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)

David: You’ve been a working cinematographer for a long time, what lead you to the development of the Blender LED light?

Tom: A couple of things came to a confluence. One was that I had been working on variable color temperature lights for a number of years. The reason I was doing that is because when I was doing narrative work every once in a while I would need something as a fill, as a special, as an edge, not as my primary light, because I’m usually color balancing to whatever is my key light sources, I wanted something and I wanted to be able to finesse it a little bit this, a little bit that, and be able to do it on the fly and by eye. So I had been playing with that notion. That’s one stream of information. The second one, and the primary reason for this is I started doing more non-narrative work, and in particular, I was in a situation where I was working in a very busy hospital, a very sensitive situation because of the patient care and it being pediatrics, and we were having some filming and some interviews that were near windows, and then we were going into a hallway, and interviewing doctors and nurses in a hallway on the fly and once they got beeped they had to leave, so we had to work fast. And then we’d be in an interior office and be able to have a formal interview and there might be incandescents as well as office fluorescents, so it was always a mixed light situation, it was always in a hurry, I very much wanted light that could be slightly off to the side, so it wasn’t a direct on-camera fill, I wanted something to be able to hold out to the side and have a sense of directionality. I played with, used, rented, LED lights and it was never quite easy enough, fast enough, to get what I was looking for to appear natural. And my source was always sort of insistent and visible. And I wanted it to just blend in and augment the available light. I did not want it to be calling tremendous attention it itself. So I grafted these two ideas together: the variable color temperature and the availability of high power white light LEDs that can be obtained on a black body locus. I worked through all of the technological issues to make it both something that was unique in the technology sense and easy to use.

David: For our readers who are not cinematographers, could you explain what you mean by “LEDs that can be obtained on a black body locus”?

Tom: In the 1930s people decided in France that there would be this large commission that would decide how much available light there is and what are all the colors. This is the CIE Chromaticity chart. Inside that is a line that tracks what we perceive to be white light. White light is what we’re primarily concerned with for film/video imaging, because that’s what we’re used to from the sun, approximately from fluorescents, from movie lights, from all of the different sources we’re usually using white light. And that white light is something that is tracked within this CIE Chromaticity chart.

David: But all white light is not the same, is it?

Tom: No, and especially when you go to most modern sources, and I’m not going to claim all, I’m a cinematographer, not a spectrophotometry expert, but you’ll see a lot of light sources that are both discontinuous spectrum and you’ll see a lot of light sources that don’t provide all of the available wavelengths and things like that, but they are close to the black body locus that white light Planckian locus, that curve that our mind says, “oh, it’s white light” “it’s not too green, it’s not too magenta, it’s not too amber, it’s not too blue. Now it is possible to obtain high power LEDs.

I have custom orders that allow me to select things that are on the black body locus. And that’s one of the functions that I want because I don’t really want to be messing around with a lot of plus-green or minus-green gels if I don’t have to. I want to eliminate all of that and be able to work by eye. So it was essential for me to land on a spot that corresponds to the world and how we perceive white light and what’s photographically acceptable as white light as a starting point.

David: A lot of LED lights come as either tungsten balance (3200K) or daylight balance (5500K) and you have to use gels with the lights if you want to change their color temperature. Now there’s something really different about the Blender, I can adjust between the two with knobs. Tell me more about that.

Tom: By having banks of these. For years I had used things like Kino Flos and other fluorescents that allow you to mix and match daylight and tungsten units, and boy it sure is nice to have half and half sometimes, or one daylight unit mixed with the tungsten, it will be just a little bit cooler, but to have two banks of what are nominally daylight and tungsten white balanced lights, I could dial-in all of my variable situation where I could be one sixteenth more warm, slightly more cool, and I could do by eye what I have always liked to be able to do, which is do something like have a back light be slightly cooler, or have my key light be slightly warmer than the ambient, so I don’t change my white balance, or anything, I can just dial in without having to use any gels, working by the monitor and my eye is trained so by my eye as well, what are warm and cool values that match the natural world and then have the artistic leeway to slightly warmer or slightly cooler, if I choose to.

David: So this light has two banks of lights, and it has two knobs and one switch. So it’s pretty simple to use.

Tom: It’s very straightforward, I’ve had students use it, and once they use it they see immediately what happens.

David: So tell me about some Blender usage scenarios.

Tom: I’ve used these in situations where I’ve had subjects near windows, and I’ve wanted to do what you would call carry the light from the outside. And I’ll bring this on the opposite side of the camera closer to the window and have that cool light from the window wrap more around the face of my subject which it doesn’t do on its own. And then have a second light, perhaps slightly warmer, coming from the inside, indicating the interior light. So I get a fully rounded form that matches my daylight, it can be close enough and bright enough that I can actually expose for the outside world and I have a sense of the presence of the world.

David: Can you share another scenario?

Tom: We were in a building with office fluorescents with a number of people doing a series of interviews. And one thing that was particularly interesting is that we were using the Blender light as a backlight, these were standard office fluorescents, they were somewhere between 3800K and 4200K approximately in terms of correlated color temperature, so they are in between value already. We had actually, for the first subject, used a fluorescent light that had 1/2 daylight and 1/2 tungsten bulbs in it that we were using to match the office fluorescents. Well, the second subject came in and their shirt was much brighter and we didn’t have flags, so here we had approximately a 15 lb. rig lighting as our key light, and we substituted it with one of my Blender lights. We brought it a foot closer, it’s a very bright light, but not too aggressive and not too intimidating for a subject. And just by tilting it up and taping a piece of office paper on it, because it doesn’t get hot [like an incandescent] we were able to flag the guys shirt, it cut perfectly with movie fluorescent we used [in the previous shot], and our backlight was slightly cooler. We were in an office environment and we were able to use it as a key and a kicker.

David: How bout one more?

Tom: Shooting run and gun hand-held in a hallway with fluorescents, with windows, with all sorts of wacky stuff, hand-held with a wooden handle off to the side. I was doing the interview, someone else was shooting. I could have a little bit of directionality. I just did it by eye, and we could roll in thirty seconds, cause we had the light out and plugged in to a battery.

David: Sounds like you might want to have a special pistol grip with the Blender light and a microphone on it.

Tom: That actually is not a bad idea, because sometimes it means asking the sound guy, “hey, you’re booming, can you hold this off to the side so it does not have to be on camera?”

David: That brings me to the thought, the miniaturization of these video cameras has really changed the way we shoot. The cameras are getting smaller, it changes what we shoot, how we shoot, what we can shoot. Well, now we’ve got LED technology that’s getting brighter and cheaper, and it’s changing how we light. How do you think these smaller LED lights like your Blender are going to change how we shoot, and what we shoot?

Tom: I think there’s a couple of things. One, they have sufficiently low power usage, it’s nice that they are more environmentally sound, but for us as shooters that’s way down the list, in terms of what it is that we need to shoot professionally, but it’s nice that you can run them off batteries, that you can run for an hour, you can run for two hours, and you’re OK to go. You can’t really do that a lot of the sun guns and tungsten types because they really drain power a lot more. So suddenly we’ve become a lot more portable. A secondary thing, and something that really surprised me with the Blender light, you end up lighting a bit differently than you would normally. Now I was going towards this myself, so I was not aware of it, until I put it into the hands of other shooters, and have them say, “Aha! I’m doing this now,” I was really surprised, because suddenly, instead of creating a light that is sort of obvious, and it becomes your key light, and it’s clear that you have lit the situation, which is what you see in a lot of interviews, you can actually dial this down, raise your subject to a level where you can control attention, but it’s not obvious. So it’s a naturalistic light in way almost like bounce sheets are. I don’t know about you but there are some times when I would rather have nothing plugged in, I’d rather have like a silver bounce here, and a white bounce there, or negative fill over there, and be done, because it can be very naturalistic, and embed your subject in their environment. As long as you can control attention, and you’re not busy looking at the background, you can actually focus on the subject, you’re good to go. Well, these work, because you can blend them almost like bounce sources that have intensity. And so you can approach it in a much more naturalistic way, and you might find yourself placing the light in a different place than you would normally, because it reads as if it was part of the environment, you might find yourself putting it someplace and dialing it very warm or very cool and saying, I wouldn’t necessarily go that far with another light source, but it feels like it’s the light from that other room, so I can get away with something that’s a little more tasty or more interesting.

David: I imagine the Blender will be popular not only with professionals but with newcomers as well.

Tom: For the people who are not coming into this by being technically savvy, they are coming in because they want to make images, they want to make motion pictures, they want to make narrative, non-narrative, whatever it is they are trying to do, they are not coming from a trained background, they are coming from a place, “these tools let me do stuff, I just want to do stuff,” well, here’s a light that allows them to just set it on auto white balance, or they just white balance to the available light, they can now dial in, look at their monitor, and they don’t have to consider what are the correlated color temperatures of those fluorescents, what’s coming in that window, is it sky?, is it day?, is it sun?, what’s coming from that desk lamp?, is it halogen?, is it incandescent?, you can work in a more intuitive way by eye, and I think that’s a huge difference in terms of making motion pictures imaging function the way us professionals are used to in terms of control, and putting that level of lighting control into the hands of people who can now use cameras, because there are now so many nice aids and assistance to making a nice picture with a camera, now there’s that level of assistance to making a nice picture through the aid of controlling your lighting, controlling attention to the subject.

David: I’ve put together a minimalist on-the-go documentary kit in which everything has to fit into a carry-on size hard case: camera, microphones, cables, batteries, accessories, maybe I’ve got room in here for a Blender. How do I attach the light to a stand or my camera?

Tom: I provide a swivel mount, it’s a 1/4″-20 thread on the bottom, I also have a wood handle, which is actually adapted from a file handle, with a 1/4″-20 stud on it.

David: Does that come with the light?

Tom: It’s an optional accessory. The people who want it, who want the light off to the side, immediately say, give me the handle, because they are running and gunning it. The people who say I don’t care about that, well, why bother loading them down with it.

David: What about powering options?

Tom: There are a couple. One, if you’re using a 2/3″ professional video camcorder, and you have a power-tap, D-tap it’s called, all you need is a 2.5mm center-positive connector on the Blender end and you can run this light. And at 14.4 volts you’ll be getting hours and hours of running time.

David: What if I’m using a smaller camcorder like the Sony HVR-V1U here?

Tom: Optional sleds. What I have are battery sleds that come in many different flavors to fit Panasonic, Canons, Sonys, and what I do then is custom wire them so you can use your existing camcorder batteries and not have to invest in a new battery system.

David: That’s handy, since I don’t have a lot of room left in this case for a whole new set of batteries. I’d love to be able to use the same batteries, the same battery charger, as I use with the camcorder.

Tom: I do not like extra battery systems, I don’t like going into a hotel and making sure every different charger is plugged in (laughter) I just want one battery system, so I knew that this would function that way.

David: With one of the camcorder batteries I have here, how long can I run the Blender?

Tom: They look like 2,800 mA batteries, or something like that, so it will last about an hour and a half, that’s what I’ve tested it, from an hour and thirty to an hour and forty minutes. Now there are two things that are worth noting, as it drains, it does not change the light output, what will happen, is this will simply blink off when it’s done. It does not change the light output as the battery drains. The electronics raise the voltage to the base level needed for the LEDs. It’s meant to accommodate [a range of sources] and it will simply blink off [when the voltage falls below a threshold].

David: Do you have plans for larger units?

Tom: Yes, this light, what you might call “pint-size,” is only the first in the line. The design is scalable and we will be making larger units in the future.

David: How can people purchase a Blender?

Tom: Blenders are currently being manufactured here in the United States. They can be ordered from my web site at blenderlights.com.

David: Good luck with the light, Tom, it’s a great idea.

Tom: Thanks so much, I appreciate you taking the time.

Update: Since I spoke with Tom, he has entered into an exclusive manufacturing and distribution agreement with Lowel who will be manufacturing and selling the Blender light. LED lighting will continue to make serious inroads into professional production, especially in run and gun documentary and ENG production.

Keywords: Light, Lights, Blender, Lowel, Interview, Tom Robotham, Lighting, Video, LED

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Archival Image Credits: Kinetoscope Parlor, Publicity or news photograph of San Francisco Kinetoscope parlor, ca. 1894–95, British Film Institute; Publicity photograph of man using Edison Kinetophone, ca. 1895; Serpentine Dance (1895), produced by the Edison Co., part of the Open Source Movies collection; Thomas Edison, half-length portrait, facing left and looking down into glass, experimenting in his laboratory, United States Library of Congress; The Edison Home Kinetoscope, 1914, Thomas A. Edison, Inc.; Advertising photo, Net#Work BBDO, South Africa, Graeme Jenner, Julian Watt (Creative Directors), photo by Brian Gibbs, 2007, copyright material used under industry best practices guidelines for fair use; iPod video en la palma de mi mano by Pedro Aznar, 2005, copyright material released under the terms of a creative commons license; Viewing iPod by Michael.M, copyright material released under the terms of a creative commons license; Half Nelson audience at IFFB, courtesy of Adam Roffman, Independent Film Festival of Boston, copyright material used with permission; Pixar Lobby by Elia Diodati, 2007, copyright material released under the terms of a creative commons license; Technicolor Camera, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, Photographic History Collection.

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Special thanks to Steve Garfield for providing me with the video he shot with his Nokia N95. I had originally planned this to be an audio interview, but when Steve Garfield gave me his video of the discussion, it became a video. When I combined his video and my audio, I was impressed that the audio sync drifted less that a frame from start to end. Many of the little cameras drift a lot (like my Canon TX1). The N95 is an impressive little camera.

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In the video Slava mentions Mark Gill’s statement, “The Sky is Falling,” see the article Gill wrote, Yes, The Sky Really Is Falling, which appeared on June 22, 2008 in for IndieWIRE. At the Los Angeles Film Festival’s Financing Conference, Mark Gill, CEO of The Film Department (and former President of Miramax Films) declared provocatively, “Yes, The Sky Really Is Falling.” He detailed many challenges currently facing independent film. Here’s a quote from the article: “If you want to survive in this brutal climate, you’re going to have to work a lot harder, be a lot smarter, know a lot more, move a lot faster, sell a lot better, pay attention to the data, be a little nicer (ok, a lot nicer), trust your gut, read everything and never, ever give up. If you’re looking for a cool lifestyle, you’re in the wrong business. If you want work-life balance, go get a government job. But if you really want to make movies–even after all the unvarnished bad news I’ve dumped on you today–then by all means do it.”

Theme music by Colin Owens.

I spoke with Philip Hodgetts at the New Media Expo in Las Vegas and asked him about his new venture, the Open Television Network which I blogged about several weeks ago.

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Music by Colin Owens.

With a keen attention to multiple perspectives, Kirsner presents the view of industry executives who are reluctant to innovate, and contrasts their views with the innovators who have advanced the many technologies like projection, color, sound, non-linear editing, digital projection, internet distribution, etc. that have transformed the industry over a century of change and revived it over and over again for many generations of audiences. Inventing the Movies is a lively book of interest to innovators in any field, as well as people who love movies and want to take a look at the business and technological machinations behind the many screens in their life: cinema, television, home theater, personal computers, portable media devices, and video-enabled phones.

Last week I did an interview with Scott Kirsner about the book, how the project got started, and what he plans to do next. The interview is currently being edited will be posted on this blog sometime before September rolls around.

The book is now available from Amazon.com. The book is also available as an e-book from LuLu. Scott Kirsners blog post on the book is here.

David Redmon and Ashley Sabin
(view this image on Flickr)

This weekend I interviewed David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, after their New England premiere of Intimidad at the Independent Film Festival of Boston. Ashley and David made Intimidad made over the course of five years. In the story Cecy and Camilo Ramirez dream of buying land and building their own house. The film presents an unflinching view of living on minimum wage with very little infrastructure and the sacrifices and hardships the family must endure to survive.

I really liked the film, and I think it points to an evolution in documentary form, a new genre in which subjects are able to take on more of the process of making the documentary since filmmakers can give their subjects inexpensive cameras to shoot some of the film themselves. In Intimidad Ashley and David use it to good effect, as Cecy and Camilo captured some intimate moments amongst themselves that the filmmakers could not capture. While this raises lots of interesting issues in terms of ethics, subjectivity, authorship, etc., I see it as a positive evolution, part of the macro forces we’re experiencing in our culture as we move out of the era of auteur filmmakers and broadcast models of media distribution and into an era of more collaborative authorship and social network-based models of distribution. This is very much part of the decentralization of media structures that McLuhan wrote about in the 60s.

Enjoy, feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Detailed session descriptions follow:

Web Video 2.0: Delivering Your Video Online
Friday, March 07, 1:00PM – 3:00PM, $25.00
Video on the web is hotter than ever and the excitement is moving beyond YouTube and into corporate web video, web-based episodics, delivery of films directly to viewers, and new applications of video never before possible. Through examples, demonstrations, and discussion, you will learn how you can make web video work for you. A practical how-to approach will provide you with an understanding of delivery options (e.g. progressive download vs. streaming), compression and format tips (codec and player choices), video sharing and streaming services, and monitization strategies. This session will be of interest to producers, directors, videographers, editors, and site designers who want to deliver video online and/or integrate video into their web site. Back by popular demand, this follow-up to last-years sold-out session has been updated with new material and examples to reflect the latest tools, techniques, and trends.

Art of the Interview: Strategies and Techniques for Better Video Interviews
Saturday, March 08, 9:00AM – 11:00AM, $25.00
The interview is a fundamental element of most documentary films, many video blogs, and event coverage. Through video examples and interactive discussion this session will provide you with practical strategies and techniques you can apply to your work and includes coverage of how and why to use interviews. You will learn how to: choose the right interview style (e.g. walk-and-talk vs. formal sit-down), choose a form of address (e.g. first-person vs. third person), prepare for an interview, put your subjects at ease, conduct an interview, and more. A discussion of how technical components (camera, sound, lighting, environment) influence the results is included. Designed for both beginning and intermediate documentary filmmakers, videobloggers, and event videographers. For an in-depth exploration of lighting for interviews, consider attending the “Interview Lighting” session that follows later in the day.

Interview Lighting: Professional Results On A Tight Budget
Saturday, March 08, 1:00PM – 3:00PM, $25.00
A demonstration and discussion of several approaches to lighting interviews ranging from low-budget existing light and one light techniques to classic three-point lighting using professional fixtures. Session covers: review of lighting fundamentals, survey of popular lighting fixtures and kits, screening and discussion of practical examples covering aesthetic issues and technical trade-offs, and suggestions for putting together a kit based on your specific needs. This session provides an excellent follow-on to “The Art of the Interview” earlier in the day. Prior attendance to “Art of the Interview” is helpful but not required.

I hope to see you there.

This week’s Art Film Talk interview is with Christen McArdle, the Executive Director of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the oldest festival of its kind in North America showcasing avant-garde, documentary and independent films from around the world. We talk about the festival's fundraising campaign and the censorship controversy the festival has been involved with.

David Tamés: What do you see as the role of P2 technology in production and post-production?

Barry Braverman: P2 is Panasonic’s implementation of the SMPTE MXF format, Sony has XDCAM, their MXF format. P2 is a transport stream, very similar to any other transport stream, except it was created by the entertainment industry to facilitate the movement of files through the production process from image acquisition, hopefully, ultimately, through the digital intermediate. Digital cinema, for example, is an MXF format. The idea of MXF is that you have your audio and video, but you also have your metadata which is really at the focus of a lot of our discussion because metadata, accurately tracking metadata, represents for studios and producers a significant potential savings of money, because you can track for example, who shot this, who modified it, who graded it, who composited it, you have a record of access to that clip, which is contained in the metadata which travels along on this transport stream. And it’s effective because there’s no change to the video data or the audio data itself. The data simply moves along the pipe and pulling along all this other metadata which is what we need to facilitate digital workflow.

Tamés: Why did you get involved with P2 technology?

Braverman: I got involved with P2 because it represents Panasonic’s foray into an IT (information technology) based camera, [Panasonic’s P2 cameras] are the first IT based cameras that anybody has really produced. In the sense that we record data onto a card, like you would record a [word processing or spreadsheet] document, or anything else. The good side is that gives us additional capabilities, such as adjustable frame rates but the down side is that we’re not always dealing with a video stream and our equipment and our workflows have always been predicated on a video stream moving from here to there. If you don’t have a video stream, then how do you deal with it?

Tamés: So what kind of challenges does this new approach raise?

Braverman: Many users are uncomfortable making this transition. I think one of the challenges from an image acquisition perspective at the moment is limited storage, of the P2 cards, is probably the biggest, issue. Another challenge, from an operator’s point-of-view, is that since the camera is so quiet, it’s hard to tell when it’s running. Another challenge is archiving. Where’s your backup? This is the really big challenge, you don’t have original tapes to go back to, so that’s another thing you have to provide in your workflow, sufficient redundancy and protection to protect against loss of data.

Tamés: I think the possibility of data loss scares many producers.

Braverman: Early on in using P2 there have been cases of lost data for a variety of reasons. So not only do you need a workflow that has sufficient redundancy in place, you also need to understand when a clip is defective and corrupt, and it does happen. If you’re recording to the FireStore [hard drive recorder], if someone pulls the FireWire cable out, what happens to your show, or your clip? That clip has to be repaired. So any MXF device, including the HVX200, any P2 device, has the capability to repair clips, or disks, or cards. That’s a basic functionality because the transport stream is subject to corruption.

Tamés: Any recording system is subject to failure, videotape has it’s own set of problems.

Braverman: Tape is subject to dropouts, signal level problems, shrinkage, longevity issues. Betacam is stable for about fifteen years, consumer tape is even shorter, in two years you can begin to see signs of degradation.

Tamés: I guess your media is never really safe, no matter what it’s stored on. Clearly, the P2 card is simply a way to move media from the camera to a nonlinear editing station, from which you have to make your own archival backup. So how are we going to preserve our media?

Braverman: I think the biggest part of it is organization, be very careful to name things, name folders, and file folder hierarchy, it becomes really important now because of the use of servers, and locating files by servers, and database search engines, because ten years from now you’re only going to be able to find clips that you adequately and satisfactorily logged today. So that takes time and to understand what database you’re using. That’s what HD Log on the Mac side is intended to get you into, so you can manage [your media]. HDLog can also be used for other things. it’s also a viewer, and it allows you to edit your metadata. While you’re shooting [and attaching metadata to clips] that metadata is forever linked to the clip, it’s never lost, unless you bring it into Final Cut Pro (ouch). FCP and Avid do not currently use this metadata, Avid uses the fields for their own metadata, deviating from the MXF standard.

Tamés: So it looks like HDLog can help you keep track of your clip metadata even if your editing system does not preserve it at this time.

Braverman: The Panasonic P2 Viewer [for Windows XP and Windows 2000] is not as strong [as HDLog], it’s basically a free piece of software that comes with camera. These products are all in their infancy as manufacturers get feedback about how people are actually using them.

Tamés: Are there some things that a P2 workflow is better for than others?

Braverman: The camera works much better in it’s present state for commercials and music videos rather than long form documentaries or events where the camera needs to be running all of the time. That’s the the thing to remember, if you’re rehearsing and doing specified length scenes, then the camera works very well, because then you can anticipate if you have enough room on the card for this shot, but if you’re doing a documentary thing, you don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s a whole different deal.

Tamés: How would you compare Panasonic’s P2 to Sony’s XDCAM?

Braverman: XDCAM requires a playback device, you need a disk reader, a piece of hardware to play it back. Whereas the P2 card requires only a Cardbus compliant card slot. You can buy a card reader at a CompUSA for $30.00. There’s a quantitative difference in terms of orders of magnitude between the [cost of] integrating P2 into an IT based workflow and the integration of XDCAM into a workflow. Having said that, the advantage of XDCAM includes [being able to] offload disks at very high speed, and you can upload them to a server, but you still need a rather expensive disk player. Theoretically out of the camera you can upload through ethernet to a server, otherwise, you have to deal with the h ardware of a disk reader. I love what Sony did with the disk, they are very robust, very well engineered, very resistant to heat and humidity, and actual live moisture, because the disk spins off any excess moisture that builds up on the disk. Either route (P2 or XDCAM) in terms of technology makes sense to me. With the P2 route you have lower capacity to start with, the challenge of P2 is the lower capacity, whereas with XDCAM you have 23 GB on a disk, you have a much higher capacity out of the box.

Barry Braverman is a Hollywood-based cinematographer recognized for his work on National Geographic specials, commercials, and music videos.

Some documentary filmmakers do interviews while others perfer to observe people and eschew the interview (in the traditions of direct cinema and cinéma vérité) while other filmmakers prefer informal interviews (very often used in personal documentaries); this is a matter of style that is up to each filmmaker. There is no right or wrong here, good or bad, simply different schools of thought. I like to mix things up, and choose the approach that seems to make the most sense for the subject at hand. In documentary, most decisions start with the topic and subjects, always tempered by matters of personal style and budget. I’ve collected many tips and rules of thumb over the years, here’s my collection. I never apply them all at once, rules were meant to be broken, or at least applied selectively.

Interviewing Tips and Rules of Thumb

Preparation is key. Some knowledge of the subject is important. Be familiar with your subjects background and their work and whatever is relevant for your specific film.

Pre-interview on the phone to determine if this person is right for your film. Sometimes spontaneity is more important and you will not pre-interview. Make this decision on a case by case basis, or depending on the specific topic of your film and the nature of the interviews.

Rehearse your questions out loud to make sure there is no room for misunderstanding.

Don’t forget to get the personal release form signed and make sure you have name, address, phone, email, etc. in order to be able to contact them and stay in touch. Do this before the interview starts, no release, no interview. You need to have the rights to everything that ends up in your film, otherwise, you may run into trouble later. It’s simpler and easier to ask for a release to be signed than to track them down what could be years later.

Consider putting people together to talk, sometimes couples or groups give you more; sometimes disagreements yield good.

Keep your list of questions in a notebook.

Primarily good interviewing is about observation, empathy, and preparation (knowing as much as you can about the subject to start with)

Design questions carefully give the specific issues you want to discuss. Research and Preparation is key.

Decide what setting is best for your interviewee, their home, office, in the park, in their studio?

Explain clearly to your interviewee why you are filming them.

The first 10 or so minutes are usually a warm up period, even if you’ve done a pre-interview and have spoken with your interviewee during the lighting set up, it’s a new setting, a new context, give your interviewee time to warm up. Start with some pleasant, warm-up questions, but don’t make them trivial or seem light throw-away, it should feel like a warm-up, not a throw-away.

Depending on your stylistic choices, instruct interviewees to include questions in their response, speaking in full sentences, this will make things much easier to edit. You may have to coach your subject on this, and approach it that way, rather than telling them they are doing something wrong, explain how it makes the editing easier.

Be natural in your interviewing, this comes from practice and genuine empathy for your subject.

Depending on your stylistic choices, if you are going to redirect or interrupt interviewees let them know this in advance, make it conversational, organic.

Listen actively and carefully to make sure answers can stand alone. This gets easier the more you interview.

Listen not only for what you want, but what the interviewee is really saying, don’t rush to the next question, if you don’t have something complete or coherent, ask the question again, or take another angle on the same question. It has been my experience than very often the second time around the answers are more coherent. This, of course, depends on the nature of the interview.

Avoid vague and general questions. Ask for details, specifics, examples, etc. as this makes the interview more interesting.

Ask interviewee not to look at the camera unless you are doing first-person address (see section below on the Interrotron).

Showing people in their own environment is often my preference, some people are better when they are walking around their own space and talking to you, the walking and talking interview can be very effective, especially with artists and craftspeople who work with things.

Don’t forget to cover the environmental context, this B-Roll can be very important.

Start with factual questions and keep the more intimate or emotional information for later when the subject is more comfortable with you and relaxed and with the situation.

It depends on the kind of film you’re making and the purpose of the interviews, but most of the time I like to elicit stories, rather than information. Of course, if the purpose of the interviews is “expert testimony” that’s one thing, but stories are usually most interesting and reveal a lot.

Try to cover each issue in more than one way to give you the ability to cut in and out of the interview in order to tighten the material. Let people talk at their natural pace, avoid too many interruptions, but for important things you want to cover again, circle back and ask the question again in a different way or ask for expansion. Working with 3″ x 5″ cards makes this easier, questions you want to revisit stay in the middle of the pile, things you don’t want to revisit can go to the end.

To get into a delicate area, you can use the devil’s advocate approach, for example, saying “some people would say there’s nothing special about the river dam project” and let the interviewee respond…

Another way to get into a sensitive topic is to start with a general question and then ask for specific examples.

Practice active listening: Getting deeper: try gentle “And…” and “Yes, go on…” and even silence. Don’t be afraid of silence, sometimes it’s the best way to get more from the interviewee. Sometimes if you allow some moments of silence after an interviewee has finished adding a question, look at them, approve with your gestures, but be quiet for a moment, they might be thinking and go into something else. And if they don’t, your sound editor will appreciate having little pieces of “room tone” that match closely what was said (ambient noise often changes over time, so recording room tone an hour later yields a very different sound).

As the interview has wound down and you feel you’ve gotten all that you need, I suggest you ask: “is there any question I should have asked that I’ve not asked today?” Sometimes people will go on a whole other tangent that relates to something important to them, and sometimes this is great footage, often people have nothing to add. But just in case your subject has been wanting to say something, give them the chance, it may turn out to be what you needed for the interview.

It’s important to remind your subject that they should not edit themselves, and that you will cut out any “bad bits” and it’s your job in the editing to take the best parts of the interview and make sure they end up “looking good” or coming across “credible.” In most cases, you should be empathetic and respectful to your subject, you want to bring out the truth and the best in people, unless you are doing an adversarial interview.

Always acknowledge what was successful about the exchange at the end of the interview.

Be very positive and thankful, yet don’t lead your subject to believe they are going to be in the film, if they ask, explain to them that the interview was successful, but it’s eventually up to the editor what ends up in the final film, but express you’re happy with what you’ve got. Basic respect is key in managing these relationships and situations.

First or Third Person Interviews?

The subjects gaze vector (where they are looking) depends on Placement of Camera, Intervieweee and, Interviewer. Determine the audience relationship with the interviewee and choose on-axis or off-axis interviews as appropriate, a.k.a. third-person and first-person address. Third Person Address: Interviewer off camera slightly to the left or right, or under the camera lens, interviewee is talking to an off-screen presence. First Person Address: Interviewer right in the camera lens (see Interrotron below), interviewee is talking right to the audience

Movies like The Fog of War (2003) and Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997) feature interviews with a very unique quality in which the interviewee is looking straight into the camera, with facial reactions that are the result of very intimate communication with the interviewer. This is accomplished through the use of a device Errol Morris calls the “Interrotron.”

The Interrotron is basically a teleprompter, but instead of projecting text in front of the camera lens for the subject to read, it projects the face of the interviewer in the camera lens. This way the interviewer and interviewee can make direct eye contact with each other and the interviewee is reacting directly to the interviewer’s facial gestures. This results in interviews with a piercing sense of intimacy, as if the interviewee was talking not just into the camera lens, but directly to us, the viewers of the film. This is often called first-person address interviews, and with the Interrotron first-person interviews achieve their most intimate and direct expression.

I have used this approach for customer testimonial interviews with two cameras capturing the close-up and medium shots simultaneously. The customers speak directly to the viewer rather than an unseen third person as is typically done in most documentaries, industrials, and broadcast news magazines. This works for some films, yet there is a reason most films don’t use it, it’s the cinematic grammar of salespeople and hucksters, however, in the right context, it can be engaging and intimate, giving the audience the experience of people talking to them, rather than to an off screen presence.

Formal or Informal Interviews?

There are many different styles of interview, when it comes to formal interviews, lighting, the setting, and composition are important. I’m reminded of the following quotes:

“The image is the basis of the visual language of motion pictures … the camera can actively comment upon or interpret what it observes, making each frame a picture worth the proverbial thousand words … the camera is to the filmmaker what brushes and oils are to the painter” – Saul J. Turell and Jeff Lieberman (from notes for the series “The Art of Film”)

“…good close-ups radiate a tender human attitude in the contemplation of hidden things, a delicate solicitude, a gentle bending over the intimacies of life-in-the-miniature, a warm sensibility. Good close-ups are lyrical; it is the heart, not the eye, that has perceived them.”— Béla Balázs in Theory of the Film

“Much of life becomes background, but it is the province of art to throw buckets of light into the shadows and make life new again.” — Diane Ackerman in The Natural History of the Senses

Which I include here because they explain better than I could why I try to carefully light, compose, and design the setting for formal interviews, when I do formal interviews (they are not always the right way to go, but when they are, I feel they should be beautifully lit).

Parting Words

A good filmmaker is a lifelong student, it’s a journey that never ends. Take advice, listen to criticism, it’s the path to learning, and always teach something to others as well, you learn best what you have to teach the most.

These notes were originally compiled in June of 2004, revised and posted January 23, 2006.

Originally published as “This Ain’t no DV, This Ain’t no HD, This Ain’t no Fooling Around: A conversation with David Leitner about ‘The Technical Writer’” in the The New York Independent Film Monitor, Volume 8, No. 4 (January 2003).

The Technical Writer, directed by Scott Saunders, tells the story of an agoraphobic technical writer who lives in a basement apartment in New York City. The film strikes a balance between noteworthy technical achievement (shot and posted in Sony’s IMX MPEG-2 Digital Format) and compelling visual aesthetics. I recently had a conversation with David Leitner, who played a unique triple role as Cinematographer, Producer, and Technologist.

Tamés: The Technical Writer straddles a painterly quality and a documentary quality. On the surface there’s a lot of existing-light cinematography, but there’s clearly more to it.

Leitner: I’m using tiny amounts of light, but if you really look at what is going on, the colors are artificial. In my mind I was going after a Lucian Freud look, with fallow, morbid colors. Lucian Freud is a British painter and a grandson of Sigmund Freud. His paintings are often large nudes or portraits, and the color tones in the skin are morbid, greens and greys and flat sienna colors. The work has a sense of morbid human flesh and a lot of it.

Tamés: How does this fit with the film?

Leitner: The technical writer in the film is a man who lives in a basement Manhattan apartment and he’s agoraphobic. He has a fallow, drained complexion, and I wanted to convey that aspect of him. He spends most of his time in front of a computer screen. I wanted that computer screen to be the key light in many cases. That you could say is naturalism. For instance, if the camera was pointed at the face, you did not see what was on the screen. We would display color fields [on the LCD computer monitor] to give you the impression he was looking at different web sites going from a blue to a red, and then a second later to a green, but it does not feel unreal, it does not feel non-naturalistic. It may be a little over-the-top, and this is a tension I like to play with a lot.

Tamés: Yes, the lighting is natural and yet it’s not.

Leitner: In some of our scenes, if you walked onto the set you would be looking for the light switch, but they were lit already. If you look at a lot of the lighting I do it looks natural, but if you look a little closer, I’m fooling around with things. And I can’t explain it. I just know when I do it and if I like it. If you look carefully at the film there are a lot of unmotivated primary color light sources, but what are we talking about here is using tiny lights. My biggest colored light was a 30 Watt mushroom bulb, they are so tiny you don’t realize they are in the scene but I often place my light sources in the scene.

Tamés: Your work as a cinematographer on this and other films reminds me of Nestor Almendros. I remember reading a story he wrote in A Man with a Camera about shooting Days of Heaven in which the gaffer would set up the large carbon arcs lights every day and Nestor would ask him to turn them off. Almendros shot some comparisons with and without the arcs in order to show his gaffer the difference, however, the gaffer never came to the screenings of the dailies.

Leitner: He came from a documentary tradition. He was a maverick, as well, and that we share in common. If you can shoot at light levels that are comfortable and normal, in other words, not artificially boosted, do you shoot in a stylized way [pick and choose from the past] or do you shoot in a naturalistic direction as many people with a documentary background would be inclined to do?

Tamés: There seem to be more and more films being shot this way, and I don’t think it’s just about budgets.

Leitner: This is actually a bit of a revolution in cinematography. If you look at still photography, particularly the great documentary photographers, they used no lighting at all. So why in that very related field use of natural light is celebrated in terms of results but not in our field? It’s because we have been using these mechanical devices that required a great deal of additional lighting. Light levels had to be higher in terms of luminance to create a useful exposure. Today we have reached a point where technically the huge amounts of artificial light are no longer necessary.

Tamés: What inspired the time-lapse photography in the film?

Leitner: Back in ‘76 I attended a Warner Brothers summer student workshop and we shot in New York. We got on the Circle Line with some Super-8 sound cameras from Boston and we went around Manhattan… so in these movies you’re flying around Manhattan and the bridges are wizzing over your head, I’ve never forgotten that experience. In a personal way, shooting the time-lapse in The Technical Writer was my homage to that.

Filmmakers doing time-lapse in the past had to take the film to the lab and wait to find out if the exposure was right, if there was a hair in the gate, etc. The MSW-900P has an optional picture cache board that makes it the first true time-lapse video camera. What I can do with the 900P camera is phenomenal: I can shoot for five minutes and see my results a minute later, squeezed to 10 seconds. It gives me ideas, the ability to adjust things which allows me to evolve all sorts of techniques, some of which are in the film.

Tamés: You’ve been talking about advantages in production, but what does this new IMX digital 1/2″ tape format [MPEG-2, 50Mbps, 4:2:2, I-frame, 3:3:1 nearly-lossless compression], with double the bit rate and color resolution of miniDV look like when you screen it?

Leitner: I have to tell you the MPEG looks terrific. We were able to do screenings on a large plasma display with playback from a PAL miniDV player and this retains the clarity of digital reproduction.

Tamés: So, with all these tools it’s easier than ever to make a film that rivals bigger budget productions shot on film?

Leitner: It’s quite the opposite, it’s more complex today that it has ever been. I look back with nostalgia to the days when you just had to hold up a light meter and read a single reading to get a light level. You were not thinking about color space issues, detail circuitry… Back then the cinematographer was the only person who knew what the image was going to look like. They were magicians and as such they knew something that no one else knew, and there was a lot of mystique attached to that person.

Tamés: So, how has the cinematographer’s role changed?

Leitner: Today you are working with large monitors, usually high def monitors. Everybody looks at it, hair looks at it, make-up looks at it, gaffers look at it, the director looks at it. If it works well, then it creates a kind of true communal creative activity. My gaffer, Sam Wells (an experimental filmmaker) came up with a good metaphor: it’s very much like mural painting where someone draws the original cartoon and then all kinds of painters fill in the colors at once.

Tamés: Does this make for a better mural?

Leitner: When it does not work, you have all kinds of people that are looking at the monitor thinking they can do it better. What it has done has fundamentally altered the dynamic of the film set. When only the cinematographer knew what the image was going to look like, there was a whole lot of fear and uncertainty on the film set. For instance, to be a first assistant cameraperson you were pulling focus all of the time but you did not know till the dailies were printed how much of it you had ruined. Many camera assistants have become alcoholics and there is a reason for that.
Today, when you are working with these large displays on the set you can see instantly and it lowers the fear and anxiety quotient and sets are a lot calmer. Now again, some people will think this is great and some people will think it’s terrible for the art, but what is undeniable is the change that is taking place.

And it has another profound implication, people, are basing lighting decisions and cinematography decisions on what they are seeing on these monitors. Now if you accept the fact that no two monitors are exactly alike in terms of the way they are set up, their display is rarely a fixed thing. And the monitor is sitting in different lighting conditions, outside, indoors. The monitor and the color saturation look completely different in different ambient light conditions.

Tamés: Given that you can’t expect to make serious lighting decisions with a monitor this sounds like a problem.

Leitner: Lighting decisions are being made based on this, and you can say they should not be, you can say this till you are blue in the face, but people are going to do what people are going to do. As this practice becomes common that is what the filmmakers expect to see on the big screen, whether it’s film projection or video projection. On the other hand, no two images will ever, and can never, match, and yet, that is what some filmmakers expect.

Tamés: You shot almost all of the film with the new Zeiss DigiPrimes. Why did you choose to work with these lenses?

Leitner: For a number of reasons, first, I needed the apertures that only primes can deliver, second, prime lenses not only provide clearer images, they are considerably smaller. The director had done a previous film with a Betacam but his orientation was miniDV. In fact, he originally intended to shoot The Technical Writer in miniDV, so he wanted a very lightweight camera. As it turned out, the IMX camcorder (before you add camera and lenses) weighs in about 8 pounds, it’s reasonably light.

Tamés:So much of the film was hand-held?

Leitner: Yes, I would not have done that with a giant lens. I shot some of the pick-up shots with the Fujinon 6-30mm, that lens was way bigger than the camera! I wanted to keep the camera profile small. I used clip-on matte boxes, sometimes I just ripped the matte box off. I had this smallish camera, I got the best possible image quality, under the lowest lighting conditions, which meant I reproduced images full of subtlety.

Tamés: Could you have shot the film any other way?

Leitner: No. I took the technology I had assembled [Sony’s MSW-900P MPEG IMX camcorder, Zeiss’ DigiPrimes, DuArt’s ArriLaser Film Recorder, etc.]. No one had ever put these lenses on this camera, no one had used this camera to shoot a feature. I put them together with the expressed purpose of shooting in this style and getting this result. I knew what was possible, and it all panned out.