David Tamés: How did you get involved with Septentrional in the first place?

Whitney Dow: I got involved with Haiti because a friend of mine, Jane Regan, who is also one of the producers on the project. She lived there for a dozen years, and she and her partner, Danny Morel, who’s also a producer on the project, had come to me after the fall of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and they had all this footage. They had traveled with the Cannibal Army and wanted to know if we could develop some films together.

Tamés: What films did you develop?

Dow: We developed three films: this film, one on democracy, and a third on betrayal that’s going to be about Aristide, the gang leader, based on Julius Caesar. I’m not sure if the third one’s going to get made. When I was down in Haiti making the film about democracy Jane and Danny introduced me to the band. I was really interested in the idea of making a film bout something in Haiti that worked, this band that’s been around for 60 years.

Tamés: And so you filmed the band, their performances, and touring?

Dow: I started to make a film about the band, and I thought it was just going to be about the band, just about music, and when I cut the film and showed it to people, it was boring. It didn’t have any context. So their talk about things being tough sounded like whining because the imagery was so pretty that things did not look so tough.

Tamés:What year was this?

Dow: I think I finished that cut in late 2007.

Tamés:So then what happened?

Dow: In 2008 I showed it to a lot of people. I took it back to the funders, and we talked about it. And I went back to the drawing board and decided to make a film that was about two stories, the rise of Nicole, the main character in the film, and the fall of Aristide and compare and contrast their leadership styles and what makes a successful leader. And I made that film and it was pretty good, I thought, and then the earthquake happened.

Tamés: And what happened in the wake of the earthquake?

Dow: It did two things. One, people wanted something about Haiti, you had to have the earthquake in it, and, Two, it made me realize that what I was doing by making the story about Aristide was again reducing Haiti to a particular component because before the earthquake, Haiti was Aristide. Before Aristide, Haiti was Duvalier. Before Duvalier Haiti was an American occupation. Before that it was colonialism. It’s always being reduced into this thing, and I said, in effect, if I want to get the earthquake, all these things have been earthquakes. Columbus was an earthquake. Colonialism was an earthquake. Slavery was an earthquake. The revolution was an earthquake. The American occupation was an earthquake. Duvalier was an earthquake. Aristide was an earthquake. All these earthquakes built up to create the conditions for this massive natural disaster to take place that was really, in effect, a human disaster built over 500 years.

Tamés:Part of what made it so devastating was the infrastructure was unprepared for any kind of disaster. It was so fragile to start with.

Dow: Yes. There’s no state in Haiti. I mean, it’s actually one of the things I like about Haiti, especially post-9/11 where the state is more and more intrusive into our lives on a day-to-day basis, how we could travel in the air, driving our car, what you can take pictures of. And you go to Haiti, and there’s no state. You have to enter this organism, which is the society, without a safety net. There’s 3,000 police for seven million people. There’s no one to go to, if there’s a problem. You have to figure out a way to navigate it yourself, and it’s an incredibly freeing, yet scary feeling to spend time in that environment.

Tamés: In the film you begin the earthquake sequence with stunning surveillance camera footage. Tell me about that. How did you find that footage?

Dow:I was looking for a way to tell the story of the earthquake, and I felt — and we’ve all seen so many images of disasters, news footage and everything, I was trying to figure out how do you tell the story so it doesn’t feel rote or disconnected or how do you make emotional connection? And a friend of mine, Mario Delatour, who also worked as one of the field producers on the project, was in the camps one day and this guy came up to him and said, “Mario, I crawled into the wreckage of the palace, and I found the hard drives from the security cameras. Do you want this footage? I’ll load it onto your laptop.” And he said, “Of course.”

Tamés: That’s an incredible scenario.

Dow:Yes. So he then gave it to me and said, “This was just amazing footage, You should look at it, Whitney.” And I was really stunned by it because it was the first time I felt an emotional reaction, a very, very, personal emotional reaction to earthquake images through these objective computer-generated images by the security things. Because there was nobody behind the camera, it had much more impact just seeing those images.

Tamés: I was filled with a sense of fear and empathy for that person in the view of the camera trying to find a way out.

Dow: And you know what it is also because you know someone’s not behind the camera. You know he’s alone. You’re so used to — when you see a camera, you’re like — some people I hear say, well, there’s a guy with him. There’s a crew. There’s someone around, and he’s dying alone and you’re watching.

Tamés: There was that sense of helplessness. That footage really got me. It hit me in the gut.

Dow: The first time I saw it raw brought me to tears. I mean, I was stunned by it, and the other thing that was interesting about it is that as you watch the film — the palace is a recurring shot. You see the palace throughout the history of the country, and then you see it destroyed as a metaphor for the country. Seeing this constant in the country utterly destroyed is also very devastating.

Tamés: What led you to weave together the story of the band and the history of Haiti? In many music films there’s only a little, if any, context but with When The Drum is Beating it feels like I’ve seen two films in conversation with each other. There’s a film about Haiti’s history and there’s a film about these musicians and there’s a beautiful ballet between the two.

Dow: That’s exactly what I think it is; a conversation between the two films. This idea about context and context is something I constantly think about, the context of how I lived in America, the context of our conversation, the context of everything because content is driven by context. And I think that many times people confuse context with narrative or context with that people are their context. And what I wanted to do was show two things, this immediate context of Haiti today in the aftermaths of the earthquake but also this broader context of history, the events that you’re watching now doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

Tamés: So what we watch connects us with the world?

Dow: It’s part of a point on a continuum, for me that was the epiphany moment in my development as an adult. I remember so clearly being in school and taking a course and suddenly realizing that everything I learned was one thing, that art was connected to history, was connected to politics, which connects to architecture was connected to music. And up until then I thought I was learning these individual disconnected ideas but without the certain political events … certain paintings don’t exist without the context of these things, it was all one thing. Going back to this idea, context provides a way of understanding the crisis de jour. I think it’s also an altruistic thing. When I did a film a few years ago called Two Towns of Jasper, I remember getting down to Texas after this murder, and I was so consumed with figuring out what happened. Well, the guy left here and he walked here. He was picked up there and they drove him. It was 2:00 O’clock in the morning. They dropped him off. And suddenly I realized, I think that by understanding what happened, I’m going to understand why it happened, and they’re two different things. What happened doesn’t really matter at all. Why it happened is a much more complex question and a complex investigation, and I immediately pulled off the case, essentially, and went into the community and started talking to the people. And again, that’s what I feel about the earthquake in Haiti. What happened in Haiti doesn’t interest me as much as why and the real why. You can’t take steps to go after [the story] until you can understand the why. You often hear people say, we must remember so this never happens again, but nobody really wants to remember. They don’t want to know. If you talk about September 11th, people don’t want to talk about the causes of September 11 since cause can implicate.

Tamés: It hits too close to home?

Dow: It hits too close to home (pause).

Tamés: What has been the band’s reaction to the film?

Dow: There’s been two reactions. One, they’re incredibly proud that a film was made about them, they were a little confused by the film because they thought I was making a film just about the band, and they didn’t know what to expect. The younger guys, loved it. I had them literally in tears over talking about it because they were so overwhelmed by seeing their story played out the way it does, one member said, “I’m so proud of this film. It doesn’t matter that I’m in it because my band’s in it. My country’s in it and it tells a story. I want this to go out to the world and people can see it.” I think some of them recognized that a story just about the band is not going to be that interesting, you need a broader context to bring people to the table. So in their mind the broader context brings people to their music. Maybe in other people’s mind the music brings people to the broader context. But they probably will never tell me what they really thought about it, because of my relationship to them. Oh, we love it. It’s great. Michel Tassy (vocalist) refuses to see the film.

Tamés: Really? Has he given you a reason?

Dow: He came to New York for the Tribeca Film Festival and wouldn’t come to any of the screenings. He didn’t want to watch it. He said, “I’m a singer, not an actor.” He said, “The movie business is for other people. I’m a musician.” All the guys would say, “Well, you’re the star of the film — one of the stars of the film,” and he likes that. When they came to New York, Tribeca had them play at the drive-in. I think his voice is slipping. He doesn’t want people to see that, if you hear the old music in the movie, his voice was just beautiful, I mean, just phenomenal. And now, it’s still the most interesting voice in the band, but it’s a different voice. It’s the voice of a 70-year-old man who smokes, as opposed to a 30-year-old man who doesn’t smoke.

Tamés: It is what it is.

Dow: Yeah.

Tamés: The film is currently in the festival circuit. It got very positive reception at Tribeca and the audience here at the New Hampshire Film Festival loved the film. What are your plans for the film? How are you going to get this out into the world beyond film festivals?

Dow: Everybody wants their films to be seen, and I’ve been lucky enough to make this film. It’s been at a number of really great festivals, Silver Docs, Hot Docs, Traverse City, and a couple Korean festivals. It’s going to IDFA. It’s doing as well as a documentary can be doing, and because of that I’ve had two offers. First Run Features has picked up the film, and they want to put it in the theaters in February, and PBS is going to put it on Independent Lens in April, however, there’s a caveat: I’m in deficit on the film, and I need to raise money for rights clearances. I need to raise money to clear the archival footage because I never thought I was going to have so much archival footage in it. I also made a deal with the band that if the film was done and we got distribution, I’d pay them a fair rate to the rights to their music used in the film.

Tamés: So how are you going to raise the money you need to get the film into distribution?

Dow: I’ve started a Kickstarter campaign where people can go and contribute to the campaign. In return they can get rewards that include downloads of the music, DVDs, albums, tickets to the premier, depending on your level of contribution. I feel this is a context setting film, and I hope, when people see it that it helps them see Haiti and, by extension, places like Haiti, differently, and that they see the people not necessarily as helpless victims of their circumstances, but people who live their lives within those circumstances, not who are defined by it. I remember so clearly the War in the Balkans, you’d see Sarajevo on the news and two women crouching in doors with kids with snipers shooting at them, and I was asking, why are they there? Why don’t they leave? Why are they staying there? And it wasn’t until September 11th, I live in Lower Manhattan, and my first reaction was Goddammit, these motherf*ck*rs, I’m not going, did you think that I would leave my city? I’d been in New York 20 years at that time, when I first really felt like a New Yorker. This was an attack on my city, and there was no way that I would leave there. Now, I don’t think I necessarily did a good Kickstarter pitch in that answer.

Tamés: Perhaps not, but this conversations is not just about Kickstarter. My wife and I have a friend who lives down in the Wall Street area. I remember standing on her roof deck and looking over at the World Trade Center only a few blocks away. We were visiting her only a few weeks after 9/11 And I can relate to the reaction so many people I know in New York had at the time, “I’m not going anywhere.”

Dow: Yeah. It’s like, this is my home, dangerous smoke or not.

Tamés: Let’s get back to Kickstarter, why is it so critical to get funding from your audience?

Dow: People think of movies as sort of this business, and in a sense the documentary world is not a traditional market the way a Hollywood movies are. It’s more like the non-profit world where you get money from PBS for a film, they’re not looking for a financial return on it. They’re looking for me to create something that communicates a message and gets something out, and I think that that’s how now you have to look at these films, that it’s not a market. And so because of that, we, as filmmakers, are now put in this position. We’re always been fundraising, but the traditional avenues of fundraising are getting more competitive and shrinking. And this great thing about the Internet is now you can avoid gatekeepers and be your own gatekeeper and go out to bring your project to the world. So I hope that people will visit the When the Drum is Beating page on on Kickstarter and look it over and if they think it’s a valuable project and a valuable message, that they’ll consider contributing to it and help get the film out there. The deal is, if I can raise this money, it will be seen by millions of people. It’s a sure bet. I’m not someone saying, fund my film. When I get it done, it’s going to be great. I have these offers on the table from PBS and first run. If I get the money, it will be seen by millions of people.

Tamés: So there’s a high likelihood of success in this campaign if it resonates with enough people. [Disclosure: I have contributed to the campaign.] Success from the point of view that if I donate, you’re going to achieve your goal?

Dow: Yes. The film is finished. It’s won awards. It’s been to a number of festivals. It’s doing well, and how many documentaries get actual distribution and national hard feed broadcast slots? There’s not that many slots out there. So to have that opportunity and be able to take advantage of it is something that I’m really hoping will happen. I think it’s important.

Tamés: It’s great you have those slots waiting for you. Now, it’s up to us through Kickstarter to help you get there.

Dow: Absolutely. Have you been involved in other Kickstarter campaigns?

Tamés: So far only as a donor to several projects. I know a number of filmmakers who have used Kickstarter to help fund their films, it’s rewarding to see someone you have contributed to reach their goal and know you helped make that happen. I hope to do one for a documentary currently in development that I’m involved with, but that’s a ways off. I think it’s important to demonstrate that the funds you are contributing will result in a project being completed, getting into distribution, some major milestone.

Dow: What’s interesting about Kickstarter, one of the nicest thing about it for me has been the community, for example, the guy who’s really running the Kickstarter campaign, started a music festival in Florida on Kickstarter. Raised the money for it. Called me and said, “Can I have your film?” And I looked at what he was doing. I said, “Sure. Of course you can have the film and show it.” He really liked the film, and now he’s helping me run the campaign. He said, “I love what you’re doing. I love the film. I want to help it succeed. I’m not really doing much right now. I’ll work on it. I’ll help you.” He’s been my coach, gave me a list of 10 things I have to do every day, and I’m meeting people who are in the same boat. If you donate to me, I donate to you. We can build this community to support each other’s work. I’ve helped him, and he’s helped me.

Tamés: Well, the good thing about movies is just because somebody watches your movie doesn’t mean they’re not going to watch my movie. I mean, people watch a lot of movies.

Dow: Exactly.

Tamés: It ties into what Tiffany Shlain was saying a while back about how independent filmmakers have to start thinking of themselves as interdependent filmmakers and help each other out because there really are two film businesses. There’s Hollywood, and then there’s the rest of us.

Dow: Hollywood is a franchise, basically it’s a marketing program with story grafted on top of it. So you can’t get stuff made in Hollywood without having all the marketing tie-ins built into it first and the product base and all that stuff. And then the stuff is retrofitted with an action movie or romantic comedy, and that’s not to say there aren’t some great films that come out of Hollywood. I think that there is, but in general that it’s a very different thing that people are doing in Hollywood than independent filmmakers. Whether they are documentary filmmakers or narrative filmmakers, it’s a very, very different thing that we’re doing.

Tamés: I hope your Kickstarter campaign is successful and When The Drum is Beating gets the release it deserves.

Dow: And thank you for coming to the film. Again, I hope that I can find a way to position it so that it does find an audience.

Tamés: Will there be a soundtrack album?

Dow: I’m trying to raise money for that as well. Branford Marsalis has agreed to produce an album, if I can raise the money.

Tamés: That would make another interesting Kickstarter project. Before we wrap up, let’s get back the film. I’d like to hear more about why this topic, why this approach?

Dow: I had the opportunity, I had access that nobody else had in Haiti. I wanted to make what in my mind was a big concept film. While doing the first film I read a ton on Haiti. I read tons of history. I watched tons of things. I saw movies and books and everything, and it was a big epic story. And I felt that it was a story that hadn’t been told before. When I thought of the idea of music and history, it scared me, something I haven’t seen before, and my thought was, I don’t know if I can pull this off, but, if I do, it’s going to be amazing. And I really took it as a personal challenge that to try and undertake this idea. Haiti’s history was a big canvas.

Tamés: And why you, as an outsider?

Dow: I’m very wary of perspective, I look at myself and ask, who am I as some middle-class white guy to think he can tell some sort of definitive story about Haiti? Why should I do that? And I feel I’m very, very sensitive to this idea of white people telling black stories, and I was — and I’m — sort of doing films on race, I’ve thought a lot about this and that why — who am I to be telling this? And I got a lot of push-back originally. What do you have? And I really sort of felt like it was more for me in a selfish way an artistic undertaking that I really wanted to tackle as a way of challenging myself as a filmmaker. A big portion of my body of work is on race, and I think about it. It’s one of the things that fascinates me. It’s something that I constantly think about and am working at.

Dow: I think also that race is — I’m not the first person to say it, but race is — a fault line in America that we’re constantly navigating and constantly look at. That’s the reality that we live in. And I also think that our experiences living in the world as white, black, or Latino are so fundamentally different that we are fundamentally different. Under the skin we’re not the same. Our experiences are so different that we’re living in a fundamentally different reality, and so of course we’re different. We have different experiences but we’re attracted to the difference. We’re attracted to what’s different about us. I’m attracted to difference. That’s what excites and interests me, as opposed to being attracted to something that we share. I’m not so much interested another film about some horrible thing that white people did in the past or the current.

Tamés: We could talk about this for another hour, but I know you need to get on your way to New York. Thanks for taking the time to talk with me about your film.

Dow: Thank you.

David Tames: What was the impact of Who Killed the Electric Car? from your perspective?

Chris Paine: The film told the story of what happened to about 5,000 electric cars out in California that most people had never heard about. That motivated a lot of people (including me) to keep the pressure up for change and that in turn motivated a lot more people both inside and outside industry.

Tames: How did Revenge of the Electric Car evolve?

Paine: We started hearing rumors that the car industry was rethinking its decision to quash electric cars. High gas prices in 2008, national security pushback around oil dependence, and people fed up with gas car impact also played a role. We had some connections so we decided to go inside the system and see how things can — sometimes — change from the inside out.

Tames: What’s different this time around as far as electric cars go?

Paine: Most people understand that oil is finite and putting it in cars is not smart when you can use electricity and get a better result. Technology costs have come down and a lot more people know about them. You also have some incredible people leading the charge.

Tames: How did you decide to focus on the people you did end up focusing on in this film?

Paine: We started with about seven folks and over three years, narrowed our focus to four of the most fascinating who we were able to stay in touch with.

Tames: Were there some people you spoke with that did not make it into the film?

Paine: Hundreds. You meet so many interesting people of all kinds in the course of a long form documentary and eventually you have to decide how many your audience is going to be able to track in 90 minutes. Better known people include Shai Agassi who we tracked in Israel, Dave Barthmus, GM’s corporate spokesman in first film, Simon Peres, Rainn Wilson, the President of Iceland, a couple getting married on electric bikes and on and on….

Tames: Are there some people you wanted to talk with who would not talk with you about their work?

Paine: Plenty. We approached many car companies at first and few would take the risk of letting our crew in.

Tames: What are you driving right now? How do you like it?

Paine: I traded in my Prius and bought a Chevy Volt, for full price I might add. Got to know the car over its development and it won me over. 40 miles electric then turns into a 38 mpg car for longer trips. My girlfriend drives a Leaf and that’s pretty great too. And of course, I still have the very early edition Tesla I bought after finishing the first film.

Tames: What do you hope viewers will take away with them?

Paine: I hope they take the time to test drive or if they can afford it, buy one of these new generation plug-in cars. What got me going on this originally was how emotionally thrilling it was accelerating in all electric mode. If the film inspires that, I’ll be happy. It really makes for a better future if we continue to use cars.

Tames: What was the most challenging moment while making the film?

Paine: End of 2008 when markets collapsed and all the characters we were following hit the wall. Like them, you have to pick up the pieces and keep moving…

Tames: Are there filmmakers or other artists you draw inspiration from?

Paine: Everyone I work with – my co-writer Peter, my producer Jessie, my editor Chris, our composer David, and on and on. I get the credit for a big team effort. Outside of our crew, I really like the wit of Kurt Vonnegut and almost anyone making really entertaining films that don’t rely on a gun to move the story forward.

Tames: What has been the most dramatic change in terms of making a film back when you were making Who Killed the Electric Car? and now with Revenge?

Paine: Aside from the digitalization of the entire production process, I’d say it’s the changing nature of the audience and distribution of films. Documentaries can reach people in more and more ways even without the theatrical launch we’re lucky enough to have and marketing via social networks (like yours) makes the difference between success and failure.

Tames: How did you get started as a filmmaker?

Paine: My 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Landreth. “Gold Rush – SUtters Mill” class movie. Super 8. Hooked me.

Tames: That’s amazing, for me it was my 5th grade teacher, Miss Beachum, we made a film in class about the American Revolutionary War, Super 8, that hooked me too! So what happened as far as filmmaking after 4th grade?

Paine: My friend Roger (a producer on both Who Killed the Electric Car? and Revenge), and I made short films in high school and then in college I spent a summer at Stanford University’s documentary program. That led to a semester at NYU and a summer job at AFI. I had a turn with an MTV pilot series the wake of the Velvet Revolution and several other TV jobs So a bit here and there leading to an assistant job for Michael Tolkin (The Player, The New Age) who impressed me with his brilliance. If I was going to stay in LA, I had to work for someone really smart. Eventually one of my old friends the UK pulled me into his documentaries, and somewhere in there, I decided to try my hand directing a feature documentary.

Tames: What advice would you like to share with the next generation of documentary filmmakers?

Paine: Find amazing people, build trust, let them tell their stories without interrupting, ask hard questions, listen.

Tames: The film is now showing in theaters. What are your hopes for the film from this point forward?

Paine: That more and more people hear about it and see it and get inspired. For me it’s much more than a film – though my job as story teller is first.

Tames: Filmmakers always have to kill some of their darlings, is there something you left out of the film you wish you could have covered?

Paine: One of the biggest users of electricity in the country is the oil industry – simply to refine gasoline from crude oil. Wish I could have fit that story into this film. Maybe the next one. All we need to do is put that electricity directly into our cars and bypass the oil.

Tames: Sounds like we have a lot to think about. It’s been a pleasure talking with you today.

Paine: Thanks for doing this!

Links:

Revenge of the Electric Car (Official Site)

Who Killed the Electric Car? (Official Site)

1. Broadcast Network => Group Forming Network

We’re seeing a gradual decline in television audiences while people are spending more time on social networks and this is wreaking havoc on business models. A traditional broadcast network grows in value along a linear scale, therefore the community value can be calculated based on the number of viewers. The value of social networks (a.k.a. group forming networks) grows along a very different curve as dictated by Reed’s Law. The significance of Reed’s law is that eventually the network effect of potential group membership can dominate the overall economics of the system. David Reed discovered that the community value of large networks–particularly social networks–scales exponentially with the size of the network. The number of possible sub-groups of network participants is 2 to the power of n, where n is the number of participants. This explains the phenomenal growth in the value of social networks. Adding an additional 100,000 viewers to a television audience of 1 million is no big deal, but adding 100,000 network participants to a 1 million participant social network has a significant effect of the value of participation in the network. Networking pioneer J.C.R. Licklider wrote in 1968, “we form communities of common interest, not common location.” David Reed explains these concepts in the article “Weapon of Math Destruction: A simple formula explains why the Internet is wreaking havoc on business models” (Context Magazine, Spring 1999, link) along with “That Sneaky Exponential—Beyond Metcalfe’s Law to the Power of Community Building,” a companion article originally published as an online suppliment to the “Weapon of Math Destruction,” article.

2. Institutional Funding => Crowd Funding

The internet and a growing number of people paricipating in a variety of online communites is making it possible to raise money for creative projects online. Two services that stand out inlcude: IndieGoGo and
Kickstarter. These services differ in siginifiant ways in terms of how they operate. Kickstarter is a community limited to fundraising projects that meet their curatorial goals, and projects don’t receive any money unless the fundraising goal is reached. This is good in terms of providing funders confidence their money will go to a project that will be completed. On the other hand, IndieGoGo is an open community allowing anyone raise money for their creative project. If you don’t make your goal, you can still keep the money you raised to put towards your project, however, a lot of funders might not like they’ve given money to a project that does not have the funds needed to be completed. To some people this seems to give Kickstarter the edge with their all or nothing approach. At this time, Kickstarter is only available for projects made in the United States and you must have a U.S. bank account and a U.S. place of residence in order to use the service (even though contributions can come from anywhere in the world). In favor of IndieGoGo is that it’s open to any project (not just creative, and no gatekeeper) and they have a more global perspective with campaigns in almost every country. This year (so far) fourteen films have made it to top festivals after crowdfunding on IndieGoGo, see: “IndieGoGo Films Showcased at World-Class Festivals in 2011” (Adam Chapnick, Tribeca Future of Film, September 30, 2011). There’s a rapid rise in the number of creative professionals leveraging crowd funding to support their work. One of the most impressive examples to date is Jennifer Fox’s Kickstater campaign for My Reincarnation in which she raised over $150,000 in order to get her film into distribution, she shares what she learned doing in her guest post, “How MY REINCARNATION Broke All Kickstarter Records & Raised $150,000” on Ted Hope’s blog.

3. Independence => Interdependence

In our connected world, filmmakers are moving away from the paradigm of “independent” filmmaking and embracing the notion of “interdependent” filmmaking. Unlike many industries, we’re not in competition with each other and we can benefit more from cooperation. This idea is being championed by Tiffany Shlain, Her film Connected is about the impact of the Internet on our lives and a call for to embrace a new philosophy of interdependence, for more details see see: 10 Big Ideas for the Future of Film by Tiffany Shlain (Mediashift/PBS.org, April 20, 2011) and The Power Of One: Food For Thought 2011 by Sawn Parr (Fast Company, Jun 1, 2011).

4. Oligopoly => Constellation of Gatekeepers

Once upon a time talented filmmakers and/or promising projects would be discovered and/or packaged by the Hollywood studios. With high barriers to entry (e.g. specialized knowledge, scarce resources, a lock on distribution, etc.) the major studios has a tight control on the industry and operated like an oligopoly. With access to inexpensive digital technology for production and postproduction–along with social media making it possible to establish a connection with an audience–filmmakers with the talent and drive to make it have the ability to take themselves from a state of being unknown talent to becoming popular with an audience through a process of lots of hard work developing an audience on their own. It used to take an influential executive at the studio to give you a green light for a project, now you can take your work directly to an audience an see if what you’re doing resonates with them. It may still take lots of money to make a film, but the ecosystem is growing into a constellation gatekeepers working a variety of levels, for example, film production is not within reach of many organizations who may choose to fund films that promote their agendas. One example that stands out is Paranormal Activity (Oren Peli, 2007) a supernatural horror film. It was originally produced as an independent feature with a home movie camera, but was later acquired by Paramount Pictures after a representative saw the film and was impressed. It has become a very profitable film along with a very effective social media marketing campaign, see “Paranormal Activity Rides the Social Web to Millions at the Box Office” by Christina Warren (Mashable, October 13, 2009). Realistically, cases like Paranormal Activity are the rare exception to the rule, it’s still as hard as ever to find an audience, but it you have a film that resonates with an audience, there are less factors in your way, as the oligopoly has given way to a constellation of gatekeepers that are more attuned to enabling rather than limiting your potential. Scott Kirsner’s book, Fans, Friends And Followers provides a good survey of how various people have developed their audience in the new media landscape.

5. Auteurs => Collaborations

Normal Hollyn, an editor, teacher, and author of The Film Editing Room Handbook (now it a 4th edition) wrote a delightful blog post titled, “Collaboration and Why The Auteur Theory Is Bull,” in which he argues that, “it’s impossible to make a film by yourself.” He points out that not every idea the director is going to have is good, and not all good ideas are going to come from the director. Film is a highly collaborative art form. Hollyn suggests the ideal way to work with any creative person is to, “come to the table with an idea (the ‘thesis’), let that person come up with a different idea (the ‘antithesis’) and then to let those two opposing notions contribute to a third, usually better, idea (the ’synthesis’).” Hollyn argues that directors who think they are the, “sole auteurs of their work, and are too afraid or guarded to open up to other ideas, will generally miss out on those ‘third, usually better’ ideas, and their work will suffer.” Today it is easier than ever with email, Twitter, Facebook, DropBox, etc. to share and communicate and keep an open dialog as a project develops over time. But these just facilitators. The important trend is a change in mind-set in terms of what it means to be an “auteur” vs. “visionary” director. A visionary director can articulate a clear vision while orchestrating the process of synthesis that Hollyn discusses in his essay, which leads to the best work. Even Orson Welles, perhaps one of the greatest “auteurs” in Hollywood history, surrounded himself with amazing collaborators who made significant contributions to his films. He had so much respect for Greg Toland’s cinematography that he shared a title card with him. Behind the most successful “genius,” whether it be an Orson Welles or a Steve Jobs, is not an auteur in the classic sense of the term, but a visionary who collaborates effectively with creative people. There’s a huge difference between the two, and the difference boils down to creating an environment that supports synthesis.

6. Media Objects => Media Fabric

I believe Blu-Ray disks are the last physical media distribution format consumers will ever see. Everything is moving to the cloud. I love the convenience of Netflix streaming and I find it annoying I still have to wait for many movies to arrive as DVDs. Why can’t they all simply be streamed to my Mac or iPad? While licensing deals will keep a lot of media tied up in knots for a while, eventually it will all end up on the cloud. See “Apple, Hollywood Close To Streaming Movie Deal?” by Thomas Claburn, Information Week, October 13, 2011) and “Movies in the Clouds” by By Michelle Kung (Wall Street Journal, October 11, 2011). But the concept of Media Fabric (which I borrow from Glorianna Davenport) goes way beyond the notion of media living on the cloud. Davenport’s idea is that of, “a semi-intelligent organism where, lines of communication, threads of meaning, chains of causality, and streams of consciousness converge and intertwine to form a rich tapestry of creative story potentials, meaningful real-time dialogues, social interactions, and personal or communal art- and story-making.” The idea is that media is becoming something integrated into our everyday lives, connecting us in new ways that we are shaping through the very process of our interaction with each other. See “Media fabric — a process-oriented approach to media creation and exchange” by Glorianna Davenport, et. al.

7. Specialized Competence => Media Literacy

Media was was once the domain of specialized individuals working in specialized organizations. Today, the trend is towards media production and dissemination becoming a core competency of every organization, as well as every individual. Many of us shoot a lot of casual video to share with friends, which helps us develop a sense for working with a camera. Increasingly we are purchasing smart phones equipped with spectacular cameras. Small videocameras like the Canon VIXIA provide high-quality high-definition images in the form-factor of a small camcorder. Things like smart-auto focus with face recognition makes it easy to produce good, sharp, point-and-shoot video. The ubiquity of video cameras has made it easy for anyone to pick up a camera and try their hand at media production. In the late 1990s it was essential for everyone to have a web site. Today it has become essential to enhance that web site with video. With video sharing sites like Vimeo and YouTube, we have at our fingertips an easy way to share video with others. With all the traditional barriers gone, writing with a camera is poised to become almost as ubiquitous as writing with a word processor. See my blog post, “Cinema will eventually become a flexible means of writing.”

For additional perspectives on these trends, see my companion post, “Researching Seven Macro Trends,” which provides a survey of the background research I did while preparing for this presentation. It includes micro-interviews with: Patricia Aufderheide, Perry Bard, Philip Hodgetts, Brian Lucid, Caroline Blair, Charles Papert, Steve Garfield, Chuck Green, Geo Geller, Jon Goldman, Julie Mallozzi, Kathryn Dietz, Kevin Brooks, Lee Morgenroth, Nathan Felde, Philippe Lejune, Ryan Evans, Slava Rubin, Zak Ray, Anne Marie Stein, Audrey Kali, and Brian Henderson.

This post was revised on October 17, 2011 to fix some typos and links.

I’ve been contemplating the evolution of the documentary this summer and I was delighted to see that The MediaGuardian’s recent Sheffield Doc/Fest 2011 coverage includes ten articles providing a refreshing perspective on how documentary makers are finding new ways to reach their audience. These articles provide a view into a crystal ball in which we can begin to see a vision of the future. Here are links to the articles, worthwhile reading and a good starting point for further reflection and discussion.

Social media influences documentary-makers
Social media have had a truly revolutionary effect, enabling film-makers and citizens to disseminate their own stories

Adam Curtis: happy to be different
The maker of classic documentary series such as The Trap and The Power Of Nightmares believes he is still learning his trade

New technology opens up documentary-making
Recording devices are always evolving – from 16mm cameras to iPad apps – offering film-makers the chance to innovate

Jay Hunt: Social media promotes a better viewer experience
Using multiplatform and social media is an incredibly important part of what we’re doing at Channel 4

Can you make a film and a profit?
Making money from documentaries is no easy task, but there are some business models that are generating revenues online

How the internet is galvanising support for social justice documentaries
Films that form part of a campaign for social justice are regularly appearing online – greatly increasing their reach and impact

Tools of attraction: creating multimedia content for games and TV shows
Audiences now expect stories to be told in new ways across different platforms, but commissioners often fail to produce compelling ‘transmedia’ content

The impact of Twitter on TV shows
For producers, posts on Facebook and Twitter are seen as indicators of success – but do they influence ratings?

BBC documentary boss wants programmes that do more than entertain
Commissioning editor Charlotte Moore favours quality and craft over feelgood and populist

Steve James hails a ‘golden age of documentary film-making’
Prior to his visit to the Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival, director says attitudes towards docs have changed

Image credit: Crystal Castles by Frogman (2008).

Today, writing with a camera has yet to achieve the expressiveness Astruc envisioned. Astruc would have loved MTV (at least back when they actually showed lots of music videos, I fondly remember watching MTV during its first three years, I thought I was witnessing the cinematic avant-garde going mainstream), anything that challenges mainstream film practice. Astruc writes the future of cinema will revolve around the director as auteur, which was an important idea behind the French New Wave. Fast forwarding to the present, personal documentaries–for example, Sink or Swim (Su Friedrich, 1990), Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette, 2003), and Sherman’s March (Ross McElwee, 1986)–demonstrate how cinema might very well have surpassed the novel as the dominant narrative form of a new generation.

Astruc’s idea of film as a language independent of literature provides a theoretical and historical tie-in to what is happening today, as cinema is becoming more personal, a form of visual writing, perhaps (dare I say) even eclipsing the novel, as our current generation seems to be returning to a new form of visual orality, and possibly, eventually, abandoning (perhaps too strong a word) the written word. I shudder as I write this, for I love to read and value the written word, there are reasons this blog post is in the form of words, not a visual essay, I strive for a balance between written/verbal and visual communication, for they represent two modes of knowing, each with unique strengths and weaknesses (is a topic best covered in a book or a movie?), however, I observe with anxiety the decline in reading, and I wonder if it is inevitable, as our modes of communication become more visual, perhaps it is evolution and not decline I’m not sure, but Astruc’s essay helps to assuage my anxiety. For better or worse, we are rapidly moving into an age of visuality.

Photo from The New Wave (Edited by Peter Graham, Doubleday & Company, 1968, p. 17).