Ted’s Digital Jungle
The Revolution That is Not Being
Televised
JACK OF ALL TRADES, MASTERS OF NONE –
OR ONE MAN BANDS
For lovers of the auteur theory,
digital video must be the answer to their prayers. Now, at last, a
filmmaker can control his ( or her)own work from first draft script
to final cut. However, in my view, this is a very mixed blessing.
While it is wonderful that virtually
anyone with access to a digital camera and a computerized editing
system can make a film which can be projected on a large screen ( a
big kick for me!). one cannot assume that the works produced will be
worth watching.
My years of experience in film have
television have taught me one thing: everyone needs an editor ready
to tell you to “kill your darlings”, as they used to say in
Hollywood.
Anyone who has ever tried to make a
film knows how easy it is to fall in love with a shot or an idea, and
how difficult it canbe later in the editing suite to admit that the
shot or scene does not work at all.
The bottom line: any writer, no matter
how great, needs an editor, and so do filmmakers.
Like traditional filmmakers, I divide
production into three phases – pre-production, production and
post-production – or writing, directing and editing. While I know
there are young Mozarts out there who can compose masterpieces on the
fly, the rest of us have to slog through these three phases and hope
something worthwhile results. And personally, I have found that the
results are best when there are at least one strong mind in charge of
each phase – and that those 3 minds do not all belong to the same
person. ( I know what you’re thinking, but even Orson Welles,
Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, et omnes, had collaborators!)
Even as a screenwriter, I always
preferred to work in a team in which one person was the creator and
the other was the editor. If I was the one coming up with ideas, then
I was able to be completely right-brained and uninhibited, and let my
partner be the left-brained wet blanket. Many great Hollywood
scriptwriters worked in teams – Billy Wilder, the Epstein brothers
and many others – and they did so for a reason.
Nowadays, of course, it is all too easy
for a digital filmmaker to bypass the writing phase altogether, but
this is a recipe for disaster. Like trying to build a house without a
blueprint,
As the immortal Akira Kurosawa said,”
It is possible to make a good movie from a good script, but it is
impossible to make a good movie from a bad script..”
It goes without saying, of course, that
,without any script at all , a train wreck is all but guaranteed.
The bottom line is that great films
cannot be made by one-man ( or one-woman!) bands, and that film
remains a collaborative medium, even in the Digital Age.
As my great directing teacher Janos
Hersko from Stockholm’s Dramatiska Institutet said when asked about
the difference between a painter and filmmaker:” When you are a
painter, you get an idea and put it on canvas. When you are a
filmmaker, you get an idea and then you have to get 50 idiots who
don’t give a damn to do it for you..”
SOME NOTES ON DIGITAL INTERVIEW
TECHNIQUE
We have recently been working on an
oral history of the MONUC mission, which is about to become 10 years
old. Much running around trying to make appointments with busy
people, but things have gone surprisingly well, and now we have
completed our principal shooting, with only a few pick-ups remaining.
We have also been editing as we shot, and I wrote a fairly structured
treatment before we started, so we had a pretty good idea of what we
wanted – or needed – from each interviewee.
However, this begs the question`; how
much should one try to control the interviewee in an attempt to get
the subject to say what you want – or in a way one wants?
A lot depends on the subjects.
In this case, we are talking about
knowledgeable professionals with whom we already have some rapport.
Generally, they want to see the questions of time, since they want to
be prepared. This is fine with me, since the last thing we want to do
is ambush anyone with surprise questions. However, there is also the
question of what constitutes a good delivery.
Some people, like Barack Obama, are
naturally gifted speakers who can talk about just about anything and
make it sound interesting and spontaneous. And there are others who
are not .
For television professionals, the
latter are the challenge, of course. Getting people to relax in front
of the camera is easier said than done, especially if the subjects
have some knowledge of the medium. In the proverbial journalistic
hatchet job, a skilled television professional can make virtually
anyone look bad. FOX NEWS is a blaring case in point. ( or, as the
great Swedish playwright August Strindberg once said: ” Be careful
what you do to me – you may be in my next play!”)
So , the first thing is to establish
trust. This is an art, and not easily taught. Some people just
inspire more trust in others. However, clearly one has to be both
relaxed and professional,as well as courteous while demonstrating a
gentle mastery of the entire situation. The sound, the lighting,
the composition, and some direction regarding appearance and movement
work wonders. Ideally, the interviewee should feel he or she is in
the capable hands of well-intentioned professionals, and should not
be afraid to ask questions regarding how his or her performance might
be improved.
The second step is to get the person
talking, and then to keep the camera running until they finish. Most
people will need to warm up a bit before they hit their stride, and
then the pearls begin to emerge. I try to avoid interrupting people
unless there is some technical disaster – and even then, I will
generally let the subject decide to cut.
I suppose my thinking here is a bit
influenced by own experience of writing and, later, teaching writing.
As most writers know, there is no magic formula for writing. The
trick is simply to start writing, and then stick with it until
something good happens.
I find the same is true with speech.
Once people get started, they end up saying all sorts of interesting
things – a fact well known by police forces around the world (
which is why lawyers advise their clients to say nothing in trails
and depositions- that seemingly harmless small talk can open the
door to all sorts of unpleasantries!)
For this reason, I try to avoid overly
clever questions, and instead prefer to stick to open-ended humble
queries asking the subject to enlighten us about his or her field of
expertise. People are going to say what they want anyway, and nobody
likes clever questions that require too much thought.
From my teaching experience, I know
students hate quizzes, and I think the same is true of most people. (
I remember substitute teaching a literary history class for a
colleague who had broken his league. When I told the students what
had happened to the unfortunate man, and said that he would not be
back for the rest of the term, they applauded! I was shocked, and
then learned that my colleague had a habit of giving quizzes on
minutiae in the stories the students had read)
Similarly, I don’t know of anyone who
enjoys being deposed in a civil suit, or , worse,being cross-examined
in a criminal case. I have only had the first experience, thank God,
and can only say it is an exhausting experience. (When you like
talking as much as I do, it is very hard keeping your mouth shut, but
that is what you have to do in a deposition)
For me, the best thing is to let the
subject get on a roll, and then ask some follow-up questions. in the
process, hopefully he or she will say something you can use in a
natural, spontaneous fashion.
This approach may burn a lot of tape,
but these days, tape is just about the cheapest part of the
production. When I was studying film directing in the early 80s at
Sweden’s Dramatiska Institutet, it was just the opposite – we had
the most incredible equipment imaginable in the Swedish Film
Institute studios, but could barely afford any film!
We were hardly alone in this dilemma –
the same was true in Eastern Europe, where most of our teachers had
learned their craft. The result was that our productions tended to be
extremely well-planned and organized, with as little as possible left
to chance. Under these conditions, it was pretty difficult to think
about doing real documentaries, with shooting ratios of 20:1 or more
– something like Marcel Ophuls’ classic THE SORROW AND THE PITY
must have cost a fortune!
Nowadays, however, great documentarians
like the Australian Dennis O’Rourke can spend months getting people
to reveal themselves talking to the camera in films like CUNNAMULLA,
and the results are extraordinary. I had the good fortunate to meet
Dennis in New York when CUNNAMULLA was shown at the Margaret Mead
Festival; he explained his technique was simply to spend time with
people, and then tape his chats with them. He does his own
camerawork, so essentially the films are dialogues with the subjects
as they describe their lives. Dennis does not pretend to be
invisible, but tries to be as. unobtrusive as possible. He ends up
with a lot of material, of course, which he then looks at and makes a
preliminary edit, saving the material he likes on external hard
drives.
Then he goes on to make the final cut.
Needless to say, without digital
technology and the liberation from the shackles of Eastman Kodak,
none of this would be possible!
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©2011 Ted’s Digital Jungle
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