Maria’s Story and its role in the technological history of documentary filmmaking

Maria’s Story (1990, Monona Wali & Pamela Cohen, 53 min.) is a documentary portrait of Maria Serrano, a 39-year-old woman who is a peasant, mother, and guerrilla leader who at the time the film was made, had spent over a decade of her life fighting in the hills of El Salvador. Some might condemn the film as agitprop, others would argue it provides an insightful point-of-view of the late-eighties struggle in El Salvador from a highly personal point-of-view. The film is also interesting and important because of the manner in which it was made. More on that later. The film was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival, had a modest theatrical release, and was broadcast by PBS on P.O.V.

I would argue the film is not propaganda due to the fact the filmmakers focused on one woman’s story through which the filmmakers explored the injustice of the situation of El Salvador. Reminds me of the old film school adage, “show don’t tell.” The film was made in conjunction with CISPES (Committee In Solidarity with the People of El Salvador) and was a very effective fundraising tool for them, definitely in part to film’s personal perspective. Viewers might disagree with Maria, her politics, her approach to the problems she faces, but they could not disagree with the reality of her life and the people around her. Not only is there no such thing as objectivity, the duplicitous “objectivity” of the mainstream media stifles real dialog, real debate, real understanding. I like my documentaries with a point-of-view from perspective of real people, and if the filmmaker has an agenda, so be it, as long as they are willing to go to bat for their facts and perspectives and the social reality they are depicting.

But I digress. This post is more about what makes this particular film interesting from the perspective of media technology history: the production of the film was made possible by the use of a new Sony Video8 camcorder that recorded high quality audio and introduced around the time the film started filming. This film was made at a watershed moment in documentary film history. The filmmakers have told the story (ref. Q&A session during a San Francisco screening of the film, circa 1991) of the first time they went down to El Salvador with their 16mm film camera, audio recording gear, and many cans of 16mm film. Maria’s response, in summary, was “with all that gear you can’t move fast, you’re going to get us killed” and the filmmakers returned to San Francisco and had to rethink how they were going to shoot the film.

This was just around the time that Video8 (and soon after Hi8) were being discussed in documentary circles as viable alternatives to 16mm film and Betacam SP for shooting documentary films. There was lots of talk about whether PBS would accept Video8 (and later Hi8) documentaries and the video engineers and film snobs were out in full regalia for this debate. John Knoop, the cinematographer on the project, came up with a solution, using Sony’s new Video8 prosumer camcorder, a small shoulder mounted camera that had high-quality built in audio recording capabilities with real audio meters, and he fashioned some solar panel powered battery chargers for the camera batteries. The prosumer Video8 (and later Hi8) video cameras, were lighter and a tad smaller than most 16mm film cameras like the Aaton LTR popular at the time, but they required more electrical energy than their 16mm counterparts, so a methodology of charging the batteries in the jungle was critical.

With the new smaller gear and a way to charge their batteries far from the power grid, the filmmakers returned to El Salvador and this time Maria allowed them to follow her and her army of children and men as they travel through the hills to their campsites in preparation for what they hope will be their final offensive against the government. With very little resources and a small number of weapons, they are not the revolutionaries we see in movies but this film is about a social reality we often don’t see. Revolutionaries who are also mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, fighting for basic human rights. No stars or effects or steadicam or sweeping crane shots in this film. Just life as the filmmakers observe it day to day living under harsh conditions. The quality of the video image actually works in favor of this film, constantly reminding you this is a mediated experience, not a mimetic virtuality.

The film is also interesting because for the theatrical release the filmmakers had no choice but to produce a film print. This was at the time that a post firm in Los Angeles called Image Transform has perfected a video to film process that was helping filmmakers make film prints that looked good enough to entice some distributors and theaters to program films that had been shot in video. We don’t get hung up on shooting medium these days, but circa 1990 people sure did. The video vs. film as an acquisition medium debate was raging like a California wildfire.

The film is primarily a document of political struggle, but it’s also a turning point technologically because it was among the first films shot in Video8 that presented a compelling and important portrait that could not have been made with the analog photo-chemical film medium. The electronic Video8 format provided for a smaller camera, recording sound and picture in the same camera (16mm required the use of a separate Nagra 1/4″ tape recorder) which further reduced the technological overhead, making this film possible.

The use of a small video camera improves the filmmakers ability to record everyday life in a more intimate fashion. One of the more poignant scenes in the film is when Maria travels back to her home village, devastated by long years of fighting, and talks about the events that transformed her from a young girl into a guerrilla leader, and the story is all the more intense through the unvarnished video image with it’s matter-of-fact starkness, we observe how she’s become a hero to her people, inspiring her troops as they prepare to engage with the government.

There’s another scene I remember in the film when Maria, her soldiers, and the filmmakers are attacked by government troops. The filmmakers dive for cover. The camera, dropped to the ground, continues to record the skirmish, and while the picture from the camera laying on it’s side is not interesting, the soundtrack is about as real as you ca get and brings you there into the moment in a manner that post-production sound effects just can’t do, you know this soundtrack is real, it’s a part of Maria’s life. For this scene, the filmmakers take the actual audio footage of the attack and lay over it images they had shot at a different time. We’re a visual culture and we need images as a frame upon which to experience a film, even though sound carries most of the emotion. Some people complained that it was a re-creation. The documentary purists cried foul. But they did not understand the role of sound in conveying the so-called reality of the moment, and providing authenticity, but that’s a whole other discussion.

At their best, documentary films provide us with points-of-view we could not, or would not (possibly due to ideological bias), ever see on our own. They are extensions of our collective selves that allow us to share social reality with others, and the evolution of cameras from analog film, to analog video, and finally to digital video has made it possible to show so much more, to go places that we could not have gone before. Maria’s Story was made at a very important inflection point in this history, among the first films to show us a social reality we would not have been able to see here in the United States had it not been for the introduction of viable prosumer camcorder with decent image and audio quality from Sony.

I saw the film and heard the filmmakers talk seventeen years ago, so my memory might be sightly inaccurate here and there, but the gist is right. The film is currently distributed by Filmmakers Library and is available on DVD and VHS. A wonderfully effective example of intimate documentary filmmaking and making good use of new technology to produce a story that otherwise could not have been told.

Operation Filmmaker offers crisp angle on subject-filmmaker relationship

I recently watched Nina Davnport’s new film, Operation Filmmaker at the ICA in Boston. Not since watching Shadow of the House last year have I enjoyed watching a documentary so much.

This is one of those films that started out as one project and ended up a completely different one, because the filmmaker was able to continue working with their subject as the context around their work changed dramatically, which makes it all the more delicious. The project started when David Schisgall, a friend of Nina Davenport from college, directed a piece for MTV, “True Life: I’m Living in Iraq,” about young people living in Iraq. The piece focused mostly on American soldiers, however, it also featured seven minutes about Muthana Mohmed, a young Iraqi film student who was desperate to go to Hollywood. Actor and director Liev Schreiber saw the piece and was moved. He contacted Schisgall with the idea that he’d like to give Muthana an opportunity to come to work with him as an intern on “Everything is Illuminated,” a film Schreiber was going to direct in the Czech Republic.

Schisgall thought that Muthana’s experience might make for an interesting documentary, so he hired Davenport to make a film about Muthana working on the set of the film. This might have been an ordinary behind-the-scenes movie worthy of a DVD extra, however, when Davenport arrived on the set of “Everything is Illumniated” she quickly realized that this was not going to be a straightforward piece about an intern working on a Hollywood movie. Director Liev Schreiber and producer Peter Saraf had all sorts of expectations of what Muthana would accomplish on the set of “Everything is Illumniated,” which in the end were unrealistic; at the same time Muthana was not much different than the average middle-class kid unsure of what they want while being caught in a very unfamiliar situation. I don’t want to give too much away about the story itself, because I had a chance to see the film only knowing this setup, and I really enjoyed the journey not having any idea how the story was going to end. It’s really delightful to be able to see the movie that way, the film unfolds like life itself.

Nina Davenport, who was Ross McElwee’s student at Harvard, follows her teacher in the tradition of personal documentary filmmaking, and it really works in this film. What starts out as a straightforward behind-the-scenes piece, ends up becoming a personal film for Davenport. Her camera is at once gentle and probing, talking us along the ups and downs of the relationship between subject and filmmaker. In an era in which so many people are making films about themselves without an observer providing perspective, Operation: Filmmaker demonstrates once again why we benefit from seeing a dialog between subject and filmmaker. What makes the film so interesting is seeing a life honestly portrayed from the perspective of a third party who at the same time is closely involved in the life of the subject, and yet a different person who in the end can only observe, capturing both the things that make the subject attractive to us, as well as the things that we may not like about the subject. In the end, Muthana comes across as very human, and whatever we may not like about his character, we must recognize as characteristics about ourselves. As Anais Nin once wrote, “we don’t see people as they are, we see people as we are.” This film provides an eloquent visual manifestation of Nin’s oft quoted phrase.

This richly observed and well edited film goes beyond the events unfolding in front of the camera to tell a larger story about ourselves and relationships with others. Part of what makes this such an interesting film to watch is that Davenport reveals her struggle to make the film, during the Q&A session after the screening she said, “I felt I was in an abusive relationship, but it was not the man, it was the movie.” And while some will see this film as an allegory for our involvement in Iraq, in the end it’s a more universal story about expectations of others and what happens when those expectations don’t meet up with reality.

A list of upcoming screenings is available on the films website.

Media Fabrics for Media Makers Symposium at MIT Friday, June 20, 2008

A celebration of Glorianna Davenport’s three decade effort at MIT focused on documentary storytelling and technology, “Media Fabrics for Media Makers: Realizing an Expressive Landscape for Digital Dialogues” is a day-long symposium to be held on Friday, June 20, 2008 at the MIT Media Laboratory.

The morning sessions will show what has changed in terms of technology, methods and forms as we have rapidly moved to what Glorianna Davenport calls the Media Fabric. After lunch, three panels of Glorianna’s students will address the following topics: “Learning by Design” focused on issues related to the multidisciplinary nature of learning in the digital age; “Making Media” a discussion among founders of design firms that span physical space and media, and “Video games, the big screen and the Media Fabric” which speaks to the interaction of business interests and the entertainment field.

Agenda and Announcement:
www.media.mit.edu/eventsreg/08gid-invite-fri.html

People interested in storytelling, entertainment, as well as new technologies will benefit in particular from this special event at MIT.

Space is limited, if you plan to attend please RSVP via email to: jk[at]media[dot]mit[dot]edu.

Intimidad

Intimidad is a documentary film that weaves together a mix of home movie, cinema verite, and informal interview footage to present a portrait of Cecy and Camilo Ramirez, and their daughter Loida, a hard-working, young family living in Reynosa, Mexico.

This weekend I interviewed David Redmon and Ashley Sabin for my podcast, Art Film Talk, 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.

Smile Boston Project

Smile Boston Project is an award-winning short documentary about Bren Bataclan’s “Smile Boston Project,” a street art project. In the summer of 2003, Bren Bataclan began leaving paintings of his colorful characters for people to take all over the Boston area on park benches, in subway stations, schoolyards, and other public locations. To each painting Bataclan attached a note that read, “This painting is yours to keep if you promise to smile at random people more often.” This film covers the project from its inception in the summer of 2003 through the spring of 2007, examining Bataclan’s influences, his goals, and the reactions of the people who have found, purchased, and critiqued his paintings. The film was edited by Elissa Mintz and the music was composed by Colin Owens.

Play Trailer (00:54)

Visit the Smile Boston Project web site for more information about the film.

Back to the Project List.

Facing Realities: Dialogues in Boston Documentary Filmmaking

The LEF Foundation recently announce its support of a new film screening series, Facing Realities: Dialogues in Boston Documentary Filmmaking. The film series is part of an effort to highlight the history and deepen the understanding of Boston’s documentary tradition, which continues today. The first screening in the series will be held on Saturday, March 22, 2008 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Films include Forest of Bliss (Robert Gardner, 1986, 90 min.) and Today the Hawk Takes One Chick (Jane Gillooly, 2007, 72 min.) followed by a discussion with Robert Gardner and Jane Gillooly led by film scholar Scott MacDonald. Visit the Facing Realities web site for more information. Photo:
Bell and Howell Regent 8mm
by aka Kath

Ten Documentary Films

I was reading a post tonight on DVXuser that asked What’s the best documentary you’ve ever seen? and I was inspired by the challenge and made a list of 10 documentary films to watch that are worthy of both viewing and analysis. I can’t begin to rank what I would consider a top ten of documentaries, nor could I ever narrow things down to ten, but if I had to pick ten documentary films right this instant to program in a virtual documentary film festival, here are ten films I’d consider programming right at the moment.

One is a short to make up for the epic length of one of the selections.Ask me tomorrow and my answer will be a little different, ask me next year and it will be really different. So here’s the list in chronological order:

Read more

Notes on the Interview

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 shooting them.

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: 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.

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.

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 personal documentary” 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.

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.

The grizzly ecstatic truth

I heard an interesting interview on Weekend Edition with Werner Herzog talking about Grizzly Man, his new documentary about Timothy Treadwell, who spent many years with grizzly bears in Alaska. There’s another good interview that was on Fresh Air a couple of days prior.

Treadwell and his girlfriend were killed and eaten by some bears in October of 2003. The film makes use of Treadwell’s own video footage to tell the story. Herzog claims that it’s a “film that gives you more insight into our own nature than many other films that I’ve seen in a long time.” The film screens theatrically this summer and will be aired on the Discovery Channel this fall. Herzog says some interesting things about the documentary/fiction distinction, “I don’t really make a clear distinction between documentaries and feature films, there’s a blurred line because I stylize documentaries, sometimes I even invent … sometimes I try to dig into something much deeper than the superficial truth of the so called cinema verite, somehow [it is] confused about fact and truth, and I’ve always looked for something much deeper, an ecstatic truth, the ectascy of truth … the distinction is not so clear.”