of us the filmmaker, the want of the audience to watch it, which I think is really great. And the want of the person that is being followed, the character having a want to be filmed. Now it could be for your dad, he wants to make his daughter happy, he wants a record of his life, this is a great way to hang out with his friends, it’s a great adventure toward the end of his life, many things. KJ: Thank you and yes, you’re quoting me accurately. Let’s also talk about multiples, when you describe all of those different needs of my father, so accurately, there were multiple things there. In the documentary community right now we have assigned great negativity to the words extractive filmmaking. And I believe we’re basically lying to ourselves, whenever we ascribe only negative aspects to something, or only positive things to something. Well, what if we thought of the term extractive as meaning I extract the present and bring it into the future so that I have extracted my father’s essence as a lucid man and brought it into the future in which he has dementia. It will keep moving forward into the future when he is no longer on this planet. And that extraction will be deeply meaningful to me. I will be very grateful that I engaged in that extraction. We misuse language and in that misuse, we are preventing ourselves from exploring some of the things we need to explore. To explore our own contradictions as humans. I think we set up these binaries as forms of protection, but they’re fear based. And so what I would encourage for any young filmmaker in some ways is to allow your own contradictions. And the more that you allow that, the more you are allowing audiences into your films. In not allowing it all, I think it’s not creating a safe space for the people who have the capacity to expand all of our understanding of the world. So if we say “you’re a white kid who comes from a financially well off family, so don’t make anything,” or we say “you’re an indigenous person and you have to make the thing that will speak for all indigenous people,” it’s our own lack of imagination about what’s possible. In both cases, we’re doing a disservice to each of those individuals. There’s no question that some of us have got so much and our ecosystem must create so much more support and access for those who have been historically shut out of filmmaking. But there are and always will be people who have more and have less, and how do we negotiate that as humans. You and I both know, thanks to cameras and documentary filmmaking, we have become different people than we would have been otherwise without our films. MT: Fundamentally. KJ: So how do we give everyone access to the possibility of learning and changing by exposure to other people? But I would say in terms of trying to

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understand who gets to do certain things, or who gets credit for things, is to think about what an action is going to give towards someone and what it’s going to take from them. I think that can be a thing even calculated in terms of hours. If you think you’re the person who is putting hundreds of hours into making a film, you could think, well I deserve to make that film about Inuit people because I put the most time in. But then you gotta do the math differently. And this is four generations of people who’ve not been allowed to speak for themselves. How much time is that? And then, might you approach the problem differently? We are so success oriented, capitalism orients us to want to be the director who is recognized. I want to be the famous person, I want to be able to make a living, I want. Even when you’re making a film about poverty and criminal justice, I want this movie to get me a deal for my next movie. So that we’ve got a mixing of values that are very hard to unmix. So I think that it’s not just lip service, like do the math, follow the money on a certain level. And figure out what could change in your processes that the give and take would sort out differently. You need to make 15 films in 30 years? What’s that need? Could you make three films that are timeless? Questioning yourself and asking “I am putting my needs in front of other people’s needs in service of what? So whatever you’re hiding, whatever you wouldn’t say out loud, about what your need is, say it to yourself. Acknowledge it to yourself. If you believe you need to be seen, maybe think about why that might be. That’s why I asked people to make a private list that includes your contradictions hopes and shames. MT: No surprise you’re a daughter of a psychiatrist with such wise advice. That could be applied to maybe more than just filmmaking. That’s why I love what we do; it’s life changing.

5 POETIC AND CHARACTER-LED—TIME

Style: Poetic, archive, at times experimental, character‐led Genre: Cause drama or social issue film on incarceration, BIPOC Interview: Editor Gabriel Rhodes, film Time

FIGURE 5.1

Editor Gabriel Rhodes. Photo credit: Jennifer Miller

Time is a documentary film distinctly made using a poetic approach, with the esthetics of an art film but with a narrative and lyrical pacing not often seen in documentaries. Director Garrett Bradley’s original footage of Fox Rich follows her activism in the prison abolition space and sweet moments with her sons as she works tirelessly to free her husband from prison. This chapter centers on DOI: 10.4324/9781003254768-5

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the interweaving of the black-and-white archival footage shot by Fox Rich with the shots of original footage, and the merging of both in a truely unique editing style. We will talk to the editor Gabriel Rhodes about how he and Bradley came to the decision to create an experimental film that still allows us to follow a story, in a totally unique structure. Time is the first feature film by Garrett Bradley and centers on the cause drama subgenre of incarceration. Partly archive, Bradley was given two decades worth of home video tapes from the main character, Sibil “Fox Rich” Richardson, as Fox had constantly filmed her six sons while her husband Rob spent time in jail. It’s hard to shoot in a prison and with little to show for what life is like on the inside, Bradley describes it as a story about an invisible community. “The only way we can bear witness to their experience is through the people who are on the outside” (TIME Magazine). The film makes a huge impact by doing just that, focusing on the family left behind. Our interview with the editor Gabriel Rhodes concentrates on the choices both director and editor made to create their abstract scenes, often so short or long that you’re unsure where they end. It’s an approach to scene structure that breaks the mold for what documentary film can accomplish. Time’s scenes often seem to have no beginning or middle either; sometimes even as short as a single shot, which can leave the audience with more questions than answers. It’s an extremely inventive approach that works to keep viewers engaged, at times inviting the question: What is going on? Actively demanding answers to this question, in the same way Fox seeks answers to her questions about her husband’s incarceration, makes an audience super engaged in the outcome. Other poetic films: Faya Dayi, Manufactured Landscapes, Qatsi Trilogy, Ascension, Beba. Other incarceration films: The Work, The House I Live In, 13th, The Road to Guantanamo, Attica.

Introduction Gabriel Rhodes has edited many feature documentaries, covering a number of genres and styles of documentary form: From the heavily archive-based film on the British/Sri Lankan musician MIA, to some of the most impactful stories I have seen about war (The Tillman Story), to action documentaries (The First Wave). He has worked with directors such as Matt Heineman, Amir Bar-Lev, Garrett Bradley, and many more. It is together with Bradley that he made the Academy Awardnominated feature documentary Time. Together they developed a new creative approach to tell a story about how a family is torn apart by prison. Yes, this is a social justice, social issue, or cause drama—whichever name you prefer to use—but the film is so much more. Before making Time, director Garret Bradley had already directed Sundance-winning shorts and was a storied artist

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with installations of her works in major galleries. As such, she brings an artistic vision to her documentary work. Before shooting even began, Bradley grew very close to the film’s subject, Fox Rich, picking out the specific aspects of her daily routine that she wanted to film. Bradley had a prescribed shot list for what she thought was going to be her next short film about Fox. But just before the shoot began, Rich handed Bradley a large bag of mini-DV tapes. That’s when the project expanded and the film took a different turn, it became much bigger. Bradley knew she’d need help with so much footage but had never worked with an editor before. Impressed with Gabriel Rhodes’s previous work using archive on MIA, she approached him and they had a frank discussion about her vision. Rhodes freely admits he didn’t think he could deliver a super-artistic version of this film, but Bradley knew she had that covered. She wanted a narrative-minded editor, looking to find the alchemy between the two opposing sensibilities. Even with this new risky departure for them both, the magic really did work and it led some to call it the best-edited film of the year. “That rare film that builds a formal lyricism perfectly in sync with story that washes over you like a wave. A social justice documentary able to weave in archival footage that opens the door to emotional nuance, rather than attempting to simply explain the complexity of the larger issue at hand” (Indiewire). Bradley knew from early on she didn’t want a literal storytelling style of film, with attendant “cause-and-effect linearity,” as she felt this created a falsehood. She talks about this being one of the great challenges for her as a filmmaker—and a great reminder for all of us as filmmakers: how does one really show the totality of an individual in an only 80-minute film? As Bradley told Indiewire, “How do we show the history and experience that one endures....without being reductive? It’s a huge challenge. It is maybe the challenge.” One reason I chose to interview Gabriel Rhodes was not only for his experimentation, but the way the film highlights Fox’s fortitude. Bradley and Rhodes, together with Fox’s footage offered this intimate access to a mother (and wife’s) fight to protect her family. Audiences respect persistence and it’s often what leads people to want to watch a character’s journey, to see how it will play out. And with over 100 hours of DV tapes it showed what a union Bradley and Rhodes developed as they shared a vision for the archive as an established part of the language of the film. Rhodes believes archive can give an editor more opportunity because when you’re working on footage that has no intention he can find more possibilities. “… when it’s not really conceived as anything it can be formed into whatever you want it to be. You can paint with it a lot easier” (Final Cut). And Bradley made up her own three rules to govern how she used the archive. The first was unity, the ability of Fox and her husband Rob to stay together over the course of 21 years even though he was incarcerated for much of that time. Plus love and then individuality, their ability to hold on to who they were within a system that often breaks you down. She felt using these rules as a lens into the

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archive and the original footage allowed them to move forward and backward at the same time in the structure of the film. None of those things are chronological or linear. Both editor and director were quite formal in their approach to these transitions between different types of footage, merging similar images from the past with images of the future, cutting back to back. The relationship between editor and director seemed incredibly democratic. They both talk about patience taking a big role in this filmmaking process, both on screen and behind the camera. Rhodes compliments Bradley on how she patiently waits until she catches the smallest of real-life moments, believing that they can become the largest ones on screen. This patience suffuses the entire film, as does respect. Bradley left Rhodes with the total freedom to make a skeleton of the film, in only nine weeks. A tight turnaround (they had 100 hours of archive), and terrifying for both of them. But this accelerated timeframe forced them to quickly identify pivotal moments that progressed the story in a way that felt true. Based in different locations, they only spent roughly ten days working together in the edit room. I was delighted to be able to sit down with Gabriel Rhodes to learn more about their unique filmmaking process.

Gabriel Rhodes and Garrett Bradley at the Sundance Labs. Photo credit: Jen Fairchild, courtesy of Sundance Institute. Used by permission

FIGURE 5.2

Interview Maxine Trump: I want to talk to you about every film you’ve worked on. My partner and I broke down The Tillman Story, as both you and Amir Bar‐Lev

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(the director) had talked about this clover effect of the edit. Meaning you kept coming back to the football match memorial, which was such a great way to structure the story. That was an amazing film and an incredible subject. I’m going to try and stay with your film Time because of the poetic story structure which was even more unique. It was very important for me to include editors in this book as it’s their work that often can initially make scenes take shape. Even in an observational film, reducing shots to a point of view, helping us decide what should be included. Gabriel Rhodes: I love having conversations with other editors because I learn so much from it. Every editor brings so much to the table, some different perspective, some other kind of skill set. It’s great. MT: Even looking at your earlier additional editing credits years ago, with the film Control Room and My Kid Could Paint That, your legacy started to build. Having worked with a variety of really interesting directors, are there unique lessons that you learned about scenes by working with them all? GR: I cannot even name a film where I didn’t learn a new technique and maybe this is partially just because of the films I choose to work on. They’re always a little bit different. I don’t think I’ve ever gone from a vérité film to another vérité film or an interview-based film to another interview-based film. I’ve hopped around stylistically. And I think that’s kept things really interesting and engaging for me but it also then means that every situation is completely new. And it’s a little bit like starting over. There’s some crossover, obviously, but with Matt Heineman that was the first time that I’d cut a film from the very beginning where it was all vérité. I mean, I knew how to dive into the process because I’ve done a good amount of vérité editing, but the amount of footage that Matt was coming back with every day was a mountain, he had three crews shooting on any given day. Matt’s thing is never turn off the camera. So you’re looking at 24 hours of footage, maybe every single day. And I worked with two other editors on The First Wave, David Zieff and Francisco Bello. And they’re also both just great editors. And Matt also has a structure. I’ve learned so much from him about editorial infrastructure when you’re talking about three editors. We were working remotely, the pandemic had just started. We had all done remote work in the past, but never on a project this size. It wasn’t even something that was common. So we divided it by character, but then the characters start to crossover. And then you have these other pieces of the film. It’s like interstitials, the footage of the city. Matt is very good at spreading out responsibilities and staying on top of everybody and keeping people moving toward a common goal. That really was the biggest thing I learned from that film.

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MT: In those films that have to deliver to a schedule, it feels like you need a director that knows their footage well. GR: He knew his footage really well, which is sort of amazing considering that he had three crews shooting at all times. The guy doesn’t sleep, he would literally go for 20 hours a day, he would shoot for 12–14 hours, then he would come home and he would watch footage and then he’d sleep for three hours. Then he called me and he’d call Francisco, he called David, then he’d get back up and he’d start going out and shooting more. He just has a thirst and a hunger for gathering footage, which is unprecedented to me. MT: I’ve also broken down Cartel Land (a previous Matt Heineman film) and I teach it as a class actually. I know the editor Matt Hamachek well so I sent him my beat sheet that I use in class. It really is an action doc, it’s incredible. GR: The First Wave is totally an action film too, you dive right into that story. You’re thrown right into this hospital in the middle of a crisis. I hadn’t seen the film for probably six months by the time we premiered it. And it was traumatic revisiting the experience of editing it. How devastating the experience is for the people in the film and the crew too. MT: Yeah, I’m sure. I just remember one EMT ambulance guy saying it was like 9/11 every day. GR: A film like Time, that’s just a completely different experience in terms of how I worked with Garrett, it couldn’t be more opposite. Garrett is a totally hands-off director. She’s a complete 100% collaborator. She came in and said, “Here’s all this footage. The story’s changed in a way that I didn’t anticipate as it’s no longer a short, help me figure out if this is a feature.” I said what I’d like to do is watch everything and come back in eight weeks and show you what I see in the film and she was like, great, I’ll talk to you in eight weeks. Of course, we talked a lot. MT: When I read that I thought, I’m a bad director, Maxine, bad director. GR: I don’t think that works for everybody. Garrett is great at giving you control of that first step. And then saying this is awesome but now I’m going to mold it with you, we’re going to figure out how to move it towards something that works even better. She needed that first version, Matt’s first version has to come out of his head. It has to come from his footage, it has to come from his experience. So completely two different workflows. And I learned so much from both of them. MT: I mentioned you used this cloverleaf edit structure for The Tillman Story. And you talk about cornerstones with Time. You’ve actually worked with a

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fair amount of archive stories. I wonder, have there been some things that you’ve actually applied to all of your films when you’re using archive? Even though they’ve happened in the past, you make them feel more present day and very active, and that’s masterful. GR: Maybe I’m not doing it consciously but now that you say it, I think probably out of all of those styles of films, I think archival is my passion. I think that’s actually where I connect the most to the material. And I think I always have, there’s something about personal narrative that I really love and archival plays into that. Those were the films where I understood the material the best. And in terms of making that stuff current, I guess I have a bit of an eye for seeing the personal in the moments. I think that’s what happened with Time. I first started watching the archival footage and I got a feel for who Fox was. And then I started watching the present day stuff that Garrett shot, and I got a feel for who Fox is now. And I then revisited the archival, I could feel the current Fox in that archival, and I think part of it was to find a way to connect those two. And I think there’s a common theme in my work in some ways. It is the traveling through time, that’s happened in quite a few films I’ve worked on. Time was 20 years. With the MIA film most had been shot 20 years prior. So I think that I’ve always been interested in the landscape of a person’s life. And then because I’m interested in it, I look at archival footage of a person’s narrative, and see a reflection of who they are now from that time. I guess that comes through in the work a little bit. MT: For many of us filmmakers there might be a niche that even sometimes we’re not aware of and then we reflect and see a body of work. What a surprise! GR: And you don’t have a ton of time to reflect back on it, right? It’s one film then the next to the next film, the moment you have to reflect really is when you’re trying to pick your next project. And which I’m fortunate enough to be able to do now and I ask myself what am I gravitating toward? What am I really interested in. Can I see that archival? Can I feel a character in it? And if those elements are in it, then I’m just automatically gravitating toward that story. MT: I’m going to jump ahead a little bit because you studied for a masters degree in documentary, can you think of influences from your studies or other documentaries that stayed with you? GR: I didn’t really grow up watching a lot of documentaries, I didn’t really stumble on stuff until my 20s. And it was Ross McElwee’s films that are the first I remember seeing. Time Indefinite was probably the first one I saw.

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I’d never seen a film like that before and it goes back to the personal. It was a document of a person in this moment in their life and I was transfixed by that. I watched all of Ross McElwee’s films and I started studying a lot of personal documentaries. When I went to Stanford, I was excited by the faculty and especially Jan Krawitz, she is a filmmaker who’s made personal films in the past, I love her work. That era of early 80s documentaries when they were simple process films because they were still shooting on 16 mm but the storytelling was fantastic so they weren’t simple films. They’re beautiful, they’re hard to find but that was a big influence on me. MT: It’s so cool to hear film school having a huge impression on you. GR: I was lucky to have those teachers and lucky to have great classmates too, who also have all gone on to have really amazing film careers. We have all influenced each other actually and we always watch each other’s work. They’re like my trusted comrades, I send them cuts of everything, they come to screenings, and vice versa, so I think having a core group is really super important. MT: Yeah, I teach for Sundance and I’m always saying to the students keep in touch with each other, you will be each other’s brain trust of advisors. So let’s dig in now to Time. A big draw for me is that there aren’t distinct scenes, it must have been a really hard edit. Yes, you have transitions, yes it’s thematic but some scenes are very big or long because of the pacing and the wonderful pauses. Then others are much shorter, and that’s really exciting to watch as a filmmaker. As I was breaking it down I noticed that there is no traditional three‐act structure, right? GR: Yeah. MT: So can you explain what you mean by using cornerstones instead and how that structure worked for you? GR: I think the cornerstones and the tent poles are really a way for editors to kind of get their hands around the footage. I talk about those pieces, those cornerstones because it’s like the corners of the puzzle, this gives me a footprint. I know for example when I have an important scene, because something huge happens with the character and sometimes it’s really obvious what those scenes are. With Time, it wasn’t obvious. You’d watch it and all of a sudden you’d feel something powerful, even though nothing’s happening on the screen, and that’s how Garrett shoots, she shoots a lot of negative space in a way. So you have to have your antennas really tuned to it, but all of a sudden, you feel something and then it’s okay, that’s a

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moment that I need to build around. And this thing needs to happen at a certain point in this emotional landscape. It’s not a three-act structure. It’s an emotional structure. That’s what I focused on. I knew it was Fox’s story and that has a pretty easy concrete structure, this is the crime and this is how they were in prison. This is her in the current day talking to Rob (her husband) and this is what they’re hoping for. With those tent poles, the story then plays out. So I knew I had that to lean on. But the question was, how do you weave in an emotion through out, that you can track and that changes and grows as you move towards the end? I don’t think we knew we had achieved it until really late in the edit. And you just have to constantly be monitoring for that. Then we started showing people cuts and you’re responding to people’s notes and you’re trying scenes in a different order. It’s amazing how we would take a little piece out of that film and move it, and the whole emotional structure would get thrown off, so it was a balancing act. It was like figuring out what felt right where. Moving pieces around, trying little nuanced changes in terms of pacing and music and then feel when we hit it. Those “oh my god” moments, when we felt it, it gave us shivers, we found it and that was really late in the edit. Frankly, it was probably a few weeks before Sundance where we really felt confident that it was locked in. MT: Wow, you must have been having a heart attack. GR: No, because it always felt like it was gonna be a good film. I still don’t even know now if it’s perfect but I felt like we were aiming for that. And when you felt like you’d hit this spot, it was like okay, that’s the perfect spot, let’s just leave it there where it is. So it didn’t stress me out and I’m sure it stressed Garrett out more than it did for me. But I always loved the film, I loved Garrett’s style of filmmaking. And I felt like, look, this is a gem, no matter what, let’s just make it as polished as we possibly can, as beautiful as it can be, so it’ll shine the most. And I think we got it right. MT: I’m always trying to get emerging filmmakers to understand story beats. In Time, you have the inciting incident in the open, you have a character with a goal, there are struggles, there are obstacles, motivation, turning points, and a climax. But then people talk about Time being a poetic film. The Qatsi trilogy and Ascension being good examples of that style with no linear kind of storytelling. I know Garrett was saying to you, we don’t want linear storytelling here. But there are story beats so it’s not a totally non-linear film or totally a poetic film. GR: When Garrett and I got together, we discussed from day 1 that she’s a lyrical filmmaker. I love lyrical films, don’t get me wrong, I love them and I aspire to make them but I also need a narrative story sturcture for my films. But I said

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to her, I don’t want to pull you down into narrative muck but I feel like your film could be elevated by having some narrative storyline, what I’d like to do is show you. Films like Ascension are those kinds of films I’m in awe of because I don’t know if I could ever make them. Maybe they’re in my future but I’m more of a narrative editor. MT: There weren’t a lot of observational or action scenes from the present day filmed by Garrett. And tell me if I’m wrong, but not a lot of extreme shots, there were lots of zooms, but not massive wides except some of the establishing shots going into buildings. Did you know fairly early on that the action will come from the archive? GR: Oh 100%. I mean the first thing I wanted to see was the archival because I’d seen the edit that Garrett had put together herself, (she had done an early edit of a short film). So I’d seen all the footage she’d shot, or a good amount of it. I knew that there wasn’t enough there to drive a narrative for a feature-length film. So I took a look at the archival and her current-day footage, but really the archive is what I leaned into, how can I build a narrative out of this archive? And that was the first thing I gave to her after the eight weeks. I’ll make it as lyrical as I can in a quick amount of time but I’m going to show you something that really tells a story and pulls you in toward the emotion of this character. And when we watched it together, she was floored because it’s not something she could have seen in the footage. So then after that we had an agreement, okay, next thing we’re gonna do is undo some of that narrative. So we unraveled the film, we unspooled it in a lot of ways and that was me opening up to Garrett’s vision of less linear storytelling. MT: But you did do an amazing job with the poetry, the lyrical symbolism of the transitions where in a number of places the wheels of the cars suggest this movement forward in story. GR: The wheels of the car is a great reference. When I looked at the footage the first time, I questioned why Garrett was shooting all the stuff on the highway, how is this supposed to be used? She’d say let me just show you what I have in mind. So she sent me one clip of stuff with the wheels that she edited. And she added the sound effects and the cars and I understood it right away. Oh, it’s not a transitional element, it’s not B roll or coverage it is a narrative element that’s providing energy, it’s actually an energy element. And once I saw that, I saw the zooms differently too. So those moments visually pushed the narrative when there is no narrative, it implies narrative. So you have a point here and a point here of narrative, but you have this gap in the middle where you’re trying to feel something, well, the energy

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pulls you through that gap, and you can infuse it with emotion at the same time, you feel like you’ve been watching something moving forward. MT: I read that Garrett found it really difficult to explain what she wanted in the edit when she gave you feedback. That’s quite democratic of you, generous to say just go and edit, show me, and to not mind. I know some editors wouldn’t like that and I know the two of you were texting each other screen grabs of where to precisely cut. GR: I loved it because maybe the hardest part about editing sometimes is matching your expectations or your abilities to what the expectations are of a director. And if you can’t match it, it becomes really frustrating for both parties. So all you can do is be as open as possible to what they’re trying to communicate to you and trust it. If you don’t trust the director’s vision then you really have no business being on the job. And if you’re truly open, then you’re open to anything, you’re not going to be threatened by their abilities or feeling like they are superior in some way to you. So you have to just be open to learning and growing. And that I guess goes back to the first point of our discussion, learning something from each of these director–editor experiences. I learned so much from Garrett, she’s amazing. MT: And vice versa? How you talk about each other was incredibly respectful. GR: We love each other. MT: That’s not always said at the end of a project. GR: Definitely, I wouldn’t say that’s the case, usually. And I think that’s fine. There’s two different kinds of relationships. This one was just a really good sibling kind of great relationship, where we trust each other entirely. MT: I used to make TV trailers, I learned editing that way. Then I got promoted to work with some really lovely editors and I would be so conscious of asking for small edits, even as small as two frames to come out. You can be known as a “frame f**ker” for doing that, which I hate. So when I read that you were sending screenshots to each other, and Garret was sending a shot back to show the frame to edit, all that frame f**ker guilt I had just left my shoulders. GR: I actually kind of loved it because she’s got such a good eye, sometimes you’d get frustrated, thinking is that frame going to make a difference to this scene? But with her it made a difference. You’d do it and yes, it was much better. And working remotely like that was hard to do, but we pulled it off. MT: So I’m going to highlight the very first scene in the film. You introduce Fox Rich in the archive and she talks about being pregnant and fresh out of

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prison. You see a montage of clips of her as a good mom and then you end the archive with audio of her saying “I feel like a champion”. This then cuts to shots of her in the present‐day being photographed, dressed in a suit and standing in a posture we call a hero shot, looking at the camera, and she looks like a champion. You go through a huge emotional arc and feel differently by the end of the scene than the beginning, which is what we all aspire to do. So much is revealed in that opening montage. But then watching the film thinking about scenes or however we want to call yours, maybe expanded scenes, these beautiful, lyrical moments—one of these moments especially stands out for me. The one I’ll call her forgiveness or church scene. It’s about 44 minutes into the film and the turning point right? The scene starts with her frustrations. She’s been back from prison for 15 years but she can still only visit her husband twice a month, she’s angry, and we feel conflicted as the audience. Mainly because she hasn’t, so far, seemed to acknowledge her crime. But then organ music comes in, it’s a hugely powerful scene, Fox states very clearly that she robbed a bank seven years ago and we hear her say, “I’m now asking my church family for forgiveness.” Where you placed this scene was brilliant, you could have given this away much earlier, the fact she wanted to apologize for her crime. You’re giving the audience what they want when they want it. GR: Yeah. MT: Then you pepper those lovely earlier moments from her mom (16 minutes into the film), about the advice she gives her daughter and she says Fox never listens to her advice. It was so subtle, almost foreshadowing. Building the need for her to apologize. GR: You got it, Maxine, you nailed it. Those are the two pieces of the puzzle that had to be put in just the right spots or it didn’t work. And I’m sure you’ve read about this, because I’ve talked about it before, but that scene we actually found when we were in the Sundance labs, the church scene. That was the one we showed to people and everyone was like, whoa, that has to be part of this narrative and it was because we just hadn’t found the footage yet. We just hadn’t clued into it. So then the next question was okay, where would this go and we started to move it around. Here and there. And then Peggy her mom was like a huge, huge part of that, too … where does that come? What is the information we’re receiving from her? And where does it fall within this emotional landscape? And it had to be just right or it didn’t work. MT: This is what I want people to really understand. You’ve placed these moments deliberately to make us feel conflicted.

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GR: Yeah. I feel like the best films have flawed characters. I hate hagiography. I just really don’t like it. And frankly, it happens a lot in documentaries. And so the problem with making films about flawed characters is that people don’t like flawed characters if you tip the balance. So you have this difficult challenge of making a film about someone who’s imperfect, but very interesting and actually lovable in the grand scale of things. You have to find a way of making people second guess their own instincts about somebody. Because people judge people, that’s the first thing they’re going to do. And still some people who watch the film, friends of mine say, “but she did this really shitty thing.” They’re kind of missing the point because the point of that was yep, she did this crime, she acknowledges it. MT: She did the time for the crime. And she had transformed by the end of the film. We look for these characters that grow or learn, win or lose in our character‐led stories. GR: All that is all good. It’s not about the politics of the crime. It’s about a personal experience and the emotional fallout of a bad choice. But what we tried to do was make it so that when people do judge her, they undo the judgment because that’s what she had to spend her life doing. And those were the moments. We had to use those both in our favor and sort of at Fox’s detriment to get at that. And Peggy’s (Fox’s mom) scene at the end of the film plays like that, what’s the line at that party? “Rob, it’s good to see you,” it’s so simple and subtle. And that’s all you needed to make it feel like she’s accepted the situation that she was frustrated with. You throw a little bone at an audience, and they’ll pick up on it if you give them that respect. MT: And that must have been difficult. Garrett has this relationship with Fox. GR: I will say this, screening the film for Fox was a huge thing. And I think that’s the case with any of these character-driven documentaries, they’ve trusted you with their story. There’s no way Garrett was gonna make the film that Fox probably had in her head. And the great thing about Fox, she is a very open-hearted person. And I think she probably, and I’m guessing, watched the film and was, at first taken aback, and then spent some time thinking about it and then could totally see why it was so valuable. So I think that she’s smart enough to perceive it as her story, and how emotionally it reflects their experience. At least that’s what she told me in person. MT: And what is being said about human nature through watching her grapple with her folly, her complications, her aspirations. To state the obvious, it would not be a film if it was about how amazing she is all the time and her great activism.

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GR: And who wants to make that. The experience can be traumatic, probably, to see yourself going through something that was important in your life. And then it also can be very exposing when you’re watching it with a crowd. And those are two different things. And you have to process that, it takes a while to kind of come to terms with it. We screened the Covid doc The First Wave in New York City and one of the main doctors was on stage and she broke down, she was sobbing uncontrollably. It was such an emotional experience for her to watch it with people and she’d seen the film before, it’s just different. MT: It’s PTSD for so many doctors. GR: Besides that I think it’s also that whole thing of exposing yourself makes you feels very vulnerable. And there’s a lot of trust there between Matt, the director, and the doctor … between Stephen and Maya, between Garrett and Fox. So you just hope that it all comes out in the wash, and for all my films it has. Thank God. An experience with another film made me realize something about issues with director/character relationships. Can they ever be on the same page? MT: And this is becoming more and more prevalent because characters are much, more savvy now with extractive filmmaking especially. The character isn’t making a film about themselves and the director will apply their subjectivity and each character‐led film is told in completely different ways. It’s a case by case situation as to who is the author. But having that conversation with the character is essential. GR: Oh my god, you’re so hitting on something, it’s so true. It’s kind of bubbling up now everywhere, people saying I have this huge document of my life, let’s make it into a film. Characters are providing their own footage and then all these people have their hands on this stuff. It’s so personal, it’s complicated. Fox started shooting in the 90s. MT: I’m also starting to see conversations about characters being co-directors. But it’s so great you bring this up, that the characters weren’t amazed when they screened films about them from day 1. I do advise filmmakers to not promise characters certain things that the film will deliver. I say that like a mantra. GR: I think the only way to make it work is to state you’re not going to show the film until it’s the right time. And you will listen respectfully to their opinion, but you can’t promise to make any changes, they have to trust you. Because it’s such a slippery slope if you start giving things to people. I will of course correct all inaccuracies. But it has to be this collaboration and trust has to be there. MT: So tell me a little bit about how you used that great Tulsa University scene

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in the film where Fox is reading from her book. Initially, you used that as narration for the whole film, which makes sense and her tone is very poetic. But you talked about Garrett really taking things out of the film to make it less of a narrative device. How did you get that balance? GR: It was just push pull. It was a process of me putting in more and Garrett taking more out and going back and forth. Garrett would sometimes want to live with it, agree that it’s better, and then decide we just don’t need it. We’d watch the whole film again without it and see how it felt. And the other factor and what was complicated was the speech (the book reading) really was the spine of what we had narratively, but then it didn’t have everything. So we had the added complication of Fox needing to record some voiceover. And that had to be a collaborative writing process. We had to ask her, “How would you say, or what do we want to say here and how would you say it?” but also expressing what we needed, to give information. So we’d have to sculpt the phrases that we needed from her in order to fill in those gaps. So it was a process. MT: And amazing that she reads so poetically. GR: I think that was another challenge. Someone who speaks like that all the time can come off as rehearsed but this is actually the way she is. So to get people to understand that was through the use of the archive, we show her on stage, she’s a big persona, let’s just lean into that and make people know that was her dream. And that’s how she is able to tell her story so effectively, she’s really good at it. MT: I’ve named a number of scenes that I think are amazing. Have you got favorite scenes? About 24 minutes in, I know the sons getting ready to see their dad was an important scene for you. Justice (one of the sons), as a young boy putting on his socks, that was cut together with shots of him years later, older and getting ready to see their dad again. This is where you see the stretch of time visually represented for the first time in the film I think. GR: There is one scene that’s always stuck with me that I really love. It’s a scene where Fox is in her bedroom, she’s on the phone with Rob, and little Rob is there. And it actually used to be a longer scene where little Rob was getting in the shower and he’s saying hi to his dad, and it’s just so beautifully shot. And Fox has such a beautiful energy talking to Rob, the conversation is flirty and kind of cute. Then it shifts to Rob talking about seeing the trees out of the window. We find out two of those trees were planted when he first got to prison. And then Fox responds and her tone shifts so dramatically, where she feels the profundity of that time period. In the edit, we discovered that’s where we would flash back to her twin’s birthday

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where she walks into their classroom. You feel this lack of Rob being there, this absence and it’s clear that she’s making that video for him and they’re so young. There’s some sort of magic in that archive, they’re so cute and beautiful, it’s such a full scene. I loved the flow of it and the feel of it, that was my favorite. MT: You talk a lot about the patience that you and Garrett both had working together. One scene particularly jumps out to me regarding patience in the shooting. It’s about 18 minutes into the film. The shots start on a flag, an image in a puddle, then cleaning a car. We hear Fox’s voice selling a car on the phone, we’re in present day. She’s doing her makeup, we learn about her moving to New Orleans and that she spent $15,000 on lawyer fees. That she’s frustrated, as she feels they’ve done nothing for her husband and she’s spent all the family savings. Her next action is then motivated to try to find out if there are any new developments in her husband’s case. She calls a judge’s office and waits on the phone for a really long time. In all this time on the phone there are two cutaways. Looking out the window and her son tapping on a window blind while he waits. This long shot is just so brave because it feels like real time. And tell me if I’m wrong, this was all one judge that she kept calling back to try and hear what had been decided? GR: She’s probably calling multiple judges, but it’s all part of the same sort of court system essentially. MT: That is poetic filmmaking, having that slow pacing, it breaks with what we’re told to do. How was that for you? How did you get comfortable with it? In one interview you were talking about Walter Murch’s tip about shots, and expiration dates. And I’ve heard this a lot, you enter the scene as late as you can and you leave as early as you can. GR: It was one of those things that I learned from Garrett. When you’ve cut films that are not lyrical, you look at something like that and you’re wanting to cut to the answer. Who wants to sit around when nothing’s happening? And it didn’t take me long to understand it but it did take explaining from Garrett, that this is the negative space that’s the point of the whole thing. So I put it back and she’s like, “longer,” I send it back to her, she’s like “longer,” and I say “okay,” and then we would start editing together sending stuff back and forth. And I ask “here?” … she’s “more,” it kept getting longer and longer. And then actually, I think at some point, I probably said, Garrett I think this is too long. And we just did it over and over again, until we felt it. There are two cutaways. We just had a couple of things to work with to get us in and out of that moment.

FIGURE 5.3

Sequence of the edit. These long shots are highlighted on the first video track of the timeline.

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FIGURE 5.4

Scenes zoomed in, long shots more obvious.

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MT: Hearing the son tapping on the Venetian blinds, which is building tension, is just great. GR: You just knew that that’s how that moment could be built. And I think also hearing weird stuff on the phone was part of it. The whole atmosphere of waiting is what we wanted to capture. And that’s a testament to Garrett’s shooting style. I mean, literally, who is that patient? Shooting a documentary, people always say, you follow the action. 99 out of 100 filmmakers would turn off the camera way before that because nothing’s happening. So it’s a brave choice from the very beginning of the conception of the film and the production of the film. And, I’m just gonna learn from her how to maximize that and make it work. MT: I’ve heard that first‐time feature documentary makers don’t know any rules. They haven’t been taught, they haven’t had any tips drilled into them. So maybe there’s a freedom in that too. Like she comes from the art world. GR: What she was able to do in that style is just put a camera down, plant it on a tripod, and just sit in place. Matt Heineman is never gonna sit still, he is just behind the characters walking constantly, but Garrett is not that kind of person so it let her be herself. I’m gonna put this camera here and understand the world that I’m inhabiting, and it probably flowed straight into that from that first experience, whatever inclination to shoot it that way. MT: It’s impressive again because there isn’t a lot of action in the film, so we’re gonna sit here but we still feel a movement forward because of the lyrical elements you’ve grown into the film. Let’s jump ahead to the music. I know you talk about the Ethiopian nun, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou. The music felt like spiritual songs from down south (in the United States). GR: I called it a weird blend of Ragtime and Thelonious Monk. It’s like this bizarre, spiritual/gospel feel. Garrett found her and brought it in and I was amazed. I heard a series called Éthiopiques, it’s all these Ethiopian Jazz musicians from the 60s and 70s. I was floored, it’s a huge character in the film, that soundtrack. MT: And you said that enabled you to feel that the footage could then become black and white? GR: The black and white was a choice at the end and it fit with the music, it all came together like that. You’re finding the archival is being elevated by the music, the music is defining the pace, the look, and it all kind of fuses together, it was a great last month of editing that way.

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MT: And I love that you talk about using soundtracks from other films as temporary tracks. I can’t edit without having somewhat of a soundtrack for pacing and my rhythm, there are a lot of editors that don’t. GR: I don’t know how they do that. I used to feel inadequate that I couldn’t edit without music. One day, I realized I’m just a musical person, I needed to feel the footage. Can you overuse it? Of course. And I try and peel it back before I show the film to anybody, but I don’t ever hold back from allowing myself to use as much of it as I want in my edit to begin with. I just have to have the discipline to go back over it and be like, I don’t want to embarrass myself and have it be wall-to-wall music so I’m going to take some of this out. MT: What about the role of a music editor? Have you ever worked in tandem with a music editor? GR: Only one time really and even then I did most of it in the edit. I kind of work that way. MT: What’s your methodology of deciding to work on a film? How soon can you tell, is it watching sample scenes? What are you expecting to see or what do you need? GR: Sometimes it’s just knowing the filmmaker’s work, that’s the barest version of it and I know what this film is about. Maybe I’ve seen a trailer of the new film. Then I know what they have, it’s going to be great and I’d love to work with you. The other side of that is first-time filmmakers, which I don’t do so much of anymore, someone who doesn’t have a huge track record, I’ll usually want to sit with them and watch footage, or at least have them give me a sequence of selects. Then sometimes I’ll go back and say okay, now I want to see what happens after this. And it’s the beginning of a conversation, I want to see how they’re gonna respond, I want to see if they’re thinking narratively, like I am. So it’s a little bit of a test. It’s a little bit of wetting my whistle, and it’s a little of, am I also the right fit? Sometimes I don’t think I’m the right editor, it doesn’t fit my sensibility. So it’s all of those things.

6 ARCHIVE—RBG

Style: Archive, interview-led Genre: Portrait Interview: Cinematographer Claudia Raschke, film RBG

FIGURE 6.1

Cinematographer Claudia Raschke. Photo credit: New York Film Academy

There are many documentary films made using archive material to a lesser or greater degree of success. Historically, one of the reasons documentaries became so well known was because of their use of photos and other media in antropologolical or historical films, The Donner Party is still one of my favorite films even though it’s decades old. In the last few years many filmmakers have worked hard to experiment DOI: 10.4324/9781003254768-6

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with this style of filmmaking, being super inventive with this popular and wellknown treasure chest of material. With extensive budgets this genre is becoming exceptionally creative. Rumor has it, The Velvet Underground (2021) used 30 minutes of archive truncated into a few minutes for the opening graphic montage of the film. Expensive, unless you have access and the rights to use someone’s personal library or there’s a lot of great quality archive about a famous person or band online. To read more about rights and licensing of material there is a whole chapter in my last book devoted to this subject. One of the most popular genres using archive is undoubtedly the portrait genre; we could list hundred’s of films made about influential people (and bands). The portrait genre typically combines archive and interviews, with often little in the way of observational scenes, which can be creatively challenging for cinematographers for a number of reasons. For this chapter, I interview Claudia Raschke, the cinematographer for My Name Is Pauli Murray, RBG, Fauci, Julia, and many more. We talk about the obstacles she faced filming a subject that you spend very little time with, or who may not even be alive. In RBG (and Fauci) especially, we talk about the cinematographer’s agility and how to be creative when you’re thinking of lighting with no set up time. Getting the shots that you need to make a scene, all while making sure you get the most out of your character. Raschke talks about her appreciation of great access to characters in observational films and how she resolved her own lack of access when filming with famous characters. Compared to living with characters for months with few restraints on access or time, filming with well-known celebrities can be very limiting. They’re often very heavily reliant on the flexibility of the crew using very little prep time. Raschke discusses how she adapted to filming in locations that may change at a moment’s notice, and how to be creative within these constraints. RBG is a portrait film about one of the most famous judges in America, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who sat on the Supreme Court for 27 years. The film to this day is still one of the biggest box office success stories for documentaries, helped by being incredibly topical at the time with the political upheavals in the United States. Julie Cohen and Betsy West, the directors of RBG, talked about their approach to making an enjoyable film about constitutional law with the fame of Justice RBG. Who not only became a social media meme but a cause célèbre for the Women’s Rights movement. The directors weren’t swayed by that moment but stayed true to a film about law and her work over the decades. They managed to do this so successfully that this film not only screened in cinemas (not always a given for documentaries) but to great critical (and audience) acclaim. Other portrait films: I Am Not Your Negro, My Name Is Pauli Murray, Fauci, Julia Most music docs are also portrait films: Amy, Tina, What Happened, Miss Simone?, etc.

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Other archive films: Senna, Amy, Our Nixon, Bitter Lake, Strong Island, Memories of a Penitent Heart, The Velvet Underground. Stories We Tell. Please note many of these cross over genres.

Introduction Maybe it’s not surprising that this film about a famous person, who was still working with a packed schedule at 84 years old, had challenges from the outset. It had nothing to do with Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s advanced age; it was more about taking time off from a job that was her life’s work. The filmmakers actually had to start filming without having an agreed-upon interview. Brave and risky for both directors, but Julie Cohen and Betsy West weren’t new to this game, both having storied careers in news production. Betsy West was previously a Senior Vice President for CBS News and Julie Cohen created and produced a weekly program covering cases before the US Supreme Court. Cohen had also made other films. This wasn’t a cold call approach to Bader Ginsburg as both were respected news producers and filmmakers. When reaching out to ask for an interview, Bader Ginsburg didn’t exactly say no; it was just “Not yet.” So the directors researched and compiled a list of everyone they would interview in RBG’s orbit and that got the ball rolling. Ruth Bader Ginsburg did help with that process however. Even though she’d said no to filming for now, she did suggest who else might be helpful to approach for an interview. So both Cohen and West took that as a positive sign and they approached CNN films, who, incredibly, gave them some money to start the project. This reads almost like film lore, but it really happened this way. It was also great timing, as Bader Ginsburg was receiving a lot of attention as an icon; the “Notorious RBG” meme had been spreading like wildfire and was inspiring young female activists in their own careers. This presented the directors with an opportunity and a concern. Cohen and West didn’t want to make a pop film about people getting RBG tattoos, but on the other hand, how do you get people to watch a film about constitutional law? They knew people were recognizing her as a figurehead and would eventually want to go deeper and know more; they wanted to help people understand how RBG had changed the world for women. To that end, they also crewed up mainly with women. This brings us to Claudia Raschke. It is important to include a chapter from a cinematographer’s POV and to discuss the role of the director and shooter. They are collaborators and we should use them as such; it makes for a much better film if we do. Cinematographers can give us amazing creative solutions if we give them the freedom when we can, to do that. But I’ve also had experiences with male DPs who try and exert control over my production. Don’t be intimidated by their craft and make sure you crew up with someone who enables you to get what you want.

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I watched an interview with Raschke where she described a great director as being someone who can be on set and when things are a little flat can measure whether the production should change course. I believe this book might help you feel better prepared in pre production to give you the freedom and confidence to do just that. And I believe it shows confidence to ask your DP for their thoughts; Raschke loves working as a collaborator, this for me is the best type of DP. Full disclosure, I teach at the same college as Raschke. Even with all of her experience, she is an incredibly warm and approachable DP and the students leave her classes inspired and ignited, and well equipped. Many of our shared students talk about her classes with excitement and enthusiasm for the craft. That’s not always a given from a college course. Raschke loves observational filmmaking; her work has a fluidity and a spatial awareness that isn’t always seen in other films on screen. She co-founded a collective of camera people that have a similar aesthetic and they can step in and shoot for each other when someone is booked. When you watch their work this signature style is imbued throughout. One of my favorites from this collective’s library of work is The Fourth Estate directed by Liz Garbus. It’s a series about The New York Times in the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency. It is a feat of observational (and interview) camera work in a fast-paced newsroom. But it’s Raschke’s work that makes her the go-to cinematographer for Cohen and West; she has gone on to work on their further portrait films, My Name Is Pauli Murray and Julia. And for other directors too, Fauci, etc., all master films for this genre. Born in Germany, her mother owned a chain of cinemas, so film was in her blood from a young age. She was a fiction cameraperson and dancer first before her incredibly successful career in documentaries. You can feel this background play out in her work and it’s a joy to be able to examine these influences in my interview with the extremely talented and super friendly Claudia Raschke.

Interview Maxine Trump: It’s really nice to be interviewing a colleague for an early chapter of this book. You’ve straddled commercial, fiction, and the non-fiction world as a cinematographer. There is a lot of cross-overs these days, documentaries are much more cinematic than the history of documentary making leads many people to believe. Does that irk you too? Claudia Raschke: Many people still think that when you call yourself a cinematographer you only do fiction filmmaking. When you’re a documentary cinematographer you have low budgets because documentary is

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always underfunded, but it doesn’t mean that therefore you can’t apply cinematography to your work. You still very much think about lighting, even if you’re using only available light. But you have to be spontaneous and flexible and recognize an opportunity, then take advantage of the opportunity. It’s something you become so acutely aware of, that you’re a storyteller visually. In cinema vérité, you don’t often have a director breathing down your neck saying, “Oh I want to have a close-up.” You are free to truly capture the mood and the setting and the emotional dynamic with what you know. It’s playing off your knowledge of thinking, for example “Oh my god, if I’m going to go further over here then it’s going to be half-silhouette, I can use positive/negative spacing, and doesn’t that work really well for the duality of the character, because he’s really torn, there’s something really dark about this whole situation.” So you can go with that in the moment, but it means that you have to be acutely aware of how you can use your craft. How do you go there as a documentary cinematographer, there are no books about that. There is very little written about cinema vérité: how you can visualize something the character doesn’t emote. You can emote for them through the framing, through the contrast ratio, through your iris setting. This thinking had been traditionally only available for cinematography for fiction. There’s the history of cinema vérité, created by the French, shooting on location but there’s nothing about seizing the moment. MT: That freedom can vary by director, right? As the director can have a monitor. CR: Yes, it does. The freedom really taps into these unknowns that you usually don’t have when you’re on set for a fiction film. The schedule is so tight in terms of what has to be shot. In documentaries, you have a schedule too, and it certainly is scheduled tightly in terms of where you’re going and accounting for travel. But once you get to that character’s house or that particular village in Africa, as a cinematographer there’s time when you arrive on set where the director and producer have to make the first contact and kind of do a little bit of sweet talking. That’s my time where I can walk around and I can take it in and look at the opportunities, and that doesn’t really happen when you’re in fiction, everything has already been finely planned. You feel so much more like an explorer than just executing a craft in docs. I think most of that freedom is what feeds my passion, it is the things that I haven’t ever seen before, it is the incredible access that you have, to unseen and unheard stories. MT: RBG is in the political and portrait genre, mainly made with archive and interviews and I know you love observational filmmaking. So I want to talk

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about the lack of time you actually had to shoot Bader Ginsburg’s scenes which offered some of the action in the film. And some of the difficulties that presented? CR: We were really working our way from the outside of the queen to the inner court. RBG had these handlers for any kind of request, she was also protected by bodyguards, and so just dealing with that makes the process of having access to her slower. And then there is a negotiation about time, and so whenever we would want to photograph her we would get 20 minutes. What can you do in 20 minutes? This means the pressure on the craft to deliver every shot, so that it can be used, is huge. You can’t have any technical difficulties, and plus you just have to do the best you can under the time constraint. In general, any cinematographer will work best if they feel that they can be playful, but when you are restricted for time I’ll get the meat and potatoes. Get the story, everything she does at the time in the scene. So my mind was firing a mile a minute. “I’ve got the shot, move on.” So there was a lot of internal checking of what I had in terms of my angles. Mind you, she doesn’t move, so organic movements were very difficult. In the scene with her granddaughter at her home (approx 13 minutes into the film) again we were allowed 20 minutes to shoot and nothing else. But then the director said to her, “I heard that you work late at night at your desk, would it be possible to get just one shot through the door and you sitting there?” The handler said absolutely not, and Ruth said sure, and all the doors were open and so we got exactly three minutes. We still hadn’t done her major interview so we didn’t want to upset the handlers. So I had three minutes and I basically did my wide shot and I said I’m just going to grab one shot from the side okay. Then I went in there and I danced around, I walked behind, used every angle I could possibly milk. Because I knew with three minutes of rolling time, if each shot is 10-seconds long or 15-seconds long that’s solid enough to make a montage, so I knew I had the scene. The same thing happened after her interview when we had been given permission for 30 minutes. MT: The director made a great transition to that scene with her granddaughter that you mention. We’d just seen archive of Ruth Bader Ginsburg at college studying law and hearing how she struggled with her parents to be allowed to go to college. We see photos on a computer and hear a young person’s voice and it’s revealed it’s her granddaughter, who is also studying law, sitting with her grandmother at the dinner table. Symbolically, we feel how that struggle bore out and affected not only the country in a positive way but look at how she paved the way for her granddaughter too.

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg with her granddaughter and cinematographer Claudia Raschke. Photo credit: Storyville Films

FIGURE 6.2

You mention the main interview, and the lack of time. I was watching that interview and I was thinking this feels long, and I know Claudia didn’t have much time. You watch that interview, which is peppered throughout the film and she has those lovely moments where she repeats back the speeches that she gave, it just gives you chills. CR: Then she was 20 minutes late for the interview and there’s such a rigid schedule for her. If somebody is late it doesn’t mean that somebody else might get rescheduled. But at that point we had already filmed so much and knew how the system worked so from the get-go we knew exactly what we wanted to get. We wanted her to read her speeches, that was something that was pre-authorized by her. We knew that we were going to show her some footage, to react to the TV comedy skit. With the interview we knew there were certain topics we were not going to ask and then the first thing she does in the interview, she redirects a question to talk for ten minutes. And as directors you have all of these interrupting skills that you’re trying to use,

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but with Ruth Bader Ginsburg you don’t want to upset her. We were always treading really carefully because we were worried that she would just shut us down. MT: I mean she had the power to make laws in this country. CR: I was petrified of her, of crossing the line. I was told from the very beginning that she doesn’t like cameras and is very light sensitive so she doesn’t want any lights in her eyes. Whenever I would set up any lighting the handlers would walk around saying, “I don’t know about that light over there.” They were helping me to make her feel really comfortable and that her needs were being met. I understood that you don’t want to walk in and see there’s a light and she’s uncomfortable. For me, it was like working with a war veteran that would be triggered, and she was triggered by lights. MT: The director’s relationship with the cinematographer is so important, and I think it’s possibly one of the best experiences you can get from film school, building these relationships. You build this trust between each other and now you have a crew that you want to work with for the rest of your life. The director’s skill is to make the character really relaxed and comfortable, with the hope that the characters give you more than you imagined. But I think it’s also incredibly important that the cinematographer is totally understanding of the director asking for something more than you had anticipated in the moment. In those moments, being able to suddenly switch out lenses or having to move into a different lighting environment, but being okay with that. CR: It is always fantastic to be part of a team that is understanding of the cinematographers’ craft and that there’s a gratitude that is shown. Often they’ll say after screening footage “this is exactly what I was hoping for, thank you.” I find a lot of the directors that I encounter are so concerned about the wellbeing of their character to the extent that their anxiety is then projected onto me. So when I say something that they’re unfamiliar with, like we’re going to use an octodome which is quite a large light, all of a sudden their fear of something vetoes it without truly trusting that I wouldn’t use something to intimidate somebody. It’s just a more comfortable light, some lights can feel much harsher on the eyes, it simplifies my lighting setup, especially for interviews. I have learned through the years to recognize this and bookend my suggestion with the knowledge that this character is very insecure and that makes the director very insecure, I wouldn’t jeopardize that. But I still recommend a larger light unit that is simpler to set up. You give the reasoning so you can walk somebody through it, holding their hand. MT: Purely speaking from my director’s point of view, when you’re able to trust your cinematographer it’s this unbound joy. You know they’re doing

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everything that they can possibly do to make the best possible shoot and this is so helpful to your role as a director. There’s so much energy invested by the director in the trust you’re building with your character but it’s also coupled with so much reliance on the trust you’re building with your crew. I often say to students you may have a cinematographer of choice that ends up being your number one choice for the rest of your life. They get you and you get them. CR: When you’re exploring somebody’s life or plight or how they’re overcoming obstacles, they’re making themselves vulnerable in front of the camera. And that creates a circumstance where you want to be very protective. It’s the same thing with the relationship between a director of photography/cinematographer and a director. There’s a vulnerability when things don’t work, the director is just completely deflated about what has happened and you need to have a partner at that point, to feel that you can be vulnerable with them. The same thing if I’m super exhausted or I’ve had to shoot scenes that emotionally triggered me if I needed a 5-minute break to regroup. A cinematographer in documentaries has to be so involved, because you’re making storytelling decisions all the time. So if you are not in sync with the director, and you can’t be vulnerable, that can be hard. This feeds right into personality: usually it comes back, unfortunately, to male directors who have a certain take on women cinematographers. Some have an ingrained doubt that they’re questioning me every step of the way, and I have to calmly, but over and over again, reassure them that I am making the right decision. MT: … and by doing that they’re not going to get the best from you. CR: It’s undermining. You don’t want to be in that relationship. You are true partners when you’re making a documentary. Sometimes I find the directors become very protective and therefore cut off certain scenes early and then I have to go and say, “Look I understand, but would you consider us pushing in this direction a little? Because I think later on you might need this.” I think the beauty of a great collaboration is that you can accept each other’s personality, for who you are emotionally, intellectually, as well as your craft. And you are allowing each other space for discovery on all of these levels, while you’re together on this journey of exploration of a particular story. MT: This is exactly why I couldn’t interview directors only for this book, because it is such teamwork. I like to think the documentary world is less intimidating because I think generally we are people that try and find the fit with another person, to get the best out of another person, so I think that psychology helps. CR: In a documentary, compared to fiction, it’s a smaller crew and therefore it is so much more integrated. It is just that interchange of helping each other out in situations, in order to protect the character and their story.

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MT: This is why I find it hard actually to be a director and shooter. Obviously, at times needs must, and it gets you this intimate access which is magical. What are some tips for how cinematographers can work with characters to get the best out of scenes? CR: I think in this situation, it’s how do you get characters relaxed in front of the lens? And I always say, well it is the way you introduce yourself. Keep in mind you’re a stranger, how do you relate to a stranger, and what is your common ground? This common ground cannot be the topic itself. If you want to have a relationship and be allowed into somebody else’s house then you have to share something of yourself that makes you vulnerable. So maybe I come into a situation where I see somebody is a dog owner and I love dogs, so I tell them I’ve had dogs and my kids want dogs but it’s heartbreaking, because I’m traveling all the time I can’t have a dog right now. Certain directors, on a new set actually do a day of just getting to know the character. We don’t shoot anything, we just call it a location scout, but we go in and have a cup of tea with them. So that they get to know us, that they can ask questions, I can look around, they can show me the house. Then the next day when we come in, it’s a whole different story, you can actually say to them, “Look if you feel uncomfortable you can tell me: please don’t film.” This gives them some control and they never will say don’t film this, but you have to make it available for them. They feel then they’re not invaded and that is not the case at all on set with fiction, ever. It’s just a whole different thing. And on that note, I think it’s super important to have an interest in psychology. MT: Yes, I say documentary filmmakers are amateur psychologists, we have to be interested in what makes people tick. A curiosity into other people’s lives. I want to ask what’s your favorite scene that you filmed for RBG? I know everyone talks about the gym scene where she’s working out with her trainer (the second scene in the film). I think people enjoy that scene because it’s so surprising, it’s an action scene and you’re seeing RBG in such an intimate way which reveals character. There aren’t many live action scenes in the film. It’s like a Rocky film moment, she’s training to be the powerhouse that she is, even at an advanced age. CR: That’s not my favorite scene. The gym scene was definitely something that I struggled with, just because there were mirrors and again we only had a certain amount of time and there were only certain exercises we’re allowed to film. But everybody loves it because you see an 84-year-old woman doing push-ups and planks and not stopping. Cinematically speaking it’s not my favorite scene because you’re shooting 360 degrees, there’s fluorescent lighting, there are all these abstract machines in the background. Storytellingwise it’s great, and I love it for that, but because of the entourage of people we

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had reflections, so I had limited angle choices because I had to adapt really quickly to wherever she would go. MT: I love that Julie Cohen and Betsy West said they could have used 96% of that footage, which was kudos to you. CR: The storyline is quite condensed, RBG doing strength training and look at what she is capable of doing. So on that level, it was fascinating how much fun she had. It was definitely a wonderful character moment, you’re right in that she hadn’t been moving around much in the film and we have a scene of her doing a lot of activity, on that level that was really powerful. Cinematically speaking, I am somebody who likes to float around and really take the audience into this three-dimensional space, because film is always two-dimensional. I look at something and think about how to create a foreground and background with moves that can walk the audience around the space. Therefore, the scene with RBG doing the workout felt very staccato, a music term of just being very fragmented. MT: It sounded like everyone was surprised when you were finally allowed to film the gym scene, were there any other surprises? CR: The surprise was when she was showing us all of her dissent collars, which was not scripted, it was after her interview (TC 01:06:00). Betsy and Julie again did the sneaky thing of saying could we just get a shot of them and then Ruth said, “yeah sure,” and opened the doors to the small hallway that connects the office of her staff with her main chamber, and it’s about three feet in width. So when you open up that closet door you have about a foot and a half. Now the camera itself with the lens is about a foot and a half right, so put me in there and squeeze me like a lemon. Betsy and Julie were behind the door trying to view the shots off my little screen. I was looking through the viewfinder and they could see what she was doing, and who she was showing it to, and of course there was nobody else to show but me. And it was just really random lighting, it’s just whatever was there. You have to, at that moment, embrace it. And I couldn’t get any coverage except for punching in, because I had absolutely no mobility. MT: She talks about a gift from the University of Hawaii with the shell design and it segways into what she wears when she’s dissenting (not agreeing with the motion before the court). Again a lovely character moment and a great transition into the next scene. CR: Then because we were already there, Betsy and Julie pushed again and said, “That was so fantastic, can we just grab you sitting behind your desk?” It was the last thing we would be shooting and so we might as well. At that point, we had

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her interview. She said yes. I love that shot of her sitting, itty-bitty tiny in a huge space. For me that is who she was. She was such an incredibly knowledgeable person, that all that thinking space around her was necessary in order to understand who she was. That’s also in the set up for her interview: that emptiness behind her is so important because she ultimately fills it with all of her incredible knowledge. You don’t have to see any kind of tchotchkes that you often use in interviews to tell us who she is. She’s just pure RBG, in this huge space filled with her thoughts. MT: All of the symbolism in that shot, as a cinematographer, you must be feeling great. CR: At the desk I snuck in a couple of other shots but then I was pulled back out, saying, you don’t have clearance for that artwork on the wall, and I was like damn, let me zoom in. MT: What were other challenges for you when you couldn’t have access? CR: Overall it is an interview-based documentary, with lots of archival, so I knew that from the get‐go. Julie and I went on a lot of location scouts for the other interviews. We were in New York, we needed a location that’s soundproof and then in this particular location we had to actually do two interviews, so can I create two different looks? Even when we had to travel we always had somebody who would take 360 photos beforehand so that we could come up with a solution. We couldn’t have the real environments of other characters that we were interviewing. We weren’t at anybody’s house except for the one plaintiff. When you go into somebody’s home then it really fills in the gap of who they are, it all kind of really resonates. Everything else was created from scratch, we were in bare locations, what can we do? That whole idea of making sure that whoever we interviewed was really motivated, that it felt as if they belonged, that was a different challenge, because that goes back to my feature schooling of how to light. To a certain extent when you do interviews, very often your budget is just so limited that you go and you just augment the natural lighting. Yes, you make a very good choice and a very important choice when you set up an interview, and it’s beautiful because the background has depth. You milk what you have and then hopefully augment it with some lighting. In these cases we couldn’t milk anything, we had to create. MT: So what’s a favorite scene? CR: When the directors said we have all of these dissents and we want to use a voice-over of RBG reading this dissent. (This scene is just over an hour into the film.) We thought we couldn’t film in the Supreme Court, so how do we visualize it? But let’s go through the process of trying to get permission, so we

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do and unbelievably we get it. But again we only got 20 minutes in the court and the director said, how about if we have a jib arm. I said well a jib arm isn’t even built in 20 minutes. We could do pans and tilts and maybe a steadicam would be great. We can float, and they were like, “I don’t know about that,” but then they warmed up to it. I had two cameras but we weren’t allowed to bring in any lighting. Because it was empty I suggested we experiment with moving cameras, one on a tripod and one on a steadicam. The tricky thing usually with a steadicam is you have to have somebody in front of it because it floats with human motion. Even if you have the steadicam rig it isn’t perfectly smooth. So without anyone in the seats, how do you go about making it look smooth? I decided that filming slow motion will make more of a smooth motion by slowing it down significantly we can use it to our advantage. MT: You commemorated a staggering moment in history in that scene with the wonderful archive audio. It was the first Women’s Rights case before the Supreme Court. The case was concerning the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), the oldest military college in the United States who were not allowing women to attend. Although much of the scene are your shots of the empty Supreme Court, it brilliantly allows for the original audio recordings to be heard and the archive of RBGs voice to really resonate. CR: Exactly. I felt so happy with that approach, which I was confident we could do with the C300 MKII and its beautiful sensor. We shot the film in 4K, but of course, when you’re going into slo-mo you can only shoot in 2K because of the way you have to crop for the mechanics of it. But not having any lighting was no big deal when you’re working with the right camera and lenses. We used Prime lenses (Canon CN-E 50-mm Cine Lens), which would open to T1.3. We had some nice little moments in there that I was so happy about, like this rotation shot we did on the podium with the microphone where the presenting lawyer argued their case. My thinking was as I love moving in space, how can I give the audience an experience of not just looking at empty seats but an experience of reliving the moment, stepping up to the podium? The minute we were allowed inside I very quickly started working with my steadicam operator discussing what I needed to capture, there’s no forgiveness when you’re photographing in slow motion. So I love the movements that we created, of rotating and having the graphic over it. I felt that that really demonstrated when you have no footage there is a way that you can transport the audience to the realm of things where it happens. For me it works in sync with the story that is being told at that moment, it is so in sync visually with the motion and the lighting and what you hear.

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MT: These audio recordings are then interspersed with interview, the middle of the scene has a great interview with the first woman who was taught in the first class at the Military Institute. And the last shots of the scene are of RBG attending as a special guest at the VMI. It was so impactful in regards to seeing RBG make a very real change and the impact it had. It makes sense this scene is in Act 2 and in the last third of the film. You were a dancer and you love movement. Can you talk a little bit about some of the struggles with a two-camera interview? CR: I was doing multiple-camera shoots for all of our interviews. You always think in terms of having different backgrounds that you have to light in different ways so you can create a smooth transition between one and the other shot, that can give it continuity. When you’re doing vérité you also think about the background, you also think, what does camera A see? What does camera B see? And then you mathematically always calculate in terms of your 180 rule. So if I’m over here then the other person has to be over here, otherwise it’s not going to edit together. The other person has to be smart enough to follow.

This schematic shows the axis between two characters and the 180° arc on which cameras may be positioned . The 180° rule. If you have to go onto the other side, moving from one arc to the other, the characters would have to switch places to make the camera match. Therefore, we keep our camera movements within one arc to be able to match edits between the cameras. Image credit: Grm wnr—CC BY-SA 3.0

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From the get-go, I said I’m going to be doing more of the medium shots and moving into some of the close-ups, but I want the second camera to pick out details with the 70–200 lens. So with the longer lens, the second camera would potentially be more out of my frame as I rotate around. MT: Thinking of working with other camerapeople. You co-founded a cinematographer collective that grouped like-minded DPs together, would you suggest that for other camerapeople? CR: It is a mind merge. We often have multiple projects on our plate, so bookings might overlap. Having the resource of like-minded people that can easily follow your footsteps because they already implement a similar philosophy, where you say, I can’t do it but my team partner from the collective can. It is supremely supportive and helpful. MT: Let’s talk a little bit about favorite scenes that you’ve enjoyed in other people’s films because this is about scene analysis and it’s really trying to drill down to what you may have learned, either from advice or being on set. CR: It is not an easy question because as a cinematographer when you’re on a shoot you’re such a loner in a way. Even though you have a tight-knit team, in your craft you don’t really have somebody else that you talk to about it. That’s part of the reason why we wanted a collective to start with because we need those conversations. The tricky part is that, as a cinematographer, you have no social life, because your schedule is unpredictable. You’re on call, ultimately at all times, because your project might all of a sudden be in need of yet another moment that’s happening tomorrow. I haven’t asked for advice, but I think it’s specific to being a woman cinematographer. The minute you ask for advice, it weakens the perception of what you know, and I have been battling this for 35 years in the industry. Always having to reassure people that I know my shit, so I don’t ask for advice and I don’t take any advice. I will do test shoots on my own, I will do research on my own, I will look at different movies and get inspiration and try to recreate it. I do everything except ask somebody else how they would do it. To answer your question: regarding a film that I feel is close to my heart, inspirational, as well as plays with cinematography in a beautiful way? What I’ve always been rooting for with vérité composition, is understanding that composition is integral to storytelling. Therefore, Honeyland is one of my favorites. The scene of the protagonist’s little head looking over the wall, the amount of presence, or of being in the

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water when the girl nearly drowns, or when the baby gets stung by the bees. All of that, for me, is cinematography on the front line, without interference. And at the same time taking the time to live with the characters because they shot it over three years. It doesn’t matter what scene I grabbed from the film, it’s beautiful, it’s just perfect. MT: I agree it’s a stunning film. Any moments from one of your films that you take with you? Either, you’ll never do that again or I’ll always do that again, that was an amazing experience. CR: I realized that I do a lot of rotations. For example, when I’m over the shoulder of somebody my instinct and my curiosity is that: I’ve got to see that person, I don’t snap around I just slowly rotate. It’s the awareness shift that started out with the film Mad Hot Ballroom. We went through different kinds of cameras and it was painfully obvious that I couldn’t use a steadicam because I need to be able to shoot 360. Kids were reacting so quickly, and in such small moments, and you have 30 kids around you. You don’t know who’s going to have a good moment and so you’re like, holy crap, how am I ever going to capture that with one camera? MT: I’m so pleased you brought up Mad Hot Ballroom. It’s a multi-character film that has influenced so many filmmakers. The director Marshall Curry said it was a real influence for his film Racing Dreams. I like talking about story beats in scenes and I noticed how stakes and tension were brought into scenes in RBG. Even with so little time to film. At TC 01:23:00, we’re watching clips of an impression of RBG on Saturday Night Live. Then the scene cuts straight to her son and daughter and they’re asked if their mom has watched it and they say “mom never watches TV, I don’t think she knows how to turn it on.” Then we see shots of RBG being shown the SNL comedy clip on a monitor. She’s laughing hilariously at the impression of her, but the dialogue before had built up tension, the audience questioning “how will she react to the clip?” We’ve been set up to know she wouldn’t have seen these clips before, and her chuckles totally shifted what you might have expected. It’s such a good shift in tone between scenes, we always look for how can we create these surprising tonal shifts. This is the fourth to last scene of the film; the directors would have planned these moments. CR: I have to say seeing a “relaxed Ruth Bader Ginsburg” was very seldomly witnessed while we were filming her, because she’s so watched over. She’s

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just not somebody who does small talk, all the energy she uses is so focused on something so important to our nation that small talk seems like a waste of time. MT: Thinking on interview questions for a minute as we don’t talk a lot about interview questions in the book. When you’re making an interview film the questions will most definitely dictate whether scenes are successful at storytelling. No surprise that we’re spending so much time talking about so many scenes in the last 20 minutes of the film. Because that’s where you have so much tension leading to the climax of the film. I love the Bill Clinton scene because it’s a great example of leading interview questions. Bill Clinton responds to a question about the very conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia with a brilliant answer “I couldn’t have been a friend of his.” It sets up the next scene and is another great example of building tension in the film, the audience is left to question why. And it’s answered in the next wonderful scene of RBG and Scalia joking together. You get to understand her character from the directors asking Clinton a question about that relationship.

President Clinton with the director and cinematographer. Photo credit: Storyville Films

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CR: RBG was able to bridge those relationships, it’s a testimony to when you give somebody space and respect to truly listen to them, even if you’re completely disagreeing with them, it has this domino effect. They’ll look at you differently and listen to what you have to say too. They might not change their mind, because Scalia didn’t, but they had a common ground and they definitely respected each other. It was an amazing testimony of human kindness and just executing human rights, as everybody is entitled to their opinion. MT: That’s important to remember at this time in the US when there is such extreme opposition in politics. You were talking about duality with the lighting and getting these moments where you’re revealing character. I was actually thinking, gosh it must be really frustrating for cinematographers to not be in the edit sometimes, unable to ask, “Why didn’t you include that shot?” CR: Oh, it is. And it has been my lifelong battle because at a certain point when you’re so heavily involved it becomes your creation and your story and how you portray what you ultimately discovered. Because you’re seeing things that the director actually doesn’t see. They’re not up close, they can’t pay attention to the details the way a cinematographer does. You’re looking through the camera and you are already multitasking, because you’re pulling focus, creating a certain mood, your positioning where you’re going to start and end, and the kind of shot list that you have in your mind. And you’re being so reactive to whatever is unfolding in front of you. There is an awareness that is different than somebody just listening in on contacts, these little earbuds. Because they don’t see the body language, they don’t see the emotion, they don’t see the surrounding people, how somebody might be listening in, and all that you’re taking in and you’re reacting to what is necessary. That is not necessarily instantly available, even on a video image to the director, so then later on they look at the footage and I often get from them, “Oh my god I can’t believe you captured that, you know, I didn’t even see that on set.” I have learned through the years that when principal photography ends it’s like I’m standing at the dock and I’m waving at the ship that’s taking off without me. I usually am pulled in for rough cuts, for feedback sessions, where I participate with other selected viewers to give notes. And I find it really enlightening because I do see what works and what doesn’t work, and why all of a sudden the story takes a

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left turn. In documentaries, so often you go in with a concept or with an idea of what you’re trying to capture and then maybe the character just doesn’t pan out, or maybe you don’t have enough access, or maybe there are some other limits that make you go through the side door. And wow, that side door opens up a whole new storyline. So you kind of abandon the first one and go with the side door. So many times in the edit, I didn’t even think that that was our main topic, but I’m so glad that I actually followed that action. And there are times when the directors say, “Oh we’re not interested in that.” And then in the edit, all of a sudden, that’s where they say, “Why did I stop you, this is so important.” MT: I want to ask you one question about your latest film Julia that also has a lot of archive. You created some fun luxurious cooking scenes to cut up against the archive. How did you work with the directors (again Julie and Betsy) on marrying those scenes so fluidly in look and feel. You also told me about a cooking scene with Dr. Fauci that never made it into that film. You said not only is he funny but he cooks like a scientist, I don’t think Julia Childs would have agreed with his precision. CR: We watched Julia’s old TV show and intended to add shots as if it was filmed at the same time (the 60s and 70s) as a bridge between worlds. But in the end we felt that a chicken is a chicken and timeless. So we were somewhat set free of how to present and marry the archive with the re-creation of Julia’s kitchen footage and the modern abstract look. All of the cooking sequences with Julia’s hand were shot in a recreation of her personal kitchen. This way the audience could experience her cooking in a close and personal space. We talked about the look and feel of these scenes and what time of day to set the mood. The directors made sure only period style tools and wardrobe were used to stay authentic to the time. Our set chef was the perfect fit as Julia’s hand model. Of course the directors and I would have been lost without our extensive shot list and story boards. Most of the footage was shot handheld to give a sense of looking over Julia’s shoulder every step of the way for a mouth-watering experience. We captured the absolute deliciousness of her juicy food creations in a modern look with extreme close up and macro photography. Good enough to eat.

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Cinematographer and AC Lucas Millard on set in Julia’s kitchen. Photo credit: David Ranghelli

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7 NATURAL HISTORY GENRE—MY OCTOPUS TEACHER

Style: Not essay like many natural history films but interview and character-led, archive, and observational Genre: Natural history (animal, natural world, etc.) Interview: Director Pippa Ehrlich, film My Octopus Teacher

FIGURE 7.1

Director Pippa Ehrlich. Photo credit: Thomas Van Schalkwyk

DOI: 10.4324/9781003254768-7

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Natural history is a documentary genre we’re all quite familiar with. Traditionally made with strong voiceover/narration, sweeping musical elements, and stunning wildlife photography. Shot by wildlife photographers that have the patience and stamina to remain for months in the field, it relies on scenes of action from animals that are then structured into a compelling narrative. These narratives don’t necessarily have a climactic ending for their characters so we can consider them more essayistic in nature. It is a very different way of making films compared to the other documentary approaches included in this book. As such, in the past it often relied strongly on celebrity voice-over from experts like David Attenborough, or actors and well-known personalities like Morgan Freeman and Oprah Winfrey. My Octopus Teacher also uses a strong voice-over but beyond that, and a few other classic elements, the film has a completely unique approach. It tells the life story of an octopus through the relationship that was built with a South African underwater diver (and cameraperson). As with most natural history films, the cinematography is spectacular and although a relationship has been built between a mollusk and a man, it isn’t overly anthropomorphized. The film went on to win an Academy Award and the director Pippa Ehrlich and I discuss her favorite scenes, how they are constructed and the struggles in making the film. Struggles that involved swimming in frigid waters off the coast of South Africa without a wetsuit or scuba tanks. It is a beautiful film that reminds us of the importance of saving the threatened kelp forests in the ocean as much as we’re trying to save traditional forests on land. Other unique animal films: Buck, Project Nim, Grizzly Man, Kedi, Eagle Huntress. Other natural history: March of the Penguins, Blue Planet, Winged Migration.

Introduction We’re used to watching natural history documentaries with a human voice speaking for the animals, whether Morgan Freeman for penguins or David Attenborough talking for almost every other species on earth. After all, how do you follow and create story arcs for animals when they don’t speak in a language we can understand? For years, the natural history genre has been very homogenous in nature, although full of spectacular scenes that bring these incredibly remote locations and animals into our living rooms. They are packed full of footage most of us would never see otherwise, especially when these animals live in inhospitable places. David Attenborough was knighted for a reason: he has opened up the natural world to us in ways we haven’t seen before. I still remember watching Blue Planet for the first time in the United Kingdom. All of my friends would make sure to be home to watch it every

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Sunday night. It was an unmissable TV event. And those films play out cinematically; Attenborough is a master, and, with his team, they are the originators of this tried and tested sensational filmmaking method. He speaks for the animals. But the Oscar-winning My Octopus Teacher decided to avoid this device and did so in a very remarkable way. The film was interview-led, yes it had incredible natural world cinematography, but what made it so powerful was its insight into our relationship with nature, brought up close and personal as we’ve never seen it before. This film, as described by the directors, is a love story, about a friendship between a human being and a sea creature, and our own relationship with the natural world. People, after all, are part of nature. We are part of the ecosystem and without any natural predators, we are damaging much of the natural world. The filmmakers chose not to hit us over the head with that message however, letting us instead fall in love with the story, much as the film’s two central characters (possibly) fell in love with each other. Obviously, we can’t talk on behalf of the octopus but a relationship did seem to form. Those of us who have dogs or cats know this is possible, but between a man and a mollusk? That’s a unique story. The overall message is that the natural world can heal us. The transformation was very real for the main character, Craig Foster. As filmmakers, we are often looking for these types of stories, where a character goes on a journey and learns something about themselves or is transformed in some way. Go back to the Greeks, and Aristotle; you’ll find that these stories have satisfied the readers (and now viewers) for many years. It’s a storytelling methodology that often leads to a satisfying ending and it was this story that co-directing team Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed made so successfully. Ehrlich has a background in environmental journalism, specializing in the field of marine science and conservation. Reed has made underwater films for the BBC and Discovery among others. A duo with experience well suited for this film. We know all filmmaking is hard and for Ehrlich this film took some serious training. Beyond the scenes filmed with cinematographer and friend Roger Horrocks, Craig Foster wanted Ehrlich to shoot everything on breath hold (i.e., with no oxygen tanks) and without wetsuits. When they started filming in the winter of 2017, the water was around 12 degrees Celsius. Ehrlich needed to train her body to adapt for long shoots in the freezing ocean. She also needed her breath hold to get as good as Foster’s, in order to capture him swimming in and out of frame. Much as the octopus has adapted to living without a shell, in a moment of true symbolism, so did Ehrlich have to adjust to not using oxygen tanks. Adapting to cold water thermogenics took months.

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Craig Foster and Director Pippa Ehrlich. Photo credit: Faine Loubser, Sea Change Project

FIGURE 7.2

Ehrlich met Craig Foster through a mutual friend but had been diving for years in a location near to where the film was based. Foster’s previous work focused on tracking animals in the Kalahari Desert and eventually Ehrlich asked Foster if he could teach her how to track creatures of the sea. After months of diving with him, Foster began telling Ehrlich his story, this story. She felt that this was the first time a wild marine animal had been documented to this extent and so much of the behavior that Foster captured with his own cinematography had never been filmed before. When Foster finally put his story on paper, it moved Ehrlich to tears. Foster’s process, his filming, his healing took about ten years. In the film he tells us about this burnout from work, maybe from life. He had to recover, get strong again, adapt to the cold, learn the animals’ behavior, etc. His general kelp forest archive footage (much of which he shares with Roger Horrocks) stretches back many years, but the actual octopus filming happened over just one single year. Ehrlich’s responsibilities on the film grew organically but she didn’t realize that she would be spending months watching the incredible footage that Foster had already filmed. Ehrlich and Foster filmed together only after the octopus’s death, mostly to get shots of Foster in the sea.

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Having the opportunity to ask Pippa Ehrlich about her journey into making her first film, that went on to win an Academy Award, feels like I’m getting the chance to step into this rarefied underwater world even if it’s just for a minute.

Interview Maxine Trump: So let’s start at the beginning and how you met Craig Foster and the origin story of the film. You were learning how to track octopus from Craig? Pippa Ehrlich: Yes, tracking only, just having that deep understanding of the natural world. I had all these ideas about nature in my head, about the relationship between people and nature. Then I met Craig and he was somehow able to articulate those ideas. That was really exciting for me, when something’s half formed in your mind and you find someone who can help you shape that into something meaningful. And then even better, the story arrives on your doorstep and it’s the perfect vehicle for exploring that vision. I knew he and I could make this film. I wouldn’t say we could make it easily but we work together very easily because we had a very similar vision. MT: They’re kind of miraculous moments in your life aren’t they? When those kinds of interactions happen, when you find this person that’s had the same questions and already worked them out. You went on a dive with him in early 2015, and didn’t see him again for about a year and a half. And then you approached him in late 2016. But there was no filmmaking involved at that point? PE: That happened over time. So, to be honest, the film had a mind of its own originally. I just thought I was going to come on and help, as Craig hadn’t made a film in a really long time. I was a lot more computer literate than him and he started teaching me to shoot underwater. And I think in the beginning we were co-directing. Craig’s used to co-directing and his approach to collaboration is incredibly healthy and empowering for everybody around him. And it’s really amazing to see. I hope that’s something that I carry forward into my projects because working with someone who makes you feel empowered, and really considers your ideas, it doesn’t just build your confidence, it means that you can deliver the best that you can for a project. So he directed films for a long time with his brother, he was used to that. MT: Craig Foster was a character in the film. What made him decide to not codirect with you?

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PE: Because he became the subject in a very powerful way. At that point he could no longer stand at the helm, directing all of the intricate details of the story. Someone else had to be framing things at that point. He sat in the edit with me often, even once the interview was in, but it was difficult for him. It’s very hard to watch yourself on camera, especially because a lot of what he speaks about is quite vulnerable. MT: Talk to us about the interview that is peppered throughout the film and codirecting with James Reed. PE: There’s a disadvantage of being so close to your one collaborator or with your subjects. Craig and I had worked together for about 18 months and I tried to do a couple of interviews. But by the time you’ve been diving with someone every day for six months you’re talking about all these big heady concepts all the time. The kind of answers he would give me in an interview were not accessible to a broad audience. And that was what was so powerful about bringing James on. MT: Because you and Craig would probably be talking in shorthand. PE: James was pretty much a stranger, he had one conversation with Craig on Skype and he came in with a completely fresh mind. Craig told him the story the first time and told it to him as someone who knew nothing. So that was how that co-directing relationship worked, plus the fact that James is much more experienced than I am. He had a slickness and an a esthetic that really helped lift the film from where it was before he came on board. Before it had all been narration. He did the interview. And then he and I worked in Bristol, UK, together for four months recutting the film with another editor called Dan Schwalm, reframing the film around the interview. We worked from November 2018 to February 2019, then James had to go back to his other projects. Having a more objective person to bounce things off with was incredibly useful. Craig and I finished the film in South Africa with Netflix over the course of 2019. MT: I totally hear you, I think it really depends on the project. And I agree actually, having that objectivity with somebody else and losing the subjectivity is super important. And I imagine the interview worked so much better than the narration sounded. We could see Craig and feel his emotions. PE: And not just that but I’m diving in a kelp forest every single day, so what’s mind-blowing to me is not the same as what’s mind-blowing to someone who is click-and-play on Netflix. Dan Schwalm, the editor, was incredible. As were both our Executive Producers, Ellen Windemuth (Off The Fence) and

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Sara Edelson at Netflix. And then Jinx Godfrey came on as a consultant further along the line, she is just a completely masterful storyteller. From a technical editing point of view I’ve never seen someone work like her (Jinx Godfrey was the editor on groundbreaking films like Project Nim, Man on Wire, Wisconsin Death Trip, etc.). Dan edited for about four months and I edited a lot of the film. I love editing but I don’t think I would do both again. MT: We’re talking about scene dynamics in this book and I can list some of the films I study to inspire my scene making for each of my different films. As a new way of making a natural history film were there any films you were using as references? Or particular scenes? I read about how much you love Whale Rider, were there any other films that helped with visual ideas or recreation, or other shots you were getting?

FIGURE 7.3

Craig Foster. Photo credit: Pippa Ehrlich

PE: About eight minutes in there’s a scene where Craig goes out and starts diving and getting to know the environment. He says, “You’re flying basically.” James and I talked about that as being the Avatar sequence because it reminded us of him putting on his avatar for the first time. He can walk now and he hasn’t been able to walk, metaphorically, for a long time. He starts rediscovering his way of moving around in the world. But that was more from a “feeling” than a “look” point of view. To be honest, I think we really just went with our guts in what we were trying to do,

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more than looking at other films. It was to really be true to the experiences that we were having underwater. We were trying to create scenes and feelings that would give people a glimpse into what it’s like to dive in a Kelp forest. And that was what guided us the whole way through. Other people talk about Tom and Jerry as the dynamics between the shark and octopus, which I don’t know if I agree with that. I think it’s a bit light, considering. MT: Yes, that doesn’t spring to mind. PE: We also talked about how the octopus becomes a transformer-like creature when she pulls the shells and stones onto her body. In the beginning we looked at references like Whale Rider and watched a lot of Craig’s old films because the indigenous knowledge side of things was very important for us. And then we had that incredible cinematographer Warren Smart, who did all of our topside stuff, which is the stuff in Craig’s house. And when he’s walking down to the beach and some of those strange scenes where the shadow falls across him in a dramatic way. We got to the point where we wanted to show the on-land world but it was very jolting to go from doc-style run-and-gun topside stuff to the beautiful cinematic fantasy world, underwater stuff. And somehow the way that Warren shoots, and I’ve never seen someone film like this, you feel like you’re underwater even when you’re on land. We didn’t recreate scenes so much, but we just filmed them in a very removed almost dreamlike way, which I’m sure some people hated. But it took a long time to get the feeling of the topside imagery right. MT: I love how the film shows this big South African guy who’s telling this intimate story about an animal that’s a modified snail. And it reminded me of another film, The Green Mile, it’s years old, and it’s about this very big incarcerated black man and he befriends a mouse. How did you get some of that sense of scale? Was that a plan? PE: So there was a drone above the water, and how do we get the sense of scale under water? It was all archive, the shots of Craig and the octopus, we were just lucky with what he had. I think that those shots had been grabbed either by Craig or filmed by Roger, they weren’t even thinking about making this film at that point. They were just grabbing what they could but they often talked about getting the sense of this giant underwater wilderness. And to do that, you need big forest, tiny human. And we waited almost a year for the right conditions to get the shots of him in the forest.

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FIGURE 7.4

Craig Foster and Roger Horrocks. Photo credit: Pippa Ehrlich

MT: Wow. You see some of these shots at 11.5 minutes and at nearly 16 minutes and in so many places: underneath the surface, moving between the kelp forest and the amazing drone shots. PE: And we swam out and we shot a lot that day, it was freezing at 10 degrees. We weren’t wearing wetsuits as Craig insisted and we shot for about 90 minutes. I think I could hardly walk by the time I got out of the ocean but we got a lot of really cool footage. The drone shots are a lot easier; you just need to make sure there’s no wind and that the tide is low. So you can see the forest underneath the water. I mean, showing the human being as vulnerable in a big wild space was a big part of what we were trying to do. And then we shot all the scenes in the wild sea as well. That was quite dangerous and difficult. What was so amazing about this film, which I think is unlike almost any other natural history film, is that we were shooting it in our backyards. And what that means is if there’s a shot you want, just sit like a spider and wait. When the conditions are right you go and you get that specific shot. MT: You were waiting a year to get the right conditions. PE: Yeah the super wide ones and tiny figure. You need 30 minutes of visibility. And that only happens on say, maybe ten days a year. But we lived there so it wasn’t that hard.

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MT: You’ve said people should start out with their first film in their backyard and I think that’s such good advice. This was your first film, with everything that comes with that steep learning curve, how and when did you train and learn the breath hold (diving without the use of breathing apparatus)? PE: I’ve been freediving since I was 21 years old. MT: And you had to do the training without wetsuits. Doing this work presumably built up your relationship with Craig, of him trusting you to make the film. PE: That only started with Craig in 2016. It was about six months into learning tracking that the film came up as a possibility. It all clicked for him just before he asked me to be involved. At that time he was working on a book, Underwater Wild, with a friend that actually introduced us. Through a conversation with the book editor he realized maybe that the octopus story was what his next film should be about … he had all the shots. MT: Was Roger filming him as a friend where Craig is in shot? PE: So Roger was mostly filming the octopus. There are not many scenes of Craig and the octopus, and some things he could self-film. Where it looks like the camera’s sitting on the floor and the shot where the octopus touches his hand, Craig self-filmed that. There are other shots that are more dynamic which Roger just grabbed what he could, even Craig’s son I think shot some of it. What we didn’t have was shots of Craig on his own in the kelp forest and these we filmed later.

FIGURE 7.5

Craig Foster. Photo credit: Tom Foster

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MT: At around 18 minutes into the film we see a text card “Day 26”. This is where the trust starts to build between the octopus and Craig, she seems to be curious about Craig, he puts out his hand and she touches him. But he can’t stay down under the water forever, he has to leave to breathe. He comes up for air and we have another wide drone shot. Then we enter another scene as we’re introduced to another theme in the story. The music drops out and he talks about when the octopus finally leaves her den, it gets really interesting for him. He tells us everything he is finding out about her. How she walks! How she disguises herself as a rock and kelp, we see all of the color mutations in beautiful footage. We hear that she is alone and has all these predators and we’re now introduced to her struggle, as she only has a year to live. Great end of scene and a huge motivation to want more. Now you may not want to answer this. I don’t want to ruin any of the spectacle or mystery. But when you joined the story, the octopus had already died. How do you get over some of those obstacles? How do you balance noticing when there’s some footage missing and deciding, okay, can I recreate this with another octopus? We know other natural history films will film at zoos, etc. to get these pick up shots. PE: We tried not to recreate because one, I’m not sure what the ethics of that are? And two, it’s difficult. How are you going to recreate when you don’t have a habituated octopus, an octopus that’s used to a human being around. That’s how he could get the shots that he got. Because you know, he’d won the animal’s trust. It’s not just any old octopus that you can record those kinds of scenes with. So we felt like if it’s generic octopus behavior—like there was that generic scene where we talked about all the different things that an octopus does—then it’s ethical to use a different animal. So if we needed a close-up of an octopus’s eye then we could film an octopus and get that shot. But when we’re talking about her story, particularly her story with him, it’s very hard to get those scenes. So we were lucky that we had what we did. I mean, Craig often says that he wishes I’d been with him in the year of the octopus, because there was so much that he didn’t film. MT: The placement of the eye closing in one of the scenes was just so perfect, about 30 minutes into the film. It’s an important scene where their relationship grows and we see it play out on camera so spectacularly. The beautiful shots when the octopus sits on his chest, he wonders what she’s getting out of the relationship as he is getting so much. You end the scene with him on land obsessing about her, saying he can’t wait to spend every day with her, she’s ignited his curiosity. But the last shot cuts back to her eye closing and he asks if she dreams too. I call this the early romance scene.

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You use the eye shot in a number of places, whether it was her or it was another octopus, it’s so powerful. Every film is hard, it comes with its own challenges, you were presented with hours and hours of Craig’s footage. What were you using as your process in creating scenes? PE: We started off with a massive concept, a much broader story. James actually describes it really nicely by talking about how in any documentary you start off with a large scaffolding structure. This holds the main narrative but as that narrative gets stronger, and stronger the scaffolding starts to fall away. The hardest thing was setting Craig up and setting the octopus up. I think we recut the beginning of the film 30 times. And it got longer and shorter and broader. But once we started cutting the life of the octopus, and his observations of her, the story just started to tell itself. MT: I’m totally going to use that whole scaffolding line in my next documentary class. I often talk about finding themes in our work when thinking of scenes, especially at the early stage of the edit when you have this huge string-out. PE: And sometimes you just have to cut the scene. And even if you never use it, the thought that went into it can be helpful. That’s the other interesting thing I noticed when making this film, there were some quite weird, almost esoteric scenes that we cut that never made it. But somehow the feeling of them came through, at least to certain viewers, and that’s when I started to feel like film is really an alchemical process. You’re not just placing images and sound on a timeline, you’re putting something else in and it comes to life in ways that are hard to explain. MT: There was definitely magic in your film, the mystical sensibility, using the avatar elements, lent itself so beautifully to the tone of this astonishing relationship. I love all of the symbolism. This is a really good segue to the next question because Craig decides not to give the octopus a name. Yet I watched Craig talk in an interview saying that he dreamt about the octopus and would sometimes feel like an octopus. By not giving it a name, was that to keep a distance? Do you think there was sort of some anthropological distance-keeping that was helpful? PE: Absolutely, even calling her a teacher is anthropomorphizing to a degree. We actually got a wilderness psychologist to come in and look at some of our cuts. He guided more of those choices. MT: You made us feel that the relationship was so poignant for Craig and it could have gone even further regarding mental health issues, which is interesting,

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that balance. And I love how we are watching, essentially a character-led film, a relationship that helps heal Craig. He is somewhat transformed by the end of this journey. There is a lot out there that we can read about the hero’s journey, and how to emulate those story structures. The protagonist here really is the octopus and she has to die in the end. So what is a favorite scene for you? PE: The playing with the fish. When you’re cutting your film some scenes just don’t work and you can’t get them right so you put them to one side. You wait until something happens that helps you solve that problem. And then other scenes you cut you feel they’re pretty much working. It’s not quite magic yet but it’s pretty much there. And then you’ll cut a sequence and it’ll just be like phhhrrr, and everyone cries when they watch it. You thank God for that feeling and that discovered language. And you go back to the other scenes and you start trying to apply the same language and that, I think, is how your style lives. That was how it was with the fish-playing scene, it was the first time where we felt like, this is golden. The music worked, the imagery worked, the tone worked. And that was even in the early cuts. MT: We already had the big fight with the shark in the very tense scene before this playful scene (and she won that fight)—we’re at TC 01:08:00: at the beginning of this scene Craig reminds us in voice over that he’s been around for 80% of her short life, a good hint of what’s to come. It was such a great shift in tone. We’re near the climax and it’s such a bright hopeful moment, as Craig states in VO: a highly anti-social animal is playing with fish. Then she rushes over to Craig and grabs hold of him and we see her lying on his chest again and him stroking her and the very important line “that was the last time we had physical contact.” And you come back to a headshot of Craig in silence, just looking at the camera in his interview setup. Such a great last shot. Then you begin the next scene with a wide shot of the water and thunder clouds and you have this huge sense of foreboding, like, what is going to happen now? Great storytelling, the undulations of emotion, the hills and troughs, the stakes and the tension. And perfect placement, because I talk a lot about emotional roller coasters in scene analysis. And you place it at the perfect time, before you know what’s coming next, so you have a sense of dread. PE: That is when it happened in real life as well. I saw an early cut that Craig had made of the story, a small short cut. And the line was “I never saw this behavior again,” and then I was like, Oh my god, this is the big scene … it wasn’t just good storytelling.

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MT: That line is literal, it makes you think, it isn’t telling you but making you guess why. That is powerful writing, even with having just felt joy, that line suggests a feeling of unease. Those are great story beats and that’s from just a teasing line of dialogue. The audience is so invested in your story and then you’re making them guess what happens next. PE: As a first-time filmmaker, this project, it was like a gift from the universe. I’m not sure what I’m going to do next. MT: It is a gift from the universe, of course, but you put yourself in the right place to be able to receive it. You’ve built up all of this knowledge about marine life and you went out with Craig and trained for three months in frigid water. So in the film we’re caring so much about the octopus by now that we need you to telegraph a warning. Otherwise the shock might be too huge for us not to feel completely devastated by her loss. I’m going to mention a favorite scene of mine because you mentioned earlier that you cut the open about 30 times. I love the pajama sharks and the cave and the tension there. And I love the bonding scene with the octopus riding on Craig’s hand and even the torch/flashlight/crime scene, I love all of these moments. But I think the open is well done, it’s so hard to go straight into the backstory without losing the audience as you haven’t made them fall in love with the characters yet. You give away the shots of holding the octopus tentacle, the reaching out to Craig’s hand, right in that open, at the start of the film. That’s a big moment. PE: It’s quite an unusual way to open a feature. There was actually someone at Off The Fence (production company) called Andrew Zikking, and something in his TV experience made him suggest this open. It was wise because I don’t think people would have watched the whole way through the backstory otherwise. MT: You gave the promise to the audience that something special is coming. You showed it right up front, that’s brave. PE: We had to. MT: And I’ve got to mention your use of voice-over as well, because in the scene with the shark at TC 01:15:00, her dying scene, it feels like you drop out a line from Craig. You can feel the crafting of the placement of interview. PE: A lot of work went into getting that right. James was very experienced and we worked really hard to get it right. MT: That one interview with James and Craig, was it done over a number of days?

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PE: Three days, and it was grueling, but it was all one period. One t-shirt. And the same lighting setup, etc. MT: My last question is about the shark scene and the ethical question: do you get involved or don’t you get involved? Do you stop action that is happening in front of your eyes? You’ve talked about how that’s elicited the most emotional responses from your audience. Do you think that was the climax of the film? Or do you think the climax of the film was when the octopus actually did die? How did you build and decide what the climax was? PE: I think the climax was when she onboarded the shark (TC 01:05:00), when she’s on the shark’s back. And when I saw that footage in the rushes before I even said yes to the project, I think I knew from the very first time I saw that scene that would be it. What was the line that was dropped out that you were mentioning? MT: So the climax was the shark fight. Regarding the script, it’s the next shark scene after the one you just mentioned, when the shark had started eating her, the second to last scene of the film, you feel she’s finally dying. She’s kind of given her body over. And he doesn’t reiterate that. Craig just leads into that saying Craig VO: and then this happened … The next day a big shark came (Shots of shark with octopus in its mouth) and just took her away. And he doesn’t say she’s eaten by the shark. He just comes back with the next line. Like you see it, there’s no reason for him to have to say it, and it felt more powerful because he didn’t. It made us project ourselves into the film. I don’t know whether anyone else noticed. But I think subliminally it felt he couldn’t say the words. PE: You don’t have to say anything, because you can see she’s being swam off into the misty forest inside the jaws of her arch-nemesis. But she was already dead then. MT: She didn’t actually die then. PE: When she laid her eggs she stopped engaging with Craig, which was months before. No, she died already, she looked very white by that point. And they go completely senile as well actually. A friend of mine sent me a message once to say that an octopus was dying. So we went to watch this animal die and the octopus was so confused and climbed out of the water

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and was lying in a very shallow rock pool. I probably sat there for two hours and she just drifted off like a human would die, just breathing very, very slowly and died. How many people have the opportunity to go and watch that? I felt like it was something that it was important for me to understand. As a filmmaker it’s weird how it all worked out. I’ve never seen an octopus up that close. MT: Our films add to our lives in so many different ways, in many unhealthy ways because we drive ourselves to near lunacy almost, in the making of a film. But then it adds so much to our life experience. What we learn and the opportunities of going to see something like that which you probably would never do otherwise. PE: I would never do it. Yeah, well, maybe I would in some sense. But yeah, it’s certainly just funny how it all works out. So one thing that’s very important to mention is the collaboration. We talked about how this film was made by a hive mind. And I think I’ve mentioned many of the key people. But I think what I learned as a director, particularly from watching Craig, is that really your job is to bring out other people’s magic. And to give them the right kind of guidance, that they can do it but without being too prescriptive as to how they should do it. And we were just really lucky that everybody on this team put their whole hearts into it and never worried about how much they would be paid, because it really wasn’t very much. They just poured their talent, their love and their magic into the film at every process. That was from the composer to our incredible EPs, colorist, and sound engineer. And it’s kind of a dream when everyone comes on board with that kind of attitude. MT: Then it’s everybody’s work as well isn’t it? PE: Exactly. And it has been like that. And I don’t think there’s ever been a film in history where the colorist did 30% of the Oscar interviews in South Africa, because I was in LA. That was, Kyle, the colorist. It was really wonderful to put other people on the stage a bit. The editor had done a huge amount of work, the DPs done a huge amount of work, the producers killing themselves every step of the way. And the director gets to be the star. And it’s important to remember that I’m so grateful to everybody who worked on this project. And our production manager, they do some really hard technical work, your whole project would fall flat without them. MT: Congratulations on getting the funding to be able to bring on such a great team. I know you said some of them were working for a little amount of money to begin with.

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So one last note in the very last scene, Craig talks about his child having spent all this time with nature, learning the most important lesson of gentleness, and his son finds a tiny little octopus which is a rare thing to find. It feels like maybe symbolically both of their young came together. And Craig talks about his worries and problems dissolving when spending time in nature. It’s a great reminder of nature’s healing effects and why natural history films are so important. You made us fall in love with a threatened world that is hard to access for us humans but so important for others in the ecosystem. There was no obvious conservation message that you were preaching to us, just a simple one, that we can’t lose a majestic environment that gives us so much. Thank you for that.

8 COMPETITION GENRE—KNOCK DOWN THE HOUSE

Style: Observational, interview-led, and character-led Genre: Competition drama Interview: Director Rachel Lears, film Knock Down the House

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Director Rachel Lears. Photo courtesy: Netflix

The film Knock Down the House is a competition drama. Yes it’s also a political drama but it is incredibly focused on the point of view of its four main characters as they campaign to win a seat in congress. The four characters Rachel Lears DOI: 10.4324/9781003254768-8

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follows overcome struggles, obstacles, and compete against those that they’re running against, often politicians that have been in power for a long time. Competition dramas have a wonderful inbuilt story structure and this makes it a common and popular documentary genre. Although Knock Down the House is more unusual in structure as the characters we follow are all running to unseat other politicians rather than competing against each other, it still follows that wonderful story arch. In the last few years two competition documentary films, Knock Down the House and Boys State (2020), secured some of the biggest distribution deals ever seen for a documentary at Sundance. Not to say everyone should rush out and make competition films, but if you have a good story with great characters it’s a film structure that works well. Exploring this genre of documentary could inspire other filmmakers in generating their own ideas, especially when we look at how Lears came to tell this story. Rachel Lears started to make the film initially from her curiosity about a new approach to political campaigning even though characters didn’t yet exist. We discuss how she would plan her shoots with an intention for a scene using single and occasionally multi-camera shooting, and how to play with chronology while still working within journalistic constraints. We discuss the drawbacks of her experience mainly shooting as a one-person band, but also the benefits that style of shooting can provide to make such a successful film that captured a moment of political history. Other competition films: Senna, Murderball, Kings of Pastry, Tickled, Racing Dreams.

Introduction What I love about Rachel Lear’s origin story for her film Knock Down the House is that her journey started with her interest in two new political organizations: Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats. She’d read about them, thought they sounded really exciting, and approached them to make a film. You might think this is nothing new for a documentary maker but many emerging filmmakers may not realize that films can begin with such a small action. A great way to find a story is by simply approaching organizations you’re interested in. If you have a passion for a story, those organizations with boots on the ground will be way ahead of you. They might have knowledge of and access to the best characters, not to mention great stories. These organizations often already have a membership base that could potentially be your film’s built-in audience too, a win–win for us filmmakers. And let’s not ignore all the support they can give you behind the scenes during the long complex journey of making a film. But how do you avoid the film becoming just a propaganda piece for those organizations and that’s what we’ll aim to also discuss.

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Knock Down the House is an incredibly effective film about the political process of campaigning. Lears began working with these organizations early on before they’d even recruited new potential democratic candidates. She was there with her camera before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), or any of the other characters, had a relationship with these organizations. These organizations felt a real need for change and their purpose was to re-ignite democratic voters by bringing in new candidates to the political process. There are built-in stakes to this story as these candidate’s campaigns were often run on mom-and-pop fundraising initiatives, they didn’t accept corporate funds, so there was a real personal risk. And although primarily a political story, running for an election with these noble aspirations has not only the stakes of a competition but is interwoven with personal stories that make you care about the outcome. There can only be one winner in every district where these candidates are running. The director generated dramatic tension because the audience is now invested in whether her character prevails. I know Lears wanted to make sure the candidates she followed would be people that would be great to watch, no matter what happened with the elections, win or lose. The most important story ingredient was to express that it’s always worth trying to effect change, no matter what the final result. It’s this human endeavor that has a very universal storyline, persisting against all the odds. The audience will keep watching because they want to know what drives characters to continue on their journey. Lears made sure to make us care by providing scenes of effective and emotional backstories. The central concept of the film was always going to be about outsiders challenging established political machines. Lears herself believed that through that process the film could explore how power works in the United States, and what it takes to challenge it. She knew that even if all the candidates lost, the film could still effectively explore those themes. Each one of her characters was active on the ground, in scenes motivating people and voters to participate in their districts. Working hard to activate people who have felt left out of the political process, young people who’ve never felt engaged before. All this action is a great opportunity to capture compelling scenes. As AOC said throughout her campaign, “The organizing that’s happening in the community as a result of the campaign, that has a permanent outcome, no matter what happens with the election night itself.” Even with this strong political message, we as filmmakers need to remember we’re also making entertainment. As filmmakers, we constantly struggle with the light and dark of our stories. It’s not appropriate for all stories to have a light at the end of the tunnel—sometimes the conclusion is complex and difficult, no matter how much hope is contained in the story. But we do try to capture small windows of light. It would be a problem if the commercial film world only embraces documentaries that allow audiences to tell themselves everything is ok, because the characters in the film triumphed in the end. This would rule out much of our work.

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Many of our films are questioning the way things simply are, which many people may not even notice is a problem and by revealing the issue can make opportunity for real change. And this is where this film triumphs; it’s an engaging real-life drama while also having an important message. Lears talks about there being real hope in the fact these women put so much effort into trying. If you haven’t seen the film I can tell you she totally succeeds in this. But the film would not work as a story if not for the losses and what they represent. They still persisted, important to remember in this period of American politics and threatened democracies around the world.

Interview Maxine Trump: What I love about your origin story with this film is its potential to enthuse emerging filmmakers because you start from your passion first, so can you tell us just a little bit about the casting? Did you feel pressure because you were working with the organizations, to then pick the candidates that they wanted you to follow? Rachel Lears: I reached out to the organizers who were recruiting candidates to make a documentary about that process. There was no other way I could have done it because I was interested in the concept of finding ordinary people who had really amazing records in their communities, and giving them the skills they would need to run for office. They hadn’t actually recruited the candidates yet so what that transformation would look like could be fascinating. An ordinary person running for office and challenging political machines all over the country. These people from different backgrounds realized that they had similar struggles and similar goals and that they could band together to advance as a strong unit. Running as a unified slate with people in other areas, and finding common ground across those barriers of geography. That was exciting to me. That was the original concept for the film and I was very clear about my editorial control and independence, this was not going to be a promotion for the organizations. I showed them my previous work, The Hand That Feeds, that was about undocumented immigrants forming an independent union at a bagel shop. That showed the organizations that I was able to be sensitive around such topics. There were a lot of trust-building conversations that happened around that time with the people who didn’t end up having major roles in the film but were the gatekeepers to the candidates. And that was it. Then they started contacting me with candidates. I started doing phone interviews and went to their first mini-summit . That was my first real shoot and you see it in the film. It happened in Kentucky, it’s where Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez finalized her decision to run, so I had interviewed everybody there in person.

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After that, we had to clarify the separation more between the film and the organizers. I was the only media that had been there and they were really interested in getting access to that footage for promotional purposes. As a filmmaking team we realized we might have done something like that in the past but we had to do it differently this time because this can raise a lot of issues. When you’re working with political campaigns, you run into a lot of legal issues that you have to be very careful about. We had a fiscal sponsor as we were getting grants through the 501(c)3 non profit/charity designation. Not only was there a prohibition by our funders of using anything produced for the film to benefit a specific campaign, it would have essentially constituted election fraud or a campaign finance violation on their part: funneling money through a 501(c)3 and then doing something promotional for the campaign. I was very clear about that editorial distinction, and I think it certainly enabled us to get funding, and it enabled us to be in a position to work with a major distributor. Not all, but many distributors, including Netflix, really don’t want a perception that a film is a partisan political tool. So everything with our impact campaign was governed by the same kind of 501(c)3 guidelines even though Netflix is obviously not non-profit. Having had that in place from the beginning enabled us to line everything up, every step of the way. MT: Having to think about these editorial relationships is important. I think sometimes the quick response for some emerging filmmakers is, “oh yes, I can give you footage.” Sometimes it might be appropriate but when and why and how, are important things to consider. You also mention that these women who were politically campaigning felt similar to how you feel as a documentary maker, having to fundraise. You worked alongside a lot of your characters while they campaigned, have you found it hard to disentangle yourself from some of those relationships? I get asked this a lot by filmmakers. Maybe they’re wanting you to still cover some of their campaigning for the future? RL: There’s something that happens a lot and I’ve noticed this since my earliest films: when you’re making a film about someone, you ask them a lot of questions, but they don’t ask you as many questions as you ask them. It’s not a normal social dynamic and sometimes when the film is over it can shift into more of a friendly relationship or, now we’ll just be colleagues or now we’ll do events together. A number of different people in different films have either said that the experience felt like therapy to them or they behaved in ways that suggested they did. With my two main films there have been events where we can invite folks to screenings so those involved in the film can represent themselves. For Knock Down the House there was a lot of publicity touring and Cori Bush and

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Amy Vilela in particular were available for that. It’s an involvement when you’re working with people who agreed to do the film because they wanted their story to be told. Being able to give them those opportunities for public engagement is great. MT: That’s when the wonderful outreach campaign of a film can dovetail really nicely with screenings and have that beautiful symbiotic relationship. So you didn’t necessarily feel a pressure from the organizations … RL: No, I didn’t feel any pressure at all. MT: … to include other characters. RL: Oh no! I mean sometimes I would ask them, “Who do you think has the best chance of winning?” And sometimes they were completely off. So I ended up choosing who I would follow based on who I thought would be the most compelling to watch win or lose, because we knew that it was very likely that all four of them would lose. So loss was always going to be part of the story. It was certainly amazing that we got to include this historic victory in the film. Obviously, it wouldn’t be what it is without that. But we were very driven by each of them and their very personal motivations of direct experience of injustice. I think there are a lot of really amazing people who run for office because they have seen things in their community, maybe a social worker who has seen things, that they really want to fix. That’s fantastic. Those people should run as well but I was really looking for people who were drawing from their direct personal experience and what had motivated them to take this unusual step of challenging an incumbent as a political outsider. MT: I really thought the scene where we hear from Paula Jean Swearengin was really effective. She is giving a speech on stage about how she wants to run for office in West Virginia. Then we cut to her home town (it’s 15 minutes into the film). We see establishing shots of Coal City, she drives and points at homes of people who had cancer due to toxins from industry, and then she’s at the empty mine site. She says a great line “if another country came in and blew up our mountains and poisoned our water we’d be at war, but industry can,” and we see a great text card about Senator Manchin and coal companies. This was a very effective scene emotionally as she talks about her dad dying at an early age because of his work in the mines and she’s from a long line of coal workers. I was wondering, it must be so hard to decide the length of the film. That’s a constant negotiation, tell me a little bit about that whole process.

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Paula Jean Swearengin politically campaigning and director Rachel Lears. Photo credit: Robin Blotnick

FIGURE 8.2

RL: I think we were really targeting 85 minutes and I think we wound up at 86, so it was definitely deliberate to not be over long. With four characters there are many challenges. So the way we decided to approach it was as kind of a collective protagonist. The protagonism shifts from one person to another as you move through the story and then it kind of splits at the end and you have three losses and one victory. But, for example, there are many things that we filmed with all of them or with more than one of them: fundraising, knocking on doors, talking about body image, and various things that they all had in common. But instead of having sequential scenes of “now they’re all going to talk about how they get underestimated” and, you know, “their bodies get criticized on the internet,” we chose to pick the one person that best represents that scene for that idea. And use it so each one of them is going to present things that are more or less universal. So the character is very specifically talking about her own experience but that sheds light on what the others might be experiencing as well. Another factor of course was the outsized historical significance of AOC’s victory at the time we were editing the film. Now what a lot of people don’t know is, it wasn’t the reason she has more screen time in the film, it wasn’t a business decision, it wasn’t just because she got famous and the others didn’t. Although Cori Bush is famous now and Paula Jean won her primary too. So the

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fact was we had more footage with Alexandria from the beginning because she was in New York and so were we, and when we didn’t have any money we could still pop over and I could shoot something with her.

FIGURE 8.3

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and director. Photo credit: Daniel Bonthius

So the other three stories were covered in a very deliberate way. The thinking was I need one shoot a few months before the election where I get to know you a little bit, and then we do two weeks before the primary and like a couple days after. That was all we could fund. It was all we could do. Part of the casting process was picking primary dates on different days because we knew we weren’t going to be able to send crews all around the country. It was just me filming primarily and my husband was traveling with me, he’s the editor of the film. We were taking our little kid with us, it was nuts. MT: That’s great to know how the schedule worked and that that had an effect on the casting and screen time of the candidates too. RL: There was that schedule but then when we got to the editing room we realized a lot of different things and Robin (my husband) was the only editor who was actually cutting. But we had David Teague as a consulting editor and one of the first pieces of advice he gave was to map out the four stories separately. He actually didn’t believe that we were going to be able to make it work with all four of them. There was a lot of pressure from people in the

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film industry—although he wasn’t pressuring us—from distributor types, more commercial types were pressuring us to make it all about Alexandria because they didn’t know how interesting the others were. They didn’t know how cinematic those losses were but we never considered cutting the other three characters because we knew that they brought so much to the story. Because of the way we intercut the protagonism, the dark night of the soul moment in the film is the loss and AOC’s story wouldn’t have that. Her arc, if it had just been her, would be: starts out on an uphill battle, keeps going, it’s pretty hard, it’s pretty hard, oh my gosh, it’s kind of moving, oh my gosh okay here we go, we did it! It was much more interesting when you have the ups and downs and also it raises the stakes, to know that these people running with her, alongside her, have lost, and I think it did personally raise the stakes for her too, knowing that the others had lost just weeks before. So there was a lot of experimentation in the actual specifics of what worked and what didn’t with the edit. What we realized, that really helped bring it into focus, was that it didn’t have to be symmetrical. Realizing that it didn’t have to be a listing of: introduce all four, then go back to that one, then go back to that one. Just realizing that it was going to be a more intuitive sense: What does the film need at this point? Which character can give us that beat and what do the characters bring to the film and where do those moments belong in the arc of a feature? MT: I love that you bring this up because I talk a lot about who’s the best character to emulate a certain beat. And also to avoid repetition because you’re having the different characters playing certain roles at those specific times. Talking as a filmmaker, none of this is easy, but when you’re making a competition film you’re hoping one of your characters rises and one may not, and there’s a safety in having more characters. RL: A lot of people ask if we were following 30 people and then just chose the best. Not at all, we did not have a budget for that. And so we chose those four knowing that they were going to be the concept of the film, which was how those stories illuminated one another and is more than the sum of the parts. MT: Congratulations on that great choice of characters, because you do hear so often people following more characters and then drilling down. But you’d have had to have other crews working in other locations. So I’m going to talk about one of my favorite scenes. Action scenes are always the most cinematic. We see a radio show with AOC where she talks about how Congressman Crowley lives in Virginia not in the Bronx, we’re about 30 minutes in to the film. We then move to a church stage where we show a councilwoman sitting in for Crowley who isn’t in attendance at the town hall event. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is there and that’s when I fall in love with her. You feel her distaste that the congressman isn’t there for her

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local district and you just feel that she’s really in it now, she’s in the fight. So could you name one or two of your favorite scenes? RL: That was going to be one of them, I love that scene and it’s funny because I didn’t realize when I filmed it that it would end up being one of the best scenes in the film, and I didn’t even realize when we first edited it that it would be that great. It was part of our very early rough cut. The first time we showed anybody anything we were staying with my husband’s parents in Maine and just getting a little bit of editing done. And we had like an hourlong string-out of scenes and that scene really just worked. We showed it to his parents and they really loved it and I was like, oh wow yeah people are really connecting to it, people are laughing. It wasn’t funny at the time and I mean that poor woman who was sent to be in on stage to represent Crowley, it was really a terrible thing that she was put in that position. MT: I often tell people showing cuts to family and friends can be good test screenings. RL: I often get really distracted in the first cuts with my own cinematography. How I was trying to get one thing, and I had an issue with a mircophone or whatever, and it takes me a minute to realize, wow, there’s a lot more here. That even though I might have intended something slightly different in the way I shot it, it did come through. I think the community rose up after that debate. You can feel the lack of representation and the desire to be able to connect with their elected official, and she’s not elected yet but you can just feel that they want to talk to someone. They’re so pissed that he’s not there, and that actually happened five days before the election in the film, it’s set earlier in the edit of the film however. I mean, of course, we played around a lot with chronology as many do but we had to keep beginnings, middles, and ends pretty solid. MT: That’s even worse knowing he wasn’t there just five days before the election. And with that move of chronology you didn’t alter any cause and effect. RL: No. MT: That’s the thing we have to worry about. RL: At the second debate when you hear the moderator mention that Crowley didn’t show up at a Bronx debate, you remember that that happened earlier in the film. But in fact, in real life, it had happened four days before, so it just wouldn’t have worked to have the debates right next to one another. So I ended up being very happy with how that scene turned out and what people are able to grasp from it. I think it really helps convey the stakes. MT: It’s the beautiful weaving that you and Robin did with the edit. I really believe the editing is the second chance for us doc makers to direct. The

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pacing and the placement, you’re writing your film in the edit essentially. That’s the one big difference between fiction and non-fiction. The last scene of the film is also amazing, but my other favorite scene feels like AOC’s transformation. We’re about 47.5 minutes into the film, we’ve just seen an establishing shot of possibly her home, a block of apartments and then we’re inside where Alexandria is talking about her leaflets, and you start feeling her growing into her position. Feeling those moments of transformation in a character’s development is so satisfying in story structure and for an audience. RL: One of my favorite scenes because I set it up and I was very proud of myself, is the very last scene of the film. I heard she was going to DC. I was following her to media appearances that week after the primary. I went through all the rigmarole to get permission to shoot backstage at NBC and Meet the Press. And I told her and her team I just need half an hour with her to go to the Capitol between Meet the Press and her train back home. I just want to go see what happens. It ended up being that scene and it was noon and 96 degrees in Washington, DC.

FIGURE 8.4

Director and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Photo credit: Rachel Lears

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MT: The light must have been hellish. RL: It was horrible but nobody was there, it was kind of amazing. Someone asked me once how did you get the Capitol to be empty, well because it was 100 degrees in July. I think there’s a misconception, when you’re just starting to learn documentary making that you can’t interfere at all with the character otherwise you’re messing with reality. I don’t even think it’s a gray area; I think it’s just documentary filmmaking. I mean people have different places where they draw those lines. I personally feel completely comfortable asking someone to go into a situation and see what happens. I mean if it’s a situation that is not completely out of character for them to be there. MT: I totally agree and I teach the same way, many times we have intentions with scenes. You just talked about covering the town hall meeting where Crowley doesn’t show up and you had an intention for that scene and it sort of morphed a little bit. There’s a weird sort of control and then flexibility that is constantly morphing in what we do. RL: Absolutely. MT: … you didn’t capture the scene in quite the way you wanted but look at how it turned out anyway. RL: Yeah exactly, I was really preoccupied with how I hadn’t captured good enough sound—because we were still putting the microphones on—I missed AOC being really pissed off that Crowley didn’t show up, but that didn’t matter. I mean it just was totally unnecessary, what really mattered was the performance and the community’s reaction. MT: And you got it by the context anyway. Actually, I think it was better. RL: Exactly, you want to show not tell right. MT: So shooting-ratio-wise, how many events did you cover that didn’t make it in the film?” RL: When you’re following political campaigns it’s very tempting to shoot a lot of public appearances and that’s often what the campaign wants you to do. A few of those are going to make it into the film depending on what’s happening. But it’s so much more about what’s going on behind the scenes for me. I think when you’re working with public figures there is often a tendency for them to mentally put you in the same bucket as press and I have to tell them, “You have to let me into places that you don’t let the

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other press, otherwise it’s not going to work.” Sometimes all you need is press access, like for the debates, and I made documentary scenes out of that. But in other cases, you have to more specifically negotiate to have better access. MT: We know we’ve developed as filmmakers when we negotiate those relationships very well to get what we need when we need them. RL: So you’re asking about what ends up on the cutting room floor? We had a very interesting series of discussions, or just a dilemma, about how much emotion and how much crying to keep in. Our consulting editor David Teague had a really interesting piece of advice, which he said came from Kate Winslet, who says she refuses to cry more than once in a film because it loses its power. So we were very careful, we had a lot more tears in our hours of footage, but it’s often more powerful to see someone holding back tears than to see them breaking down. If you’re going to show someone actually crying, it has to be treated with such care. You have to contextualize it, really work on how you set it up, so that the audience can empathize and not feel uncomfortable. Because if they feel uncomfortable, or they’re in a space that they’re not supposed to be in, or the person is overreacting somehow, it can cause any number of adverse reactions for the audience. I think one of the things I’ve learned over the years as a filmmaker is, if someone cries in the interview, more likely than not it’s ‘not’ going to end up in the film. In the scene of Amy Vilela’s loss—which was the most devastating scene I filmed for so many reasons—she was reliving her grief of her daughter’s loss through the loss of her election. The last shot of that scene is me stepping back because I wanted to give her physical space. I knew I didn’t have to be up in her face at that moment, it just was not necessary. So I think that helps, and you know, we cut that scene to not go overboard because we wanted the viewers to empathize but not to feel uncomfortable. MT: I love that you’ve brought up crying because so many people think that the interviewer has got a great interview if they’ve made their character cry. RL: Please don’t, if they cry on their own that’s fine but make them feel comfortable. MT: I think our audiences are so sophisticated that they know when the emotions have been manipulated. RL: I think it really does highlight the difference between reality TV, or unscripted TV, and documentary. Because the cliche of reality TV is that

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they’re not only provoking confrontations, conflict, and emotions but they’re also going to use every manipulation. There’s a lot of red herrings, like this conflict doesn’t really go anywhere but they build it up for three episodes, every tiny little conflict. That’s not what real documentaries do. I mean they shouldn’t, it doesn’t work that way. Conflict and drama and emotions are great, if you can capture them, and I certainly try to do that in my films, but not every conflict, drama, and emotion ends up in the film. When I try to put myself in situations where I think there might be strong emotions, sometimes people don’t want me there. I am not gonna push unless I really really think I need that particular drama. I’m very conscious of that in my work now. There are moments, in the life of a film, where you have the opportunity to really convince people, like, “I know you’re a little uncomfortable with this but I’m going to be respectful, and I think it’s really important for the film.” So there are moments where I might have that conversation. But I want to be very very sure that that’s an important scene that’s not likely to end up on the cutting room floor because then you just blow your trust. MT: Documentaries are these beautiful undulations of emotion, hope as well as struggle, or resolution or transformation. Yes conflict is a great story beat in a scene and we look for those moments as filmmakers but it has to be in service of the story, in reality shows we can tell it’s just shoehorned in. So we look for all of the emotions. That’s an important note for emerging filmmakers to consider. So back to a favorite scene, at TC 01:00:09 there is a great scene of tension, AOC gives herself a pep talk before going on a TV debate with Crowley. She’s saying “I’m brave enough … he’s going to tell me I’m young and small.” Then we see the debate, and afterwards you end the scene with this beautiful moment of Alexandria in the car just sighing. RL: After the televised debate. MT: I could imagine you could have shot more, you could have interviewed her. RL: That sigh didn’t happen after the debate, that was the day after the election. It was a totally different time, which was pure magic of cinema. MT: To make that work you bolted those different shots together from different locations of shoots, but beautiful because that’s all you need: a moment, a sigh. And I’m so pleased you didn’t include an interview with her about how she felt at the time. RL: Yeah I mean, I did that, I did an interview with her afterwards about how she felt because you kind of have to. But that wasn’t what the scene needed.

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It just needed something more subtle, so we searched back through the footage for something that might work. It’s very helpful working with someone whose hair doesn’t change, who wears the same three dresses for every public appearance. MT: In the scene when Alexandria wins you shoot with two cameras, are there many times you shoot with two cameras because I know often you shoot alone? RL: Yes, that was one of the only times; we did also shoot Amy’s election night with two cameras. We had two additional camerapeople, one in New York and one in Las Vegas because those two primaries were only two weeks apart and there was a little bit of overlap. I had to be in Las Vegas and things were happening in New York, etc. So we did have those folks on the ground. In Las Vegas it was Hermon Farahi and David Sampliner in New York. But then, for that one scene with Alexandria it was truly indispensable. It was amazing and I have to say we planned it well but it worked out even better than we planned it. We needed David in the bar, whereas I would be in the car with Alexandria coming to the bar. Of course I had no idea that the results would be rolling in as we rolled up. I don’t think I told David to be standing right by the door when I walked in. We were instinctively very attuned to one another and getting different shots. MT: It’s like the magic triangle: Luck, talent, and tenacity. RL: There was definitely luck involved, but David and I have a lot of experience shooting vérité, so we had those instincts. And we were looking with one eye out for the other person to make sure we weren’t just shooting the same thing, getting different angles on the action. That scene is edited almost in real time, so it was great to be able to just put it together. And it was such an incredible moment emotionally for the film, it also happens to be historic. It’s also this different angle on a moment that went viral, which is always fun. It was really one of those flow experiences, just out of body, and just make sure you’re rolling. MT: How beautiful it is when you come back to the edit and, as you say, the shots kind of cut themselves. What are some of the drawbacks, do you think, of being a single shooter/director? It’s a lot of work. RL: I just did a 14-hour shoot completely by myself on Friday and it’s really exhausting. I realized I’m doing at least three jobs, director, producer, cinematographer. I do have another producer but when I’m on the ground I end up doing a lot of the production work as well. And then of

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course you’re carrying your own bags and ordering your own lunch, driving your own car and sound. If it wasn’t for COVID I would at least have a PA at this point. If it’s just going to be me hanging out with someone in their apartment it’s really fine to have one lavalier on them and a shotgun on the camera, I really don’t need another sound person for that. Not to disparage the work that sound people do. MT: If it’s also vérité. RL: If there’s even one other person in the room to capture, it can be very helpful to have another sound person because then you have either two lavaliers or you have a boom. So the drawbacks, I think the first one is sound. I see a lot of people shooting social media videos for organizations with two or three cameras because apparently they didn’t learn to shoot coverage. So I just pity the poor editor who has to deal with that. I’ve dealt with situations where there are a couple of different cameras that are along for the ride with the subjects. And I almost feel like, can we sit down and can I give you a little course in how to shoot for coverage so you only need one camera. MT: … and then we can get someone out of the car seat so you have even more room for coverage. RL: There doesn’t have to be four of us there, it could just be two. I do think shooting with two cameras is a little overrated, I think you really only need it, if you have something happening in real time that you know you’re going to need two angles. I think for the most part you’re going to be condensing and you can get what you need with one camera. If you can’t physically move in the space then you might need two cameras in order to get two different angles, for performance for example, where you have to be on tripods and you can’t move to get coverage for some reason. Certainly, I love having a producer around when it’s a complicated producing situation, in terms of permissions, or it’s a big event and I’m dealing with other teams or celebrities. The one camera, run-and-gun shooting really lends itself to intimate stories and I think it really shines in those intimate moments. MT: Your background is cinematographer/director, and intimate storytelling, but have you ever felt the strain of that role? Do you ever feel sometimes, “Oh it would be great to be able to say to that person can you go and get that while I’m still talking to that character?”

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RL: I’ve just been thinking about this. Occasionally, I have to have a conversation with the subject so I stop thinking about the camera angle, or I have to deal with something technical so I stopped doing whatever else I was doing. There is a very strong advantage to doing multiple jobs yourself, which is that you literally share a brain with the person and so there’s nothing lost in translation. Obviously, I don’t always think that everything I do comes out perfectly, but I kind of enjoy having no one to blame but myself. Because there’s no, “Oh if I just communicated that better.” I feel very uncomfortable being dissatisfied with the work of others, and there’s often a miscommunication at the root of it. So I know that while someone might have dropped the ball, I also probably didn’t make it clear what I needed. There are advantages and disadvantages, of course. I feel moments when I wish I didn’t have to think about three, four, or five things simultaneously. I think the key to making it work is becoming comfortable asking the subjects, “Hold on. I need to adjust this, let me do this. I’ll be back to you in a second.” It’s great to have those flow moments when you’re just filming and everything is fine but that’s because the work has been done ahead of time to set up the situation. To get into that situation where you don’t have anything else to worry about but filming. Whereas, when you’re going through a normal day as a single cameraperson you’re going to have to switch out those hats so it can be very necessary to just tell someone, “Hold on a second, I’ll be right back.” MT: Also you’re building those relationships, you’ve spent hours and hours with these people. Some of the shots, I’m bringing up Alexandria as an example, I don’t think you would have got if you hadn’t been a single cameraperson especially some of those intimate moments with her and her husband. RL: … and with the others too. I mean just jumping into cars or fitting into New York apartments. If I’d had a crew of even two or three it just would have been a whole different ball game of trouble. MT: … and let’s talk a moment about your background in anthropology, changing the environments by having outsiders present which has happened in early anthropology studies … RL: Exactly. It’s much easier for someone to get used to having me around, just over here with my camera, than having boom poles. They can be very distracting, as fantastic as they are for capturing sound. You know, having a single camera does change things too.

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MT: I’ve talked to other filmmakers about the extractive element of filmmaking, but as you’re also an anthropologist I’d love to have your take on this term. What could filmmakers consider as they approach their stories and begin filming scenes. RL: I come out of the tradition of ethnographic film and visual anthropology so that’s my background, that’s where I learned filmmaking. I did a PhD in anthropology as I was learning to become a filmmaker. As part of the selfreflective critique that the discipline of anthropology has gone through over the past 40 or 50 years, there’s a real sense that it’s important to be aware of the potential for filmmaking to be extractive. In the same way that, you know, mining can be extractive or colonial relationships can be reproduced in those dynamics. So non-extractive filmmaking practices can take many forms and there’s a lot of collaborative work in contemporary anthropology. There’s a lot of emphasis on co-authorship and innovative ways of sharing authorship but I don’t do it that way. I think it’s great if people want to work that way. I consider my projects to be collaborations with the subjects in many ways—obviously we get a lot of input from them—but I’ve had to draw those lines a little more clearly when I started working with specific political campaigns. I seek out projects that are about multiracial or cross/class alliances, and I also make an extensive effort to hire diverse crews no matter what the subject matter is. The Hand That Feeds, Knock Down the House, and To the End are all explicitly about this kind of movement-building work, which is one way that I try to grapple with power dynamics in film—to make films about power itself and how to become powerful yourself and in the world. In many ways, this comes from a concept of, and possibility of, solidarity. My last two films and current project are about political and activist campaigns. There are lots of reasons to maintain editorial control for films like this—funders want to see it, distributors want to see it, and fundamentally as an artist I really don’t want to make a film that feels like a brochure for an advocacy group or a political campaign ad. Both for artistic reasons and because I think an independently told story will reach wider audiences. When I build trust with subjects for films like this, I make it clear that I’m coming from a place of solidarity and allyship, but my independence is necessary for the film to be the best it can be. I offer opportunities for subjects to view cuts before they’re made public and offer input so that I can be sure that they feel their story is being told with integrity; but I’m careful to maintain independence and I wouldn’t change something I thought was important or good unless a very serious concern were to arise. This has not happened to me yet so far! For my film about Uruguayan songwriters [Birds of Passage, 2010], I worked with an Uruguayan lead producer and the film primarily circulated in Uruguay, with broadcasts in several other Latin American countries as well.

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Beyond this and the films mentioned above, I have not actually ever made a film about the everyday life or personal stories of members of a marginalized group that I don’t belong to. In considering future projects, if a project fits that profile I would seek to co-direct with a filmmaker from the group in question. Giving a co-directing or writing credit to a subject is an approach that hasn’t come up yet in my work so far, but I do know others who have done this. I think it’s give and take. I think it’s really easy to sort of err on one side or the other of enmeshing in a collaboration with your subjects, and becoming so entwined that you feel like you can’t make your own decisions. On the other hand, collaborations can be very successful obviously, and there are models for that. So it’s a lot of negotiation and it’s just sort of a constant theme to consider, and really think about your relationship as a filmmaker with the subjects of your film. It depends on where you are in your life and your career, where the film is, and who they are and where they are.

9 INVESTIGATIVE GENRE—COLLECTIVE

Style: Observational Genre: Investigative thriller Interview: Director Alexander Nanau, film Collective

FIGURE 9.1

Director Alexander Nanau. Photo credit: Alex Gâlmeanu

The film Collective got its name from a popular nightclub in Romania that will always be remembered as the location of a national tragedy. One fateful night in the middle of a concert, the club was engulfed in flames and due to the lack of fire exits 27 people died. But it was the resulting 180 burn victims and how they were treated DOI: 10.4324/9781003254768-9

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that became the bigger national scandal. When the burn victims began dying and the government lied about the patients’ care, Romanians took to the streets in protest, which led to the fall of the entire Romanian government. Thirty-seven burn victims died in hospital and this is where the story develops into an even larger disaster. Director Alexander Nanau was on the streets filming those demonstrations. To him, it was the first time Romanians realized that political corruption wasn’t just concerned with stealing government funds, it was killing people. Unknown to them, at the time these marches happened, the Romanian people were being manipulated at an even grander scale. Eventually, a brave trio of Sports journalists uncovered a web of lies that attempted to hide the reasons that even more people kept dying in hospital. The unsanitary conditions where they were treating the burn victims was the cause of many of the deaths. At first Nanau was intrigued by the fact that it was a sports newspaper that broke the news. Examining why all the other press outlets failed to do their job uncovering this story and the broader universal theme of how investigative journalism works. One of the distinguishing characteristics of Collective is the absence of “talking heads” and experts speaking direct to camera, so common in most documentaries. The film uses the fly-on-the-wall observational style of filmmaking by the gifted director and also cinematographer. It plays out as a thriller; to call it investigatory feels almost too light, as there are so many twists and turns it feels like a shakespearian story with a plot that plays out ruthlessly. We’re left to ask how can there possibly be a camera present in all of these intense moments, the access is incredible. As with his previous observational film, Toto and His Sisters, Nanau shoots his own films with just one camera and often alone. It’s his unique vision that makes him a fascinating director and Collective a film that I was thrilled to examine. Other observational films: Honeyland, Sweetgrass, Cutie and the Boxer, Through the Night, Mr Bachman and His Class, The Truffle Hunters, etc. Other thrillers: One Day in September, Man on Wire, The Mole Agent, Enemies of the State.

Introduction When the young people of Romania initially took to the streets to protest after the Collective club fire, it felt like a turning point in Romanian history for Alexander Nanau and was the inspiration for him to pick up his camera. He began his own research to find characters to possibly follow for a film, with a team of three or four journalists. They eventually came to the conclusion that following the investigative journalists from the sports newspaper that broke the news story could be really interesting. They recognized reporters breaking news probably wouldn’t welcome a camera crew into their newsroom easily. Sports Gazette is the oldest newspaper in Romania, and was staffed by serious sports journalists known for their investigative journalism. Nanau didn’t know how the story was going to play out when he first

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started filming, thinking maybe it’ll just be a local story but he was intrigued by the universal theme of how journalists work. The Sports Gazette newspaper first uncovered a simple lie: that the city fire department didn’t know the Collective nightclub existed without fire exits, and that there was a new hospital burn unit treating victims. But this burn unit wasn’t open, it had never been open, and therefore wasn’t treating anyone at all. One day Nanau’s team got a phone call from the Sports Gazette newsroom saying they had uncovered something in their investigation and do they want to come in to the office. He firmly believes that this door wouldn’t have opened if he hadn’t proved he was serious with establishing his own team of reporters in the first place. Little was given away in the news room by Catalin Tolontan (the main character) and his Sports Gazette team. Nanau had to piece the story together himself, which is what you see play out in real time in the film. To get full newsroom access Nanau had to promise to not use any footage they would shoot for the film until the newspaper had broken the story. He readily agreed. As you watch the story unfold, it feels like you’re watching a master craftsman at work. Romanian born, living in Bucharest at the time, it was Alexander Nanau’s curiosity about the characters, his search for protagonists behind the breaking news stories that drove him forward. Then when he finds his protagonist, he works hard to first build their trust and then attempts to disappear behind the camera. He wants his characters to relax because then he can start to see the development of their character on screen. Although the film doesn’t include interviews, at the beginning of production Nanau does interview his characters to try to get to know them, almost as if he’s holding a casting session before he shoots the observational scenes. He films with his camera at eye level, not using a sound person but putting on the lavalier mics himself. Being this close to the character he believes allows him to see what their barriers are to letting go. Nanau describes his work as that of a street photographer, using his intuition to find shots that express a person’s state of mind and looking for stories that aren’t obvious, going below what is happening at the surface. If he is emotionally connected to the characters, his thinking goes, he’ll feel the intuition of what they’ll do next. He first learnt this working as an assistant director on fiction films, to sit and watch and connect with actors communicating non-verbally. This lesson allowed him the freedom to stop expecting things to happen in his documentary work, to trust that life will bring the story to him if he embeds himself in the characters lives. From the second month of shooting Nanau knew Collective would be an observational film. With this method of filmmaking, Nanau thrusts the viewer into the middle of the cataclysmic series of events as they unfold in Collective. It’s immediate and exciting. If he had used talking-head interviews with anyone in an official capacity, it would have been suspect. The cover-up by the government made obvious in the press conferences and news reports early in the film, alone, was enough. As the story progressed, and as Nanau learnt the capability, inhumanity and corruption of the healthcare system, it had a huge effect on him. He found out about the

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shocking developments in much the same way as we do in the film. People were diluting the cleaning products, the disinfectants in hospitals, which led to terminal infections when the burn victims arrived and many people died. Politicians lied, but so did doctors, who deleted notes on infections only discovered when they were finally forced to transfer patients to hospitals abroad. That intense level of corruption with doctors, people we inherently trust with our lives, so disturbed Nanau he likened it to a Romanian Chernobyl. A German newspaper compared the film to The Third Man. The Collective story unfolded as other governments’ manipulation around the world was becoming more blatant too. With Brexit in Europe and the investigation into the Russian government’s interference in the US election, this problem had become universal. Even the title, Collective, was kept inclusive to suggest that all world citizens were in this together. “Although he (Nanau) is dealing specifically with one instance in Romania, it’s easy to see evidence of greater global malaise reflected here,” wrote the film critic Amber Wilkinson. When the film was released in cinemas in Romania it had a huge Romanian audience, the event and its aftermath is a national tragedy that Nanau knew no one will forget. Collective is the story of a small band of persistent and brave people wanting to uncover the truth—journalists, victims, and advocates—and it’s this fight we readily cheer for.

Interview Maxine Trump: Alexander, you talk about certain films that you watched for research. I do that too, I’ll get my hands on anything about a subject and just pour over it. You mentioned the fiction flim Spotlight and trying to find as many investigative journalism films as possible. Were there tips that you took away from that research about how to make a thriller type of film? Alexander Nanau: Spotlight was important because I was very scared that I would not be able to make this film work that basically takes place around tables. And I think Spotlight was the kind of film that gave me the confidence to believe that there is a way to do it. MT: I struggled with that in my very first film, meetings around tables. AN: How can you make it dramatic? How do you build tension? How do you build storytelling around characters? But in Tarantino’s films, people sit at tables and talk too. MT: This film makes me want to ask a lot of questions about the amazing footage. Starting at the beginning, what was the first scene you shot? AN: The thing is with this film we could not manipulate time. So it was one of the big challenges, normally you can play a bit with character, with the way you build up a character, you can switch some of the timeline. Sometimes

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you can take things from the beginning and use them to show us something later on. But it was not the case here because we were basically linked to a real-life investigation that can be tracked. It was also an ethical thing, we have to stay really true to the timely order of things. And with this project we started by trying to understand what was going on because a change in society seemed to be happening. Many young people took the streets for the first time, to demonstrate against the corrupt political class. If you ask what is the first footage that was filmed? It was the footage from the concert. The first few scenes of the film is a little time trick. You see the parents at this gathering, where they try to find out answers about their children’s treatment. We meet the journalist in the beginning without knowing he will be a character. And then they’re talking about the devastating fire that happened, and then we cut to a concert, that seems basically to be a response to what these people are talking about. MT: It felt as if it was a benefit concert in the second scene and I wanted to know if that was deliberate? It was an amazing scene, how you shocked us halfway through when we realize it’s footage of the fire. Because as I was watching it I thought it was a relief concert initially, raising money for the families we’d just met. Then we realize it’s a scene of the fire itself. AN: They’re a young band, representative of a young generation that were already singing about corruption and their generation’s struggle with some of what the parents were telling us in the beginning. And that’s basically where I think the cinematic space opens up in the hands of the viewer, because watching that play out you have to open up to a lot more layers in this film and be ready to think. Because you get caught off guard, you didn’t expect the fire to happen, it’s a multi-layered story. MT: A fantastic way to structure the beginning. You talked about compressing information in the film, which is always really hard for us as filmmakers. I found the title sequence very interesting because you’re giving us these reassuring voices from the government under the titles. Was that audio from video and did you decide to strip away the images to make the audio much more pronounced? AN: Yeah, there were even more reasons for us to do that. The most important reason was to put the viewer in the shoes of the people that lived through it. You experience a trauma. And out of that, these voices come out, the politicians who really try to be empathic with the people they address and say, don’t worry, we’re in control, we’re going to take care, we’re going to rescue people. So it was our way of manipulating the viewer in the same way as the people were manipulated by those people in charge. And then I felt that if I included their faces it would point to certain people. When in

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fact, the manipulation is not linked to any certain person, it’s linked to the way our system works. And so it was more important for us to get the viewer into this space of believing these voices, feeling taken care of by these voices, after they lived through the shock of the fire. MT: It’s deeply depressing, hence the importance of your film highlighting the tireless work of investigative journalism and long may journalists continue to uncover these important stories. Which brings me nicely into the Sports Gazette’s offices in your film. They eventually generously let you in and obviously they’re not going to sit you down and say, Alexander let us tell you everything we found out. I feel in the fourth and possibly fifth scene (time code approximately 8.5 minutes in) it felt a little bit like you were doing that with the audience of your film too. You start out with these night time exterior shots, we hear audio we think maybe from a nurse, a whistleblower is in the office talking about what was going on in the hospital then you cut to the interior daylight and the end of the scene. But even though you could argue that’s two scenes, the themes connect in the dialogue. The first night-time dialogue revealed that infections in the hospitals killed the burn victims. It’s cinematic like you said. I learned years ago don’t give the audience all the information, let them connect the dots themselves, it makes for a much more exciting watch. Audiences like to work out what is going on from the clues you’ve placed in the film. Was that your intention at the beginning? How did you decide how much was too much information? And what was too little? AN: That’s hard to answer, it always depends on where you are in the film, it’s a very big difference between the beginning, middle, and end of a film. But I certainly wanted to replicate the way I experienced the story; by not knowing anything about it. I didn’t understand about hospital infections or disinfectants. And I had to piece together the story myself from what the reporters were up to. I felt it also had something to do with the way journalism works or should work. Basically, they have these whistleblowers coming in, they talk about things, and then they try to piece together factual information. For sure, we could have brought in more dialogue earlier, but I feel that’s the place where you leave the cinematic space and go into the reportage space. And for me, I think of myself as a filmmaker, I’m making cinema and not reportage, I’m not a journalist. My aim is to make the viewer experience and make the viewer think, and I’m sure that’s why the information is spread out. And on the other hand I’m building characters, really identifying characters. That’s the character that asks the question, that’s the character that is persistent, which basically replicates their real-life characters. But in a film in the editing, you have to limit what you say in order to get the essence of a character. You could let them talk all the time, but then it would have been

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better to make an interview film about their investigation than an observational film. And so the aim was to put the viewer into that space with them. And really let the viewer experience it as an unfolding story that they are witnessing and discovering, piecing it together alongside the characters. MT: Getting filmmakers to understand why information is left out is really important. When I teach it’s always that detail that I find hard to impress on students the most. Stripping the information away can be quite nervewracking because it feels like you’ve taken away some of those story tellingtent poles. We need to build the confidence to do that and know the audience won’t be confused. I love this phrase explanation after the action. It’s very mysterious in that early whistleblower scene. AN: For me, the challenge is how fast can I break down a story that is happening in front of me in images? That’s my daily challenge. When I get into a room, into a situation, can I see what it is? Who’s leading the scene? Who’s in what mood today? What’s in their head? What do I have to capture? How is this developing? Is there a scene there? It’s basically filmmaking on a fire burner, you have to edit in your head, you have to add up the relationships with people in your head. And you don’t have the time like fiction films. Observational means you don’t have people sitting down, you don’t tell them what to do. It is recording (observing) reality without intervening in it, it is me who is observing, which means it will always be different from what another filmmaker might observe or decide how to record it. MT: The film plays out like a thriller, with action scenes and incredible moments of tension, but you also celebrate silence, which can also provide tension. Sixteen minutes in, the eighth scene, we’re back in the newspaper office. The reporters are talking about the fact that the government didn’t think to check, even once, what was in the cleaning products that were being used in the hospitals. You have a shot of a lead investigative reporter (and your main character) Tolontan taking a deep breath. He’s about to call the government Health Minister to challenge him over this fact. We feel the tension because we’re feeling it with him as he takes that deep breath before he makes the call, you give that moment a few beats. Later on similarly, in the 13th scene about 27 minutes in, I wanted to count how long you stayed on Tolontan’s face. He’s just had a phone call with the whistleblower. The professor who had given all of the documents (about the products and the hospital) to the government and the government just ignored them. Tolontan wonderfully pumps his arm on the phone in celebration when the professor confirms he will talk to him on the record, as his information is crucial to the investigation. You stay on his face as Tolontan calls Mirela, his colleague, you don’t cut away from his face. You hear Mirela’s voice off-camera asking him about whether the professor will confirm the story. Tolontan gives a gentle little

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smile and nod. And as the audience we smile too, as we now know Tolontan kept it very cool even though he was just very excited. It’s an amazing character moment. There were so many moments like that. How did you learn that silence was just as important as action? AN: Maybe it was in Toto, my last film. I just stay on characters. The way I connect to other people in life is through the camera, and that’s the place where I have to overcome my shyness and really be courageous, to study people, to not look away. And at the same time, it’s also something that comes with observational filmmaking: the tension that is created by observing someone. You feel it when you film it, when someone is charged, you just don’t go away, you stay because you never know what could happen. And I learned it by hating myself, in the films I did before, when I realized that I switched off the camera too soon. MT: Nothing is a mistake, we learn from all of these things. AN: Yeah, and never, never switch off. Just count to 10 and if 10 is not enough, then, you just stay there. MT: Getting comfortable with that. AN: I mean, we’re talking now about filmmakers being comfortable, but I think it’s not easy for the people that are filmed. I don’t know if I could be filmed. Part of directing an observational documentary is similar to directing in theater or in narrative films. It all comes from the way you build a relationship with the people or with the actors. And by that, I mean, it comes out of the way you look at them. That’s also why I learned it can work with non-actors too, you can develop a deep relationship, you can develop a deep tension between you and the person. That’s the challenging thing with observational documentary filmmaking: with so many storylines and characters like in this one, you really have to have a relationship with all the different people. You have to want to understand what it means to be in their shoes, and to really observe them and understand them and feel them and that it is authentic and they will respond in a certain way. And suddenly shy people that could never stand more than three seconds in front of a camera can do it. So it’s a complex process. MT: There’s an inherent conflict in that as well, because you want this relationship, but you also want them not to see you. In observational filmmaking, you’re there, you’re not going away, they see you every day, you’ll have the occasional conversation with them, etc. But then they have to ignore you. So it’s interesting, the dance of filmmaking.

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AN: I don’t think that they ignore you, I think that they are comfortable with you. And that comes across as if they don’t see the camera, but basically they just feel safe. And when they don’t feel safe, you just have to edit around it. In comparison to my last film, it was easier to build a strong relationship with kids. Someone was making them feel important. That was new for them. It’s very different with people that are much higher up the social ladder. Adults and adults in control, like a journalist, like Tolontan who is a public person, he’s well known. He is used to being in control. So for him, it was a very unpleasant thing, right? And there was a point where he said something to me like, “I mean, what you’re doing it will never work, because I’m not good on camera”. I think I said something like “as you do your job so thoroughly trust me in doing mine” … trust me that I know my job, and it will work. It was another step of him becoming more comfortable with me. MT: He’s a reporter, he’s a professional. He didn’t have to be the life and soul of the film. I love these anecdotes. How you start scenes is amazing, very rarely do you have those big wide establishing shots. You start scene 19 at approximately 45 minutes into the film with welding of wires or some macro detail on a robotic hand. From the start we don’t know quite where we are. It eventually reveals the scene is a fitting of a prosthetic hand and we’re assuming it’s for one of the burn victims. It’s this amazing scene with the burn victim, Tedy and her mother. AN: I think we have seen her before, right? MT: Yes, we’ve been introduced to Tedy (the female burn vicitm) before. AN: That’s one of my favorite shots. The first time we meet her in the photoshoot with her putting on lipstick. MT: Yes, it’s gorgeous. I mean, what an introduction to character by starting with such a strong image in the scene you mentioned. And then it’s revealed that she’s a burn victim. So my question about this scene in the hospital, fitting the hand, it was very short, very emotional, and you didn’t need it to be longer. It’s, I think, 90 seconds and that’s all we needed. People are speaking English in the room, with a Scottish accent so we think she’s out of the country. But these moments don’t labor the point. She gets fitted with the hand, she moves it for the first time, her Mom cries and we’re out of the scene. It’s a hopeful beat in the story. I always look in my own work for hopeful scenes. Whether it’s joy or the hope that comes with getting closer to the goal of the character, it’s hard to have endless struggle with no outlet. Tedy is a great character for that, she survived. You talk about casting characters, so how did you know Tedy would be the right burn victim to follow?

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AN: We went to a lot of the victims meetings, Tedy basically was there and I don’t know, it was personality maybe. MT: You weren’t following a number of burn victims? AN: Not a lot more. There was one major path that didn’t make it into the film. We were filming with the only survivor of the band, the lead singer while he was, and still is, hiding from the world. He is not a public person anymore. And that was really intense footage and a wonderful story with him. We filmed his surgeries, the tough things that he went through. That was maybe one of the last things where, I decided it’s not part of the film. MT: Gosh, tough. AN: To get the bionic hand scene with Tedy, I flew with her, just me and her mother to Edinburgh, where she got a hand. MT: And we didn’t need any exterior shots of Scotland because it doesn’t have anything to do with the story. You use establishing shots very occasionally at the beginning of scenes to place us, but you often chose not to do that, quite the reverse. It’s not needed. AN: I’m interested in the human condition. I’m just trying, through the way I shoot to explore that with my camera, to understand the character, what they think about, what their emotions are, how they survived. Because I always identify myself so strongly with the characters while I make a film. I really want to experience life from their point of view, and basically pass this on to the viewer. That’s the function of editing. So it becomes the viewers’ experience, living in their shoes. MT: So let’s talk about the turning point, after Tedy’s robotic hand scene we suddenly meet this wonderful new Health Minister, and you’ve talked about this shift of protagonists. We look for turning points in our films, we know they’re great story beats. But it doesn’t usually happen that your main character changes to become another person that we follow. That can be hard for a filmmaker as it’s rarely done. How did you solve connecting the reporter, Tolontan to the Health Minister, Vlad, so the audience could connect the stories. AN: When it happened in real life, that the former minister was sacked, and a new one came in, I immediately thought, maybe that’s a chance to get inside the system, into the government. I thought maybe an independent outsider will have the balls to let us in. And it took some time to get to him but we did. I had this big dilemma, as I thought this might never work, how can you switch characters in the middle of a film? I started to go through all the films I ever saw that might do that, but we never found anything. And

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then I felt okay, if I can see it happening in real life, there must be a way to work it out. And so I just went for it. How do you get the audience interested in a new character in the middle of the film? And do you give backstory to try to understand who this guy is, how do you connect to him? And basically I found that you can connect to him exactly like we connected to him in real life. We were asking the questions “What is this guy gonna do? Will he be corrupted by the system? Will he say one thing and do another?” So that’s also how it starts in the film, out of the blue, this guy comes in, and is promising something interesting and then he stumbles over the first questions from the journalists. Okay, so it doesn’t start well, and then the journalist writes about it. And we were lucky to film the scene, in the office of the minister, reading what the journalist Tolontan has to say about him. And so these things start to connect, because you get interested in the way these two characters play out. And then luckily, the minister becomes someone who really tries to fight the system and is really a genuinely honest person. And I think that connects them again, because you’re basically on the same journey. And I like the response the audience seems to have to Vlad (the Health Minister), because half of them say, “Oh, he’s just not strong enough” or some start out from a position of thinking that there’s good in the world but that’s not how politics work. MT: That’s the problem with politics. AN: I think that’s the interesting and complex riddle for the viewer. What’s the solution? What kind of people do we need? Or what kind of people do we want in these positions? And what can work, because it’s good to fight for your ideals. MT: You’ve just talked about the scene where the goverment ministers discuss the article Tolontan wrote about Vlad. We’re about 48 minutes into the film so we’re still in Act 2. And Vlad reads it and one of his staff says “Oh, don’t worry about Tolontan, ignore him,” it was wonderful. AN: Ignore the guy that got the last minister sacked. MT: Yes, maybe that’s his first mistake? Like you said, a wonderful A and B story merging there. Which was a great way to connect the worlds, and you managed to be there to capture that, to solve that problem. You were the only cinematographer. So how the hell were you managing to capture so much? How were you responding so quickly to events? AN: So two good things, the locations were pretty close by in the center of town. Our office is close to the ministry, and close to the newsroom. And so we were rushing in between, I mean the team had to be pretty wired to

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try to get all the different things and understand what’s going on everywhere and have our spies in every location, and so forth. MT: Incredible. What are some of your favorite scenes? AN: When I’m editing, I’m editing until every scene is one I love. But certainly the central scene for me, and the one I think is really good, is the scene with the minister and the whistleblower at night in his office (TC 01:02:30:00), which is the doctor—the same whistleblower as the one in the beginning of the film. She was the source for the journalists. MT: The beginning of the film or thereabouts, we mentioned the scene earlier. That I thought was a nurse in the office. AN: It’s so intense in terms of human experience and what’s going on in their heads. The meeting between the top position in the system’s hierarchy and a whistleblower. I also love the meeting between the journalists and whistleblowers (TC 01:17:00:00), the accountants. I worked a lot on that one. MT: So much feeling in that scene. AN: You can only love them as characters. You have whistleblowers that played along all the time in the corruption, and then at a certain point in their lives they decide to not do it anymore. So there’s so much about attitude, and that we can decide at any point in our lives, no matter how bad we’ve been before, we can change. MT: Whistleblowers on camera, when they’re giving information, is incredible access. AN: You don’t have that normally in films, you have either whistleblowers being interviewed, but I’ve not seen the actual moment they talk to the journalists. This was the very first moment. MT: So let’s talk about what’s happening in this scene. It starts with a close up of a phone and we hear audio of an awful person calling a member of his staff a brainless f**k. Then you pull out with the camera and we see we’re at the newspaper office. In dialogue we hear how these two female hospital accountants want to bring in documents to provide evidence of corruption in the hospital. Again you have these amazing reveals, at first we have shots in macro, you’re keeping the audience guessing. It’s almost an anti-establishing shot. You have so much confidence in staying with that movement of the camera, I think I’d constantly worry that I would miss some reaction if I’m not on the wide or a character’s face. It was very brave to decide, ok, I’m going to be

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very certain on these types of shots, of where to start and where to end. Do you just believe in yourself that you’re going to capture everything? AN: Believing in yourself is very shaky ground. I’m not sure that you ever do that. But I think once you are further into production, the more you’re really connected to the story, you start to breathe the same rhythm. And you just start to be very good at feeling where the tension is, where you should be. When I film, I film with the canvas in mind, I film with editing and tension in mind. So when I feel like I should pan or something, from details or a character, I really wait for the moment where I feel we’ve kept the audience waiting a bit too long, and then you move. So it all becomes a dance. There’s one thing that is filmed by my assistant, Maria Cirstea. At a certain point, I teach her what I’m looking for in the footage. And that was the scene when the journalist is waiting in a car for a hospital manager to arrive home. MT: Which is one scene. AN: It’s a pretty great scene. MT: Yes, it’s the continuation of the scene above. You transition from Tolontan walking in the office, then we cut to a person walking outside. A photographer takes a photo and we cut to tapping on a car window. We now know it’s a photographer taking a photo for the reporter. Then the reporter plays the audio again from the phone, the awful abuse we heard from the previous scene, as if he’s playing it for the photographer, but it reminds us who they’re probably following. Then the hospital manager arrives, and the photographer incredulously asks, “Is that him?” He is wearing a hoodie and looks burly, like a member of the mafia. And that’s where we’re left. You often leave us with a question at the end of the scene motivating us to want that question answered. AN: I’m not sure I would have filmed it that well. These are the lucky moments in observational filmmaking. MT: I wonder if editing as you go along helps with that as well. AN: I don’t edit as I go along. What I do is I go back to the editing room at night after a shooting day. I review footage, playing with connecting shots, seeing if the tension is there most of all, if the authenticity is there. Because many times on set you get emotionally involved and think that there is some emotion. But once you watch it, you realize it’s not there. In the beginning of production it takes me a while to understand what kind of film I’m making, what the visual language will

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be. I need to grasp that idea because that will inform the way I will film the next day. MT: That’s interesting, because director Matt Heineman (Cartel Land, City of Ghosts) does exactly the same thing. And you’re both observational DOP filmmakers. I found out recently that he would shoot all day for his film The First Wave and come back to watch rushes. Sustaining that, what was your shooting day like? AN: Sometimes it was 16 hours, sometimes it was 3. Many times we went to the newsroom, and we would hang around mostly to get people used to the fact that I’m not going to disappear. And then the journalists would say nothing is happening today so you can leave, let us get to work, they get a bit tense. And many times that’s, for me, a good indication that something will happen, when the character thinks nothing will happen. I don’t know why, it seems to be like a law of filmmaking. So we would say okay, we can go and then would grab a coffee and in ten minutes we’re back. And then things start to happen. And that’s another thing: being rather a shy person, it’s a fight with yourself, you challenge yourself, you need to be a pain in the arse. MT: Us Europeans don’t really like being a pain in the arse. When you watch the rushes at the end of every day do you make a shotlist of what you need to capture next to make scenes work? AN: I have my notebooks, yeah. I write every day and develop ideas, what could happen or should happen. What I think was strong, what did this shooting day say about the character? What was the central thing? MT: So talking a little bit about the edit now. I know it took 18 months, and you’ve said that you sit with a co-writer sometimes during editing sessions talking about story. I use this terminology: that we write in the edit, and we should all get writing credits as editors. Fiction is written before production and we documentarians write it afterwards. We turn to the paper edit often in post. AN: I bring in George Cragg for two or three weeks, normally, in the middle of editing when I have several rough cuts, and I’m at a dead end. He’s very good and very fast at taking rough cuts apart, trying new things out. And that gives me a lot of new impulses, input and possibilities. Together we had the courage to take the footage apart and place the victims in between the investigation. Also it allows me to take a step back and judge the film by being in a position where I can say no, that’s sh*t.

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MT: I found the TV broadcasts in the film a great solution to provide informaion that was missing. I know you talked about your team member managing to get a lot of the TV material and the news station being very generous with access. They became like a narration, in the film, right? Because you’re making an observational film and need so many facts to be understood at times. Did you go back and ever record some of the TV screens playing footage? AN: Yes for sure, two or three TV screens that we basically put stuff on, because it had that narration. But it doesn’t mean that it is manipulated, it’s still from the same days, it’s just because we weren’t able to capture that moment. We had to go back basically and use plates to put on the TV screen. But the reactions of the journalists are basically genuine. MT: Thank you for being so open, I just think it’s helpful to see some solutions that we find that work. AN: All solutions are morally valid, as long as they’re authentic and not manipulating the truth. MT: So we’re right at the end of the film, now. I’m not going to talk about the maggot scene, that was incredible. We’re moving towards the climax of the film, as filmmakers we know this as the scenes get shorter and faster, it’s getting much more active, more tense and the stakes are clear. So let’s talk about the climax first. The stakes are very real, Vlad (the health minister) is worried that all the hard work his team has spent instituting changes to the health care system could be lost in the election that’s coming up. In a very short scene, Vlad goes home, he votes, and his party loses. You recognize as the DP you should stay with him. You travel with Vlad in the car at the end of the day, after this huge loss and you get that amazing phone call with his father, the denouement of the film. The father is saying, why don’t you leave, you can’t change anything, it’s so corrupt. How did you know that you should be in the car with him afterwards at the end of the day? AN: I really see it as writing a fictional script, looking for situations that you have to capture, you just don’t leave your character when he’s down. You need that moment. MT: You had set up the wonderful foreshadowing earlier, of him saying I want everything, all the work we’ve done, to stay, i.e., not to be lost with a change in government. You were thinking of the script of the film and what could be the end for this character and searching and looking for that and not leaving and assuming that’s it. It allows you to get that wonderful, intimate moment, it makes him so real. And as an audience, we’re agreeing, thinking, yes, it sounds like he had a much better life living abroad but we respect him so

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much for fighting against corruption. So for you to stay there with the camera when I’m sure he was looking tired wanting to go home. That takes fortitude. AN: It’s my responsibility to tell the story. I want to mention the last scene of the film. MT: It might be a strange thing to say that I’m so pleased you ended the film with the burn victim’s family. There were so many things we could apply to that scene. AN: I think these people are some of the most wonderful people I’ve ever met in my life, this family. The way I filmed it really was out of this feeling I had for them, because that’s the way I film all the time. And trying to understand how you can translate that to images. The quality of the scene says also a lot about the quality of the people. MT: And your relationship with them. AN: The fact that they were so gracious to let me be there in the most vulnerable moments of their life. MT: That was incredible access and presence. I like to say presence, instead of access, access feels cold. They allowed you to be a witness at Christmas time, to go with them in the car and film them at the graveside of their lost son and burn victim. Then as they leave, the tears of the parents, as the dad sings along to what you imagine may have been his son’s favorite pop song and he points to the sky, to heaven. And that’s the end of the whole film. The finale, the end. …

10 CRIME DRAMA SERIES—TIGER KING

Style: Interview-led, observational, and performative Genre: Crime drama series Interview: Sound Recordist Jose Araujo, series Tiger King

FIGURE 10.1

Sound Recordist Jose Araujo. Photo credit: Justin Ervin

Tiger King may not need any introduction; if you haven’t seen it I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Released in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, season 1 was ranked as one of Netflix’s most successful series. DOI: 10.4324/9781003254768-10

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A true-crime documentary series about the life of former zookeeper and convicted felon Joe Exotic. The series focuses on a battle between big cat owners (of which Joe is one) and other zoo keepers/would be conservationists, but centering on one woman specifically. Exotic is accused of abusing and exploiting wild animals, and the series follows the growing feud and events leading up to Exotic’s conviction when a plot to have a hitman murder Carole Baskin is uncovered. We learn about the dark underground world and horrors of big cat breeding. Many conservation groups criticized the series because of how it framed this eccentric world, as entertainment, but that wasn’t what the directors had in mind. It’s staggering when it’s revealed that the United States is home to the highest population of tigers in the world, upsetting when you think that that’s tigers in captivity. The series was sensational, the characters themselves were so incredible that you felt like they were straight out of central casting for a fiction show. The series itself makes me think of the world of a circus in many ways. The series was made by the conservationist and ex nightclub owner Eric Goode and director and producer Rebecca Chaiklin. Goode invested his own money to start production until Netflix came on board a year before air. Chaiklin and Goode first imagined the story as a film for National Geographic, possibly akin to a Blackfish for tigers. It was their plan to tell a story about conservation first but then the world of private zoos exploded. These days some documentary series feel as if the content is stretched to fill episodes, but not this series. They had so much material on the subject that later seasons have already been developed. With this amount of material and the cast of characters, the series format definitely suited the material best. Many crime drama series are a mix of interview-led and observational styles, but this series had been filmed using the performative approach with Eric Goode, the director as a central character driving the investigation. When the feud between the central characters became the dominant driving action of the film, the director took a step back to stay behind the camera and the style changed. Although it would have been fantastic to talk to Goode and his co-director about their process, it’s another member of the crew that I interview for this chapter who fills a role, that I believe, is integral to our work. The production of Tiger King took two years to film and the cameras were coninually rolling. Think on that for a minute, the production and cameras always rolling, the sound person holding a boom pole for most of that time, with dangerous big cats circling. That takes a certain kind of resilience. Often the role of the sound person is a hidden skill on set, a hugely important skill that I’d like to bring attention to. Sound (both recorded in the field, sound design and music) has become ever more important to me in my filmmaking career and interviewing such an experienced sound recordist as Jose Araujo will show you why. Other crime drama series: The Jinx, Making a Murderer, The Staircase. Other documentary investigative series: Philly DA, Love Fraud, Don’t F**k with Cats.

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Introduction There are many situations on set where sound is crucial and the environment isn’t easy. Making sure your sound person is not phased by having to mic quickly, and is comfortable with unpredictable situations, was key for this role. And Jose Araujo was the person for the job, citing it as one of his favorite filmmaking experiences because of the flamboyant cast of characters. He didn’t balk at the sense of danger but rather found the whole production exciting, knowing he would never have met these characters in real life otherwise. There are some films made without using sound recordists. We mention director/DPs of Collective and Knock Down the House, but both directors knew how to mic and it’s a risk going it alone but necessary sometimes for more intimate settings. The people that work in the field of recording sound for films, often a very laborintensive job on documentaries, is so important. These days when budgets are tight, sometimes a local sound person is booked for a documentary shoot. The team may not have worked with them before and often this is the last booking of the crew. So how are you communicationg your needs for sound? It’s important to include here the point of view of a sound person to recognize how important that role is on set and to challenge us all to think a little differently about sound. So what are all the sound roles in a film? As well as a sound recordist on set you will have a sound designer in post who will add sound or improve sound to save our edits. They often have their own library of effects and background or wild/ambient sounds, fades, tones, etc. As the great sound designer Pete Horner describes it, “they can draw things out of an image that the director may not have thought of. Sound is the attachment to the image, it’s how you understand what you’re seeing. I can alter your perception.” Sometimes this person, the designer, will also be the sound mixer especially for documentaries. This role makes sure all your levels are working perfectly for broadcast, fixing additional dialogue, etc. If you have the budget you may use a music editor (possibly a music supervisor), and foley effects department that makes original recordings of sound effects, a re-recording mixer, dialogue editor, and composers of course. These different roles express how important sound is and it really depends on your film budget and your vision for the film, as to what you will need. But a sound mixer and often sound recordist are essential. As one sound designer described it, documentaries often have sound added to make them seem more real and for fiction you add sound to make it seem less real and more fantastical. If you want to see images of a sound recordist on set, refer back to our interview for the hybrid film Dick Johnson Is Dead. You often see the sound recordist Judy Karp on film, Kirsten Johnson deliberately breaking the fourth wall, revealing how the film is being made. Staying with Dick Johnson Is Dead (DJID) for a minute before we move on to the interview with our sound recordist, Jose. Pete Horner was the sound designer for many of the films included in this book: The Truffle Hunters and Trapped as well as DJID. It is worth considering how he works in post-production to make sure you

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are capturing the best sound on set in your own films. He looks for contrasts, extremes, and excitement, because he feels when you work in those realms that’s when you engage an audience. In DJID, he had the full range of sonic film language, tones from violence and stunts (deciding whether to play those as a cartoon or as a serious stunt) to intimacy and emotional moments. Horner talks about trying to get into an emotional and subjective space with sound, believing this space allows an audience to work out how they feel about what they’re watching. In one scene that features a Halloween parade, which merged fictional moments and live action, Pete Horner morphed ice cream truck bells and sound effects from his library on Toy Story and his own recording of the Notre Dame bells in Paris. All to add a more sinister and disorienting feel to the scene. Knowing what sound designers look for, thinking of that range and capturing those sounds, or articulating the need for those sounds, can have a dramatic effect on your film. Having space, and not back-to-back dialogue, can give you that room. The power of sound design many say, is taken for granted, and the work that they do isn’t always very apparent in the film i.e. you don’t notice it. For example, for the docuseries Cheer a dialogue editor had to be brought onto the project because the auditorium room they practiced in had sound issues. The lavalier mics put on cast members wouldn’t capture the drops and landing of the cheerleaders. Making sure the sound person had time and room to capture ambient sounds from the location was of paramount importance. We could easily spend a chapter on each of the sound positions on a film, think of music editng too which can make or break your film. But here we will interview Jose Araujo, who has worked on over 90 projects as a sound recordist in the field; he’s also made his own films and worked on fiction, non-fiction, and news shows. He’s worked with fiction directors Kevin Smith and Roger Corman and on the wonderful feature documentaries from Buck to Fauci to Julia, and crime drama series Tiger King, The Case Against Adnan Syed, and so many more. We will concentrate on Tiger King, as Jose Araujo found the project energizing and exciting and I could imagine probably one of the more stressful environments for a sound person. The old adage couldn’t be more true of never filming with animals or children, for the lack of control on set. One of Tiger King’s greatest strengths was the feeling of anything can happen in the series at any time, I’m sure the crew were well aware of that. This was a hairy (pun intended) filming situation. So how was the sound?

Interview Maxine Trump: Jose let’s begin with Tiger King and its exceptional challenges. Jose Araujo: Tiger King took a while to get completed. The film began as one of the directors, Eric Goode—is a conservationist and has a Turtle Conservancy—and was interested in documenting animal trafficking. In the process of filming the

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world of trafficking, the big cat stories became just super interesting and that combination morphed into the film that is Tiger King. A lot of times it was like we were filming in a foreign country. The locations were private zoos that have a security detail or bodyguards because the owners were very protective of their environment. It took a while for them to open the door to the crew. At first, when you go into a project like that, you think of the danger of filming big felines and the fact of being so close to them. After shooting a few times, however, you become more at ease but the fear/respect for those majestic creatures is always in your mind. For instance, we filmed a show in one of the zoos, where, in one of the segments the trainers paraded in front of the public, holding tigers and other big felines with a leash, and in order to record that I was told to hide the hairy windscreen because the animals could think it was prey or a toy and I got a bit concerned. I kept it close to the ground and thankfully nothing happened.

FIGURE 10.2

Joe Exotic. Photo credit: Rebecca Chaiklin

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MT: My goodness, of course. JA:

So I had to be very discreet using those types of windscreens. But it was incredible because I was able to record tigers and lions playing and fighting or feeding inside their spaces. The sound was fantastic. Recording the roars and other animals’ sounds were amazing, especially when they were being fed. Tiger King was a very different type of project. I’d say that while we were filming we already knew we were doing something special. Eric, the director, was also a character in the film. We’d film him doing the interviews so he always had to be wired before we’d go into the locations because the interviews could happen anytime. Sometimes we’d get a ticket to go into the zoo without the gear and watch the animals’ show beforehand, which was helpful.

MT: Just like a location scout really? In docs, there’s not always the budget for scouts which is troubling at times. Is there a favorite scene in the series because of what you managed to capture with sound? JA:

I hope that a great scene we shot is going to be in the new release. It was part of a show in one of the private zoos. The performance would open with tigers swimming under water with the trainers inside a glass swimming pool. The animals seemed to love the water. And then chimpanzees would enter the stage and interact with the audience throwing balls and jumping around different platforms in front of the pool. The public loved it. At the same time there was also the sound of two narrators describing what was going on during the show and we’d also hear water splash. Because it was a pool area the sound would also reverb. And again all of this was vérité. It was quick, everything happened very quickly.

MT: … and you managed to capture dialogue? JA:

I was able to get close to people to get sound with the boom and the main characters were always wired. I can think of some other very interesting scenes from that series, like driving around in a golf cart in one of the zoos, recording a conversation between the director and a character, showing the different areas, including the one where meat was cut to feed the big cats. The meat was being thrown in the middle of the cats, they’re racing and roaring to be the first to capture it. And you’re right there.

MT: What about Joe Exotic? I know he filmed a lot himself. JA:

I recorded many of the phone calls between the director and Joe in prison. We were filming in different states and I was recording in different areas.

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The phone calls though were really interesting to me because I could visualize the place where Joe Exotic was calling from. I’d worked on several episodes of series about characters in US prisons and most prisons have similar layouts. And when he talked about certain things about the facility I knew what he was talking about. Also because I like recording phone calls. Recording from cell phones is much easier because you just put it on speakerphone. Old landlines are more challenging and you have to have a special piece of equipment, prisons have landlines. MT: I’m still wanting to get into why Joe Exotic’s calls were so important. JA:

Because the conversations were long and surreal. He is a very unique character.

MT: Tiger King must have been exhausting. JA:

There was always a kind of tension because of the nature of the subject: big cats. Moving around the zoo facilities was challenging. Sometimes you’d have to move very fast in order to film an interesting event which had just taken place with people or animals. In most of the situations I could get very close to the cats and was able to record sound. So there was tension in shooting the series but that helped to capture the raw emotions that drive the different episodes. A lot of the scenes I recorded for Tiger King were walk and talk situations. They took place in the different areas of the many private zoos. The characters were mostly the owners but sometimes they were also animal handlers and spouses. I’d wire the character(s) and the director and just followed the walks. I’d also always used the boom to record the extra sounds which could occur on our path, like a handler feeding animals, visitors’ interactions, talks between the main character and another person and animals fighting or playing in their cages. There were a lot of large cages with many animals together. The animal noises were welcome since they brought authenticity. They mixed well with the dialogue. Sometimes, wiring wasn’t possible, like the scene when one of the characters rides on top of an elephant, comes out of a river and goes for a stroll in the neighborhood, he was wet. So, I just ran with the cameraman and recorded what was possible with the boom. In another scene, however, inside the zoo, when the same character also rides on top of the elephant and ends up in front of a group of visitors, on a tour, I had wired him beforehand. The visitors feeding the elephant and reacting I recorded with the boom. In almost every situation I had the characters wired before the cameras rolled, since interesting scenes could occur at anytime. We were a small crew and we also knew what to do in the downtime. The DP would get his interesting shots for editing and I’d do the same, recording ambiance sound of animals, people, water, fire, birds, announcements from speakers, etc.

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The locations for the sit-down interviews tended to be very authentic and zoos offered a lot of options. Sometimes, I had challenges like, for instance, wiring a character if he’s talking with a spider monkey hanging from his neck. Of course, the monkey would touch the lavalier and spoil the sound many times, but fortunately, I was also using the boom, which was in danger too, since the monkey wanted to grab and hang from it. Luckily, the character would restrain him, avoiding an accident. But another time, a zoo’s owner was speaking to camera while playing with tiger cubs on a large couch. I was always worrying about the hidden lavalier, which was, in those cases, the main microphone, being found by the animals. As again here I couldn’t rely much on the boom because the animals could think it was prey or toy. Discretion was the key. MT: Were the directors quite understanding that the filming was very run and gun and a bit more like a reality show, if the sound goes down it goes down. JA:

Yeah, both directors were understanding but they’d expect good results like all directors. Eric is a very fascinating person; he’s an artist, filmmaker, conservationist, and the former club owner of the famous Area nightclub in New York which has been closed for a while. He comes from the arts and he understood extravagant characters because of his background. I think it was very comfortable for him to do Tiger King. It’s good to know a bit about the director and the work he/she has produced before working with them. Knowing their vision and intent helps a lot. It guides you to capture the right sounds.

MT: I think Tiger King is one of those series that doc filmmakers can really love and that may be due to the sound because it was so rich on so many levels. I wish we had the time on every shoot I’ve ever worked on to have a post-mortem, post-shoot discussion about sound. We’re all off onto our next project so quickly. What would you say to your crews in a debrief. JA:

I wish that documentary directors would think more about the soundtrack when developing the idea for projects and would put those ideas down on paper. It would be great for the sound mixer/recordists to have a list, beforehand, of specific ambient sounds that would advance the film’s narrative, sounds that would evoke the feeling one’s trying to imply and vibrate in the listeners’ mind. Most docs nowadays don’t give much space for sound to tell a story, to linger in the viewer’s mind and understand the emotions being transmitted. Most contemporary films are too fast-paced and sound needs more time to be understood and appreciated. Most documentaries emphasize dialogue and vérité scenes but not ambiance and sound effects. Other elements of the soundtrack are, a lot of times, available in the different locations we shoot but there’s never much

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time to explore and record them. I like to find and record evocative ambiance tracks that I think may help the projects down the line. Scripts for narrative films pay more attention to sound in that respect and they usually give more descriptions and indications for the sound recordists. MT: What’s a documentary that you think has used sound in an incredible way in scenes. JA:

I like Wim Wenders’ films, they give a lot of space for sound and emphasize music, noises and street life, and, of course, silence. It’s always important to have silence as part of the track. Into Great Silence by Philip Groning is an incredible film about a monastery, where monks live with vows of silence and practice monastic life. It’s about a lifestyle where silence and listening are the driving force. I come from a small town in the countryside of North-eastern Brazil, and, when I was growing up there was not much noise pollution. Sound was always part of my life. Listening was part of my contemplation. I made a film, Landscapes of Memory, which won prizes in Sundance and Berlin, some of those sounds were from my childhood. Sound is different in every location and they’re constantly changing.

MT: Are there any particular documentaries that stood out for you, from your country or continent that we should be aware of? JA:

There was a movement in Brazil, called Cinema Novo, which happened around the same time as the French New Wave. And I appreciate a lot of Latin films by Guzmán from Chile, Eduardo Coutinho from Brazil and I worked on most of the films by Lourdes Portillo, a Chicano Awardwinning filmmaker. She was nominated for the Oscar for The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo.

MT: What do you do when you’re in a situation, on a documentary set, and you’ve heard something that the director hasn’t heard being said? Dialogue from a character in a scene maybe? Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve been able to alert a director to something you think they haven’t heard? I’m thinking of some of amazing sound moments, in the documentary series The Jinx for example. JA:

A lot depends on the relationship you have with the director, DPs (Directors of Photography) have a closer relationship with the director than the sound person. But if the sound person is someone that the director already knows, they can establish a mutual understanding about sound much better. The director usually chooses the cameraperson. Sound, most of the time, is hired by the producers.

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MT: The DP and sound person relationship is very important. JA:

It’s crucial in doc vérité. We’re sharing spaces, moving together, so you have to have a choreography, working and following the subjects with the camera and sound. And not only following but pointing out situations to the DP because I’m the one listening. A lot of times the cameraperson doesn’t have headphones so they rely on the sound person to say “film those guys as they’re saying something important.” It has to be immediate right? The DP has to catch it instead of pointing at something else. Or if you’re filming a situation where there is a very distinct noise that affects the sound quality. It’s not easy if you have a big ego to be a sound person. The team expects sound to be around, but sometimes it’s considered to be a problem. No matter what in order to do a proper job, you have to find a spot for the sound gear on set. I’ve worked on both formats, fiction and documentary, and also on hybrid versions. They all have issues in finding proper spaces for the sound person to work.

MT: I often tell my students and clients that sound will save your film. If something goes down with the image, as long as you have a great sound person you’re gonna be okay. And my background is as a visual artist so it took me a while to get there. JA:

That’s the big truth. Viewers don’t forgive bad sound. It can be ok to see an out-of-focus image but not distorted or badly recorded audio.

MT: Can you talk a little bit about how to be prepared as a sound person for different scenes? JA:

For docs the continuous employment periods are shorter: one day here, two days there, etc. When the producers call me I always try to get as much information as possible about the projects, their styles, and their aim for sound. Sometimes they don’t know the full spectrum because in docs, changes often happen during the filming. You need specific gear for every situation and it takes a day or two to prepare. You have to find out, beforehand, what types of scenes are going to be recorded in order to be prepared. If, for instance, they’re going to have walk and talk scenes, a run and gun situation, sit-down interviews, etc. You have to take the right amount of wireless, directional mics and windscreens. It’s also important to find out the camera models, frame rates, and the amount of cameras the production is going to use. You’ll have to have enough sync boxes to place on every camera. So you have to have some information. And you have to test everything before getting to the set.

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MT: So thinking of a scene being shot where you’re having a multitude of camera angles. For example, you’ve got wides and you want dialogue, you can have lavaliers on the characters, but then no boom. Are there any tips possibly about that? JA:

I’d rely heavily on the lavaliers but I’d also have the boom mic recording from a distance, in order to create the sense of space.

MT: How do you feel as a sound recordist when it comes to some of the techniques being used today? I’m thinking about the recent controversy about the Anthony Bourdain project and the edit of the voice. JA:

I find it interesting.

MT: Are there some things that you’ve been asked to do ethically that’s made you uncomfortable? JA:

Like for instance when the subjects are wired and don’t know they’re being recorded? I understand that those sounds can be important but I always feel uncomfortable doing that. Of course I’ll do it if I’m asked. I’m a professional and I understand how films are built, so I record them. It’s for the producer/director to decide later if they are going to use those lines or not. It’s a fact that people tend to relax more when cameras are not on their faces and that, after a while, they forget they’re wired and what they say at those moments can be crucial.

MT: I feel ethically ok if they know they’ve been wired. Unless they ask specifically if it’s being recorded and they don’t want it recorded. But if they haven’t asked for it not to be recorded then I feel it’s ethically okay. JA:

I think so too. Or what about when the sound guy has to wear a microphone and walk between people trying to record their conversation secretly? Or recording phone calls when the person on the other side of the phone doesn’t know he/she is being recorded?

MT: We have laws about phone calls in the United States; I know they change from state to state and it is complicated but there are privacy laws. JA:

Those kinds of recordings don’t happen everyday.

MT: I work with the amazing lawyers called Donaldson, Callif, and Perez. They quite often talk about privacy issues and although filmmakers aren’t journalists, there are certain ethics that we need to follow because we could be sued, and ethically, we should be thinking about what is right for the industry and our characters.

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Are there any films you particularly worked on that you’ve been really proud of the sound you’ve been able to capture that has created an amazing scene? JA:

I’ve worked on more than a hundred projects. It would be hard to list them all. Working as a sound recordist, like in every profession, experience plays a big role. In wiring people, for instance, the more you do, the more nuances you learn, i.e. where to place the mics on the characters and problems that certain clothing material can cause. Or other situations like recording a conference, where you don’t have much time to set up or the ability to plug in to the sound system that the location is using. You’ll have to quickly decide who’s going to be wired or on what side of the long table should the wired character be seated. In that situation it’s good to have the wired characters in areas where reaching with the boom is difficult. Of course, you should always wire the main speaker.

MT: Yep, those multi-character scenes. JA:

Another complicating factor is that the sound person, in a lot of situations isn’t given enough time to set up. We have to wait for camera and lighting first and they usually get ready very close to the start time. What you can do is to prepare your gear, while the lighting process is taking place and be ready when you’re allowed to set up. In small crews, I also try to help the camera team. It’s good on set politics.

MT: It’s more democratic on documentaries isn’t it, on fiction sets there are often union rules about not being able to touch other departments equipment. How far have you pushed it with how many mics you’ve used for a scene? JA:

I worked on a film called Lunch Break directed by Sharon Lockhart, about workers having lunch breaks in factories in Maine. So needless to say I was recording their conversations and activities during lunchtime. The film used a lot of camera movements, dollies etc which would move around and between workers, through long corridors and everything. The objective for sound was to record and create a soundscape of this particular environment. In order to do that another mixer and I placed mics in the different areas where the camera would pass by. We wired people and also hid the mics in the furniture and we’d also record the scene with a stereo mic from the edge of the set. We used close to ten mics. Usually with big groups, say sound for parties, I go around recording different conversations with a boom mic, which are later mixed to create a party atmosphere. With the new multi-track digital machines we can also record a scratch mix track on location, which can sometimes end up in the final edit.

MT: Scratch tracks are usually temporary so that’s a great compliment to your recording and mixing. I remember working with one sound recordist and

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being out, literally in the field in Alaska, and having to hike with the character. What could be some tips to make the equipment lighter especially in regards to the sound mixer? JA:

The best would be to have a small package, which is really never small. If you’re working with a character, say climbing a mountain, you’ll still have to take the recorder/mixer, the boom mic, and a couple of receivers: one for the character you’re climbing with, plus an extra, in case of a situation where you’ll have to mic another person, on the way, or if the first wireless being used by the climber fails. We’d also have to carry spare batteries and other necessary accessories. The sound bag is still heavy.

MT: We’re always told boom is best, right? JA:

Sure, the boom should always be the best sound but, because in a vérité situation, sometimes, you can’t get close to the subject with the boom, so it’s best to have the character wired as well. So, the package I mentioned is still the one. People tend to think of sound, effects, and music, only during the editing. I understand because sometimes when you do docs, you begin with the idea, a concept, and then you start shooting.

MT: That’s very true. JA:

The directors, after their first rough cut, start to think more of sound.

MT: Yeah, at least at the point of having a first few sample scenes cut, right? Adding sound helps you work out how you’re telling your story. It can make such a tonal difference to how a scene should be viewed. I sometimes get my students to try non-diegetic sound (i.e., sound not from the film but added to it) that they’ve found in an archive library to feel how the intention of the scene changes once it’s placed in the scene. JA:

I come from a rural area and I got my early education at a Catholic seminary. I think when you grow up with a lot of silence in the school like that, when there are only a few hours a day where you can talk, then you maybe see the world or listen to the world in a different way. I think this is what made me a sound man. It’s important to go out and just listen.

MT: I love that an hour and a half into our conversation I learn this about you. I’m a big optimist and the world is becoming smaller, but also more divisive in many ways. What have been some challenges and some positives coming from a different language culture and working in the states? And is there anything inspirational you can offer to other Latin filmmakers or sound people?

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My cultural background was helpful in certain situations. For example, when I worked on a project about voodoo in Haiti, I understood it well because of my background. I grew up in Brazil around a lot of religions, including African-based ones. And by being of Latin origin in the United States helps when working on projects related to the community. I’ve also been hired to work on certain projects because of the languages I speak. Certain projects need specific crews.

MT: And you’re adding that extra dimension of safety and trust as well. JA:

Exactly, especially for wiring people. Speaking the language of the characters helps a lot.

MT: You could be in a situation where women could be talking about traumatic experiences, it could trigger them so I also remind people to make sure to ask before you touch anyone before putting a mic on them. Any last points you want to leave people with? JA:

Sound is crucial in storytelling. It’s sometimes complementary to the images but in other times sound is everything. Give enough space and time to sound and don’t forget the room tone.

MT: When I’m running at 150% I really rely on my sound person to say, okay, we need to capture room tone. JA:

It’s the role of the sound recordists to say that. Rely on them.

ADDENDUM—FILM LIST BY STYLE AND GENRE

Style (will also have a genre but a film will be listed only once) Filmmaker Legend: BIPOC +, LGBTQIA+ *, Foreign -, Disability °

STYLE Archive Adam Curtis films Attica + The Donner Party Fire of Love God Knows Where I am I Am Not Your Negro + The Kid Stays in the Picture Our Nixon Room 237 Teenage The Velvet Underground The Weather Underground

Docudrama/Hybrid Documentaries Using Recreations Exit Through the Giftshop The Imposter Kate Plays Christine Misha and the Wolves Project Nim

Addendum—Film List by Style and Genre 179

Social Dilemma Three Identical Strangers

Essay The Corporation Encounters at the End of the Earth Hottest August The House I Live in In Transit + Helvetica Master: A Building in Copacabana Nostalgia for the Light The Reason I Jump °

Experimental (please also see hybrid/docudrama) 308 Hollywood + The Act of Killing The Arbor Chronicles of a Summer Dick Johnson Is Dead * Edge of Dreaming Wisconsin Death Trap

Interview-Led Client 9 Fauci Gideon’s Army + Listening To Kenny G One Cut, One Life The Gleaners Trapped +

Observational Collective Cutie and the Boxer + Honeyland Mr Bachman and His Class Sweetgrass

180 Addendum—Film List by Style and Genre

The Work + Through the Night + The Truffle Hunters -

Performative (see also Personal) Dear Zachary Faces Places Hooligans Sparrow + Louis Theroux series Paper and Glue Sherman’s March

Plot-Based American Factory Babushkas of Chernobyl Storm Lake The Thin Blue Line Wildwood New Jersey The Work +

Poetic Ascension + Faya Dayi + Koyaanisqatsi Manufactured Landscapes Samsara Time +

GENRES (again there are many films that are multi-genre but we will list the film once) Action and Adventure Big Men + Big River Man Cartel Land Free Solo Touching the Void

Addendum—Film List by Style and Genre 181

Activism Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry Blackfish The Garden Gasland We Are Russia -

Animal and Mollusk (Natural History) Buck Blue Planet Grizzly Man Gunda Kedi March of the Penguins My Octopus Teacher Taming The Garden Virunga

Animation Eternal Spring + Flee * Persepolis Waltz With Bashir

BIPOC 13th The Eagle Huntress Freeman Hale County This Morning This Evening I am Not Your Negro The Infiltrators Maineland Malni - Towards the Ocean, Towards the Shore Maralinga Tjarutja River Changes Course Strong Island Summer Pasture

182 Addendum—Film List by Style and Genre

Children and Teens Anbessa Garbage Dreams Minding the Gap + Only the Young Racing Dreams Rich Hill Spell Bound Tchoupitoulas +

Classic Documentaries Don’t Look Back Gimme Shelter Grey Gardens Harlan County, USA

Competition Hands on a Hard Body Icarus Kings of Pastry Murderball ° Spellbound

Courtroom Drama Amanda Knox Gideon’s Army + Paradise Lost Trilogy The Staircase (series)

Crime and Political Drama—Series Don’t F**k with Cats Fourth Estate The Jinx Making a Murderer * Philly DA

Addendum—Film List by Style and Genre 183

Disabled Crip Camp Horseboy Life Animated Notes on Blindness Sound and Fury

Economic Injustice Born into Brothels + Dark Days Life of Ivanna + Overnighters * Princess Shaw + The Pushouts +* Sicko

Elderly Herb and Dorothy + Please Remember Me Some Kind of Heaven The Way We Get by

Environmental An Inconvenient Truth Circle of Poison Crude + If a Tree Falls Musicwood +

Family Drama (not to be confused with films for the family) Brother’s Keeper Capturing the Friedmans The Devil Never Sleeps + Stories We Tell Tarnation * Toto and His Sisters Wolfpack

184 Addendum—Film List by Style and Genre

Fight the Power Citizen Four Crime and Punishment * Enron The Fight The Invisible War

Food/Cooking Bananas!* Jiro Dreams of Sushi + Julia King of Corn

Heists and Conmen American Animals The Last Leonardo Man on Wire The Painter and the Thief Sour Grapes +

Human Rights 5 Broken Cameras Fire at Sea Island of Hungry Ghosts The Road to Guantanamo

Humorous The Amazing Jonathan American Movie Anvil King of Kong Neutral Ground + Overnight Winnebago Man

Addendum—Film List by Style and Genre 185

Illness or Disease How to Die in Oregon Mommy Dead and Dearest My Beautiful Broken Brain Pruning Season Thank You and Good Night Unrest

Investigative Bowling for Columbine Catphish Inside Job No End in Sight Tickled *

LGBTQIA+ How to Survive a Plague Marwencol Memories of a Penitent Heart * My Name Is Pauli Murray * Real Boy The Times of Harvey Milk Welcome to Chechnya

Music Amy + Billie Eilish The Defiant Ones (series, but what the heck) Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck MIA Musicwood Searching for Sugarman Summer of Soul + Tina What Happened Miss Simone

186 Addendum—Film List by Style and Genre

Personal Films 51 Birch Street Beba Edge of Democracy Shirkers + Stories We Tell Thank You and Good Night Time Indefinite

Political Citizen Four Fahrenheit 9/11 Get Me Roger Stone * Knock Down the House RBG Street Fight Travels with George

Portraits/Biopic Iris The Queen of Versailles The Salt of the Earth Weiner Won’t You Be My Neighbor

Religion Going Clear One of Us Rebel Hearts

Shorts (there are many many short films, here are some my favorites) 4.1 miles Edith and Edie + Extremis Heroin(e)

Addendum—Film List by Style and Genre 187

Hotel 22 Lost and Found The Martha Mitchell Effect The Mute’s House The Trader -

Sports Crash Reel Hoop Dreams Murderball ° Senna + Speed Sisters Word Play

Thriller Enemies of the State Man on Wire The Mole Agent One Day in September

War The Cave The Fog of War The Kill Team Of Father and Son + The Other Side of Everything The Pat Tillman Story Winter on Fire -

Women’s Rights After Tiller Hunting Ground Maiden To Kid or Not to Kid Vessel Writing with Fire

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to the panel of trusted professors, editors, festival programmers, and filmmakers (both documentary and fiction) who reviewed my introduction and film chapters to ensure my argument was sound and my reasoning thorough: Lynn True, Joe Arcidiacono, Randy Dottin, Dawn Smallman, Theresa Loong, Julie Bridgman, Ben Cohen, Ron Kopp, Malikkah Rollins, and Kat Vecchio. Your insight was invaluable; thank you for generously offering your time. A special thank you to Dawn Valadez, for not only reviewing chapters but also my film list and making sure consequential Latinx films were brought to my attention to watch. Thank you to the Kanopy service for selecting the film titles in your library, as many brilliant films aren’t picked up by TV or streaming services. To my lawyer Chris Perez who has advised me on my own films, and check out our chapter that we wrote together in my last book on Fair Use; I couldn’t make my films confidently without his advice. The author and documentary professor Michael Rabiger, who I have never met but whose books inspired me when I began my own filmmaking journey. I used interviews and articles as research for each chapter, and I want to thank those writers and outlets for celebrating these documentary films: Pro Video coalition, Film School Radio by Mike Kasper, Filmmaker Magazine, Indiewire, Lincoln Center, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Radio station KPW, and so many more. I want to thank every film festival that has screened our documentary films, to those who have supported and funded our work, and every organization who holds panels and industry events, please continue this important work. A special thanks to Alison Green, the Vanderrusten family and Jess and Jonathan Roscoe. I want to thank especially every filmmaker in this book that gave their time so generously. I enjoyed and learnt so much from every enlightening conversation; we could have talked for hours. To my students (and clients) who keep me learning

Acknowledgments

189

and encourage me on my own filmmaking journey. Simplifying this book into a casual conversation was important for it to work as a practical guide and I hope that many of you walk away feeling more confident in your creative abilities after reading the chapters. To my many interns who have contributed to all of my films, making them possible. Nick Kochman, who corrected my spelling mistakes and read some of these chapters. To all documentary lovers, the audiences of our films, those that commission, stream and broadcast our films: thank you for watching and seeking out our work. Thank you to the team at Taylor & Francis/Routledge for recognizing the need for more documentary books and my friend Bruce Sheridan, who gave me the initial encouragement in the first place. Paula Bernstein, thank you for always answering my emails even though we’ve never met. To the others in my career who gave me support, opportunities or introductions: Marshall Curry, Matt Hamachek, Liz Nord, Thom Powers, Rapheala Neihausen, Rachel Seed, and the wonderful women of Film Fatales. Jill Campbell especially for your retreat. NYFA faculty led by Andrea Swift, teaching for Sundance and volunteering for Filmshop all made me a better filmmaker and firm friends. My late cat, Oscar Wild, who kept me company throughout the writing of this book. Both he and my husband lost me to the documentary world for a while, a world I love almost as much as them. Josh Granger, thank you for your wholehearted support. I couldn’t have gotten here without you, you are my editor in life and work, I owe you a debt of love and thanks. And for those that need help with your films do get in contact; find my website at helpfilms.com. And thank you for reading.

INDEX

Abortion 40–41, 44 Act of Killing, The 53 Action films 12, 16, 180 Activism films 181 Adventure films 180 After Tiller 40 America 19 American Factory 19 American Movie 53 Amy 10, 93–94 Animal films 181 Animation 8, 181 Anthropology 146 Anvil 53 AOC. See Cortez, Alexandria Ocasio Araujo, Jose 164–177 Arbor, The 53 Archive style/films: description of 10; list of 94, 178; RBG 92–111; Time 6, 63, 72–91 Aristotle 3 Ascension 7, 73, 80–81 Assange, Julian 68 Attenborough, David 113 Attica 6, 11, 40, 73 Audio 10 Audio diaries 10 Avatar 118 Babushkas of Chernobyl, The 19 Bader Ginsburg, Ruth 93–94 Bangerter, Nels 60

Bar-Lev, Amir 73, 75 Barnouw, Eric 12, 15 Baskin, Carole 165 Beba 6, 40, 53, 73 Bello, Francisco 76–77 Biopics 186 BIPOC films 15, 39–40, 181 Birds of Passage 146 Bitter Lake 94 Blackfish 165 Blue Planet 113 Bonn, Scott 16 Boys State 130 Bradley, Garrett 6, 72–75, 76–91 Brazil 172 Brexit 151 Buck 113, 167 Bush, Cori 133, 135 Cameraperson 50–51, 53, 60, 65–67 Cartel Land 16, 54, 77, 161 Case Against Adnan Syed, The 167 “Cause-and-effect linearity,” 74 Cause dramas: description of 14–15, 39–51; Time 72–91; Trapped 7, 39–51, 63, 166 Chaiklin, Rebecca 165 Chandler, Daniel 13 Character-led films: description of 10; Knock Down the House 129–147; Time 72–91 Cheer 5, 167

Index

Chevigny, Katie 60, 64 Children and teen films 182 Chile 172 Chronicle of a Summer 11 Cinema Novo 172 City of Ghosts 161 Classic documentaries 182 Clinton, Bill 108 Cohen, Julie 94, 102 Collective 12, 15, 19, 62–63, 148–163 Comedy genre 52 Competition films/genre: description of 15; Knock Down the House 63, 129–147; list of 182 Control Room 76 Corman, Roger 167 Cortez, Alexandria Ocasio 131–132, 135–137, 139, 142–143 Courtroom dramas 182 Coutinho, Eduardo 172 Cragg, George 161 Crime and Punishment 19 Crime dramas: description of 15–16; list of 182; Tiger King 63, 164–177 Curry, Marshall 107 Cutie and the Boxer 149 Dear Zachary 53 Descriptive genres 13 Dick, Kirkby 68 Dick Johnson Is Dead 5, 52–71, 166–167 Disabled films 15, 183 Docudrama 9, 178–179 Documentaries: genres of. See Genre(s): music 10; narratives versus 2; styles of. See Style Documentary: A History of the Non-fiction Film 12 Donaldson, Callif, and Perez 174 Donner Party, The 92 Don’t F**k With Cats 16, 165 Drama: cause. See Cause dramas: crime. See Crime dramas: family 14, 183; plotbased 10; political 182 Du Maurier 3 Dweck, Michael 17, 20, 21–38 Eagle Huntress 113 Economic injustice films 183 Ehrlich, Pippa 2, 112–128 Elderly films 183 Enemies of the State 149 Environmental films 183

191

Essay films 11, 179 Essay style 11 Ethnographic film 146 Exotic, Joe 165, 168–170 Experiential live films 8, 53 Experimental style: description of 9, 179; Time 6, 63, 72–91 Extractive/ethical filmmaking 69–70, 85, 146 Fairytale genre 17 Family drama 14, 183 Farahi, Hermon 143 Fauci 93, 95, 167 Faya Dayi 6, 73 Fiction, genres in 12, 14 Fight the power films 184 Finders Keepers 53 Fire of Love 10 First Wave, The 73, 76–77, 85 Food/cooking films 184 Ford, Yance 6 Foster, Craig 114–128 Fourth Estate, The 95 Freeman, Isabel 6 Freeman, Morgan 113 French New Wave 172 Fyre Festival 19 Garbus, Liz 95 Genre(s): BIPOC 15, 39–40; cause drama 14–15, 39–51; comedy 52; descriptive 13; documentary 12; fairytale 17; fiction 12, 14; films by 180–187; natural history 16, 112–128; personal 52–53; portrait 92–93; prescriptive 13; reasons for studying 12–16; scenes affected by 13; social issue 39 Gideon’s Army 40–41, 43, 47–48 Gondola, Carlo 30, 33 Goode, Eric 165, 167, 171 Green Mile, The 119 Grey Gardens 18 Grizzly Man 113 Groning, Philip 172 Guèbrou, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam 90 Guerra, Mirko 30 Guglielmino, Letizia 27 Hale County This Morning This Evening 40 Hamachek, Matt 77 Hand That Feeds, The 132, 146 Hands on a Hard Body 53 HBO 41

192 Index

Heineman, Matthew 16, 54, 73, 76–77, 90, 161 Heists and conmen films 184 Hertzog, Werner 10 Honeyland 5, 9, 19, 106, 149 Hooligan Sparrow 53 Hopkins, Anthony 57 Horner, Pete 60, 166–167 Horrocks, Roger 114–115, 119–121 House I Live In, The 73 Human rights films 184 Humor 53, 184 Hybrid/experimental style and films: description of 9; Dick Johnson Is Dead 5, 52–71, 166–167; list of 53, 178–179 I Am Not Your Negro 40, 93 Illness films 185 Immersive films 8, 53 Incarceration films 72–73 Inciting incident 5 Indiewire 74 Interview-led style/films: description of 11; Knock Down the House 129–147; list of 179; RBG 92–111; Tiger King 63, 164–177; Trapped 7, 39–51, 63, 166 Into Great Silence 172 Investigative films/genre: Collective 12, 15, 19, 62–63, 148–163; description of 15; list of 185 Investigative journalism 56 Invisible War, The 19, 40 Jackass 60 Jinx, The 165, 172 John Lewis: Good Trouble 41 Johnson, Kirsten 5, 50–51, 52–71, 166 Journalism 56 Julia 93, 95, 167 Kapadia, Asif 10, 41 Karp, Judy 166 Kate Plays Christine 53 Kedi 6, 113 Kershaw, Gregory 17, 19–20, 22–38 King of Kong 53 Kingdon, Jessica 7 Kings of Pastry 5, 130 Knock Down the House 63, 129–147 Krawitz, Jan 79

Landscapes of Memory 172 Last Race, The 22 Lears, Rachel 129–147 Lewis, John 41 LGBTQIA+ films 15, 52, 185 Linear storytelling 80 Lockhart, Sharon 175 Longitudinal films 8 Love Fraud 165 Lunch Break 175 Mad Hot Ballroom 107 Making a Murderer 16, 165 Man on Wire 118, 149 Manufactured Landscapes 73 March of the Penguins 113 Maysles brothers 18 McElwee, Ross 78–79 Me You Can’t See, The 41 Memories of a Penitent Heart 53, 94 Mental health 41 MIA 74, 78 Millard, Lucas 111 Minding the Gap 40 Modes 8 Mole Agent, The 149 Montage of Heck 10 Moore, Michael 58, 68 Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, The 172 Mountain films 12 Mr Bachman and His Class 149 Murch, Walter 87 Murderball 130 Music 185 Music documentaries 10 Music editor 91 Musicwood 13 My Kid Could Paint That 76 My Name Is Pauli Murray 93, 95 My Octopus Teacher 2, 16, 63, 112–128 Nanau, Alexander 12, 15, 62, 148–163 National Geographic 165 Natural history genre: description of 16; My Octopus Teacher 2, 16, 63, 112–128 Nelson, Stanley 6 Ness, Marilyn 60, 64 Netflix 41, 61, 117–118, 164–165 New York Times, The 95 Nichols, Bill 8 Non-diegetic sound 176 Non-extractive filmmaking 146

Index

Non-linear storytelling 9 Notes on Blindness 10 Obama, Barack 41 Observational style/films: Collective 12, 15, 19, 62–63, 148–163; description of 9, 15; Knock Down the House 129–147; list of 179–180; Tiger King 63, 164–177; Trapped 7, 39–51, 63, 166; Truffle Hunters 2, 5–6, 17–38, 63, 149, 166 Oliver, John 44 One Day in September 149 Other Side of Everything, The 53 Our Nixon 94 Overnighters, The 53 Participatory films 9 PBS 41 Performative style/films: description of 10; Dick Johnson Is Dead 5, 52–71, 166–167; list of 180; Tiger King 63, 164–177 Personal films 52–53, 186 Philly DA 165 Picasso, Pablo 6 Plot-based dramas: description of 10, 19; list of 180; Truffle Hunters 2, 5–6, 17–38, 63, 149, 166 Poetic films: description of 9–10, 73; list of 180; Time 72–91 Poitras, Laura 68 Political dramas 182, 186 Porter, Dawn 7, 39–51 Portillo, Lourdes 172 Portrait genre 92–93, 186 Prescriptive genres 13 Project Nim 113, 118 Promise of My Brother’s Keeper, The 41 Prosecutor genre 15 Qatsi Trilogy 73, 80 Rabinger, Michael 3 Racing Dreams 107, 130 Raschke, Claudia 92–111 RBG 63, 92–111 Reaction formation 61 Reed, James 114, 117, 125 Religion films 186 Reporter genre 15 Rhodes, Gabriel 6, 72–91 Rich Hill 13 Richardson, Sibil “Fox Rich,” 73–74, 82 Rilke 6

193

Road to Guantanamo, The 73 Roe v. Wade 41 Romania 148–163 Ryan, Maureen 60, 64 Sampliner, David 143 Samurai films 12 Save the Cat 12 Scalia, Antonin 108 Scenes: in archive style 93, 97, 100–108, 110–111; changes in 3; in character-led style 73, 76, 79–91; in Collective 150–154, 156–163; in competition genre 130–131, 134–135, 137–143, 146; in crime dramas 167, 169–176; description of 2–7; in Dick Johnson Is Dead 53–71; fantasy 55; feelings associated with 3; genre effects on 13; in hybrid style 53–71; in interview-led style 40–51; in investigative genre 150–154, 156–163; in Knock Down the House 130–131, 134–135, 137–143, 146; lighting 18; as location specific 3; in My Octopus Teacher 113–114, 118–126, 128; in natural history genre 113–114, 118–126, 128; observational 150; in observational style 20–38; in performative style 53–71; in poetic style 73, 76, 79–91; in RBG 93, 97, 100–108, 110–111; story beats and 3–4, 6; tension in 4; in Tiger King 167, 169–176; in Time 73, 76, 79–91; tones of 5; in Trapped 40–51; in Truffle Hunters 20–38 Schwalm, Dan 117 Science fiction 12 Scratch tracks 176 Senna 10, 94, 130 Shakespeare 3 Shirkers 53 Shorts 186–187 Shuhari 6 Smith, Kevin 167 Social issue genre 39, 72 Social justice documentary 74 Some Kind of Heaven 13 Sorkin, Aaron 3 Souza, Pete 41 Sports films 187 Sports Gazette 149–150, 153 Spotlight 151 Staircase, The 16, 165 Steig, William 68 Stories We Tell 94

194 Index

Story beats 2–5 Strang, Matia 30–31 Strong Island 6, 40, 53, 94 Style: archive. See Archive style: essay 11; hybrid/experimental 9, 178–179; interview-led. See Interview-led style: observational 9: performative. See Performative style: plot-based dramas 10: poetic 9–10; reasons for studying 7 Sundance Film Festival 41, 45 Swearengin, Paula Jean 135 Sweetest Sound, The 53 Sweetgrass 149 Synder, Blake 12 Tchoupitoulas 53 Teague, David 136, 141 Tension 4–5 Territory, The 9 Third Man, The 151 13th 11, 73 32 Sounds 53 Three-act structure 4, 6 306 Hollywood 53 Thrillers 187 Through a Lens Darkly 40 Through the Night 149 Tickled 53, 130 Tiger King 63, 164–177 Tillman Story, The 73, 75, 77 Time 6, 63, 72–91 Time Indefinite 78 Tina 11, 93 To Kid or Not to Kid 40 To the End 146 Toto and His Sisters 149, 155 Toy Story 167

Trapped 7, 39–51, 63, 166 Truffle Hunters 2, 5–6, 17–38, 63, 149, 166 Turning points 5 Urata, Steven 30 Velvet Underground, The 10, 93 Vérité style 9, 18, 76, 105–106, 143–144, 173 Vessel 40 Vilela, Amy 134, 141 Virginia Military Institute 105 Visual anthropology 146 VR films 8, 53 Wakayama, JP 59 War films 187 Way I See It, The 41 Welcome to Chechnya 53 Wenders, Wim 172 West, Betsy 94, 102 Westerns 12 Whale Rider 118–119 What Happened, Miss Simone? 93 Wilkinson, Amber 151 Windemuth, Ellen 117 Winfrey, Oprah 113 Winged Migration 113 Winslet, Kate 141 Wisconsin Death Trap 53, 118 Women’s rights films 39–51, 104, 187 Won’t You Be My Neighbor 50 Work, The 19, 73 Writing With Fire 40 Zieff, David 76 Zikking, Andrew 125