"Creating Relationships With People"

I'm a bit of camera nerd and also a fan of Chicago-based Kartemquin Films.   Here's a short piece that feeds both interest.  

Kartemquin co-founder Gordon Quinn describes their first camera rig and the modifications they implemented in order to cut the tether from the camera to the audio recorder.  Quinn explains: "You wanted to be able to set the camera down and be like a human being with the people we were dealing with. Because a lot of what we were doing was creating relationships with people."



Camera #1 from Kartemquin Films on Vimeo.

It goes without saying that shooting in remote locations in those days was a formidable and expensive undertaking.  It also speaks to the passion and humanity the folks at Kartemquin bring to the craft.

Herzog On Blank

Here are 3 minutes from director Werner Herzog on the late, great documentarian, Les Blank. Blank directed Burden of Dreams, the documentary on the production of Herzog's Fitzcarraldo.

Les Blank (1935–2013)

Acclaimed documentary filmmaker, Les Blank passed away yesterday. Here's the opening clip from his classic film, The Blues Accordin' To Lightnin' Hopkins.

RIP

Doc Editing Book - Now FREE!

That's right.

Karen Everett of New Doc Editing published an eBook a while back on documentary editing, Documentary Editing. Here's my review.



Now that book is free to download. Check it out.

While you're at it, please look at the services offered by New Doc Editing. Karen offers an array of services to documentary filmmakers. She's a supportive teacher and a gifted story consultant.

"Why documentaries matter"

In this recent article published in the Guardian, Nick Fraser, series editor of Storyville on BBC4 considers the future of documentary.

Fraser writes: "Will these documentaries – low budget, clever, appealing to small, passionate audiences – be adequately funded in the squeeze on television budgets? I'm starting to worry. I'd like to know how their independent spirit can be conserved and nurtured.

In the meantime, let me suggest a way in which we might start to think about documentaries. Of the current manifestations of contemporary culture, which would you choose to preserve? Thought of as an app, documentaries wouldn't make it. They have no real cultural recognition. They will always be seen as part of something else – film, television, journalism, even real life. But you would miss them if they went. My hunch is that you would miss them very much."

Great Interview Advice

Interviewing people for a video can be tricky. There's nothing more frustrating than editing an interview only to discover that a sound bite doesn't work.

In the course of normal conversation, most people don't speak in complete sentences. We often offer one-word answers. However can create a huge problem. During editing the voice of the interviewer is typically removed leaving only cryptic and unworkable one-word answers. Ouch.


To combat this, interview subjects are often coached to speak in complete sentences. This works sometimes, but too often it makes the subject self-conscious and screws up the flow of the interview. In short, your subject may start to dwell on how they're speaking instead of thinking about what they're saying.

At the New Doc Editing blog, Karen Everett offers some great advice:

"The key is to avoiding this situation to frame your question with certain opening phrases that will force your subject to give full sentence responses.

For example, if I asked you what color your car is, and you reply 'blue', that’s not a very helpful soundbite to use in the edit room. But if I asked you to 'Describe the color and make of the car in your driveway?' you’re more likely to say something to the effect of, 'It’s a light gray Honda Prius.'

I credit my colleague, PBS filmmaker Jon Else, with these interview tips. Try framing your questions with one of the following opening phrases:

• 'Describe such and such…'
• 'Explain such and such…'
• 'Tell me about such and such…'

Use one of these opening phrases and watch your interview come alive with full-bodied answers that will stand on their own in your script."

You can read the full post here.

Book Review ~ "Documentary Editing"

While the video industry provides a constant stream of new and improved production gadgets, cameras and software, little attention is paid to the craft of storytelling. The new eBook, Documentary Editing by Karen Everett makes a welcome contribution to this often ignored area.

Addressing documentary story structure Everett writes: "A story, in the screenwriter’s sense of the word, is not a profile (for example, a film about an eccentric uncle who farms nuts), a condition (human rights abuses in Haiti), a phenomenon (the popularity of multi-player video games), or a point of view (Social Security should be privatized). Robert McKee defines story as 'the great sweep of change that takes life from one condition at the opening to a changed condition at the end.'"

While the book is a useful text in its own right, Documentary Editing might better be referred to as a workbook. Everett leads the reader through a number of exercises to help craft and hone the structure of a documentary story. And since the book is delivered as an Adobe PDF, the reader is able to type directly into the included work forms. The eBook also includes embedded links to a number useful Internet resources.

The book also includes a discussion of the trend of funders to favor of character driven documentaries. This type of film has grown in prominence due in part to the reluctance of funders to underwrite vérité works which rely on the process of discovery to tell stories.

Everett writes: "the dramatic arc of a vérité film, in which life is recorded as it unfolds, is understandably difficult to predict. Filmmaker Fredrick Wiseman probably did not write a detailed, three act treatment for Titticut Follies (1967). Likewise, the Maysles brothers couldn’t have foreseen the dramatic arc of Salesman (1969) before filming. Sadly, these grand experiments in cinema verité would most likely not get funded today."

Documentary Editing also reviews essay style documentaries, three act structure, iring an editor and story consultant as well as producing a trailer. And while the book focuses on story structure, it also details the documentary editing process from logging to rough cut to finished film. Proper and improper cutting techniques are also reviewed.

Documentary Editing is an obvious choice for anyone interested in documentary film production. Here's a link to order the book. Don't miss the opportunity to browse all of the resources available at Karen Everett's web site, New Doc Editing.

The Murder of Fred Hampton

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark by the Chicago Police Department and the FBI.

Filmmakers Mike Gray and Howard Alk arrived at the crime scene a few hours after the massacre to document the scene. Their footage disproved official police testimony and newspaper accounts which portrayed the raid as a "shootout" with the Black Panthers when in fact it was nothing short of a deliberate execution.

This footage was incorporated into their documentary, The Murder Of Fred Hampton, which is available in a newly restored version on DVD. Here's the lower resolution online version:





The police involved in the raid, State's Attorney Hanrahan and the FBI officials involved in the conspiracy against the Black Panthers were never brought to justice. However, survivors and the families of the deceased eventually won a civil law suit more than a decade after the murders thanks to the diligent efforts of the People's Law Office in Chicago.



One of the lead attorneys, Jeffrey Haas, has recently written a book on the case, The Assassination of Fred Hampton. It's a great read and much-needed reminder of the consequences of unbridled government power which is as relevant today as it was in 1969.

Somebody Shoot Me

John Huston was a talented actor and Oscar-winning filmmaker who directed 47 films. While well-remembered for Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Prizzi's Honor, Huston also served in the U.S. Army during WWII and made three war documentaries for the Photographic Division of the Army Signal Corps.

Typically Hollywood personnel were enlisted to produce propaganda for the U.S. government. However Huston chose to show the horrors of war and its long-term consequences. It's not surprising that Huston's war films were not appreciated by U.S. military leaders. Recounting a screening for the brass, Huston said: ''I remember the ranking officer rising around a third of the way through and leaving the theater. And when he was gone, the next-ranking officer rose and he left. And so they went, one after the other, until I was alone in the room.''

Midge Mackenzie wrote for the NY Times, "two of the three films Huston was to make were never shown, suppressed by the military because the images of broken bodies and stumbling, shell-shocked soldiers told a different story: that in war, everybody loses."

These films were finally declassified in the 1970's and are now freely available via Archive.org.

Let There Be Light, 1946

The Battle of San Pietro, 1945

Huston said that "If I ever do a movie that glorifies war, somebody shoot me".

Free Video Training From FourDocs

FourDocs is the online documentary channel from Channel 4 in Great Britain. As part of its mission, FourDocs devotes a a portion of the site to documentary video training. I spend quite a bit of time looking at free video training resources and this is among the best.


One could easily spend hours working through the wide range of online tutorials there. They cover the gamut; from planning to budget to documentary film history, with plenty of technical tutorials on directing, shooting, and editing.

Although there are many of technical tutorials available online, FourDocs takes great care to wed technique to storytelling. Check it out.

Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction

Here's a great book to check out, particularly if you're new to documentary film and want to learn more about its history and sub-genres. Film critic Patricia Aufderheide's Documentary Film: A Very Short History lives up to its title while providing a useful overview.



To help define documentary, Aufderheide writes: "A simple answer might be: a movie about real life. And that is precisely the problem: documentaries are about life; they are not real life. They are not even windows onto real life. They are portraits of real life, using real life as their raw material, constructed by artists and technicians who make myriad decisions about what story to tell to whom, and for what purpose."

By briefly cataloging the wide range of films that all fall within the documentary genre, she helps refute some of the the criticisms typically issued by right-wing pundits at contemporary documentary releases. Filmmakers like Michael Moore are often under fire for a perceived lack of objectivity or neutrality, but as Aufderheide reminds us, "Broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow once said, 'Anyone who believes that every individual film must represent a 'balanced' picture knows nothing about either balance or pictures.'"

Happy May Day

I can't let May Day pass without notice. Here's the trailer to Peter Miller's 2000 documentary film, The Internationale. The film explores how the legendary song became a rallying cry for oppressed groups around the globe





You can buy the film or rent the DVD or watch on line at Netflix.

More on "The Ken Burns Effect"

Here's a follow up to an earlier post on the "Ken Burns Effect". Documentary filmmaker, Eric Breitbart offers thoughtful criticism of the films of Ken and Ric Burns in the New England Review.

Breitbart's essay also indicts PBS's predilection for "a cinema of reassurance that provides a temporary safe haven in a troubled, uncertain, culturally incoherent world."

"Documentaries often challenge conventional wisdom in a way that's unsettling or provocative, but you're not likely to find yourself anxious or upset after watching a Burns documentary; the experience is like eating a good, satisfying turkey dinner . . . sometimes even more than one. Of course, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with films that don't challenge any prevailing assumptions. The problem is that, over the past fifteen years, this style of safe, expensive, non-challenging filmmaking has imposed itself as the only way high-end public television documentaries are to be made—particularly those funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities or the National Endowment for the Arts, the main funding sources for cultural and historical programs destined for PBS."

Breitbart provides damning evidence of the departure of public broadcasting from its original mission as outlined by the Carnegie Commission in 1967 to provide a "forum for debate and controversy" and a "voice for groups in the community that may otherwise be unheard". While there are notable examples of local public broadcasting productions which embrace that mandate (albeit typically smaller stations), those producers can only dream of having the production resources enjoyed by the brothers Burns.