Creating Restrictions

You research not just to discover people and situations but also to decide the restrictions that will narrow and deepen what you shoot. The clay on the potter’s wheel is a shapeless lump until the potter’s hands begin containing and squeezing it. These constraints make the clay rise and take shape. Saying “I don’t want to make a talking head film or shoot everything handheld” is already to apply creative pressure. Know what aspects of the subject you are not interested in, what coverage you don’t want to shoot, and you can better decide what aspects you do want to concentrate on and what strategies you’ll use to do them justice. In Chapter 19, Form, Control, and Style, you’ll find more on setting limits for creative purposes.

Research Methods are Subject Driven

The subject and type of documentary determine the kind of research you should do.

Example 1. You want to make an observational film about a street gang, so you use networking to make contact, declare your interests to them, and get them to accept your first visit. The idea behind networking is that everyone knows someone who knows someone else. A London journalist friend used to say, “Anyone can get to anyone else in the world in five or less phone calls.”

Once you are preliminarily accepted by the gang—who are as curious to see themselves on the screen as anyone else—you may need to hang out with them over a period of weeks or months until they come to know you and thoroughly trust your motives. This is how the modest, kindly Hubert Sauper made Darwin’s Nightmare (2004, Austria). The story concerns sick, starving Tanzanians trapped in a toxic ring of exploitative commerce. Lake Victoria’s fishermen catch a predatory fish, then foreign merchants and middle men sell it to European gastronomes and local people get the rotting heads. Guess what the Russian transport planes bring in unmarked boxes on the return trip to Africa? Guns.

People saw that Sauper truly wanted to know them because he stayed around for months. The result is a series of amazingly candid, inwardly searching conversations with street urchins, weary Russian pilots, prostitutes who dream of education and a good job, and the guard of a research facility whose only weapon is a bow and poisoned arrows. Their inward-looking frankness makes this occasionally funny, often shocking film very special.

Example 2. You want to make a tightly argued film about a group of scientists, so you must research using books, libraries, interviews, and the Internet to master intricate patterns of scientific cause and effect. You’ll also want to get well acquainted so you can profile the personalities and workplaces of the scientists themselves. You’ll want to know how they relax, what their family life is like, what they fear, and what they hope for.

Example 3. You want to make a film about how children visit a zoo. Again, you must hang out, ask innumerable questions, and learn the regular, cyclical patterns by which each day follows the last. Wittily and economically your film should establish how everyone catches their breath at the stink when they enter the lion house, how grandparents and babies doze off after lunch, or how gaggles of boys taunt the unfortunate chimpanzees. These are obligatory scenes at which your audience will smile in recognition. By the time you are ready to shoot, you need to know what’s typical and also what’s unusual—and thus be ready to film it. There’s that kid lying on his side so he can look the armadillo in its beady black eye. There’s that depressed man in a raincoat and red woolen hat sitting with his back to a depressed baboon. Quick, shoot it!

Courage and Push-Ups

The Chinese say that a long journey begins with a single step. It’s hard when you start to break the innate barriers of modesty and reserve. You have to force yourself to keep taking steps because we’re all afraid of rejection, of the stinging or sarcastic rebuke. Yet take that step, and you’ll find how welcoming and helpful most people are. You and your camera, after all, bring a little glamour. Taking those steps gets easier if you practice by walking up to a couple of new people each day and finding out about their lives. These encounters are the documentarian’s push-ups.

The Working Hypothesis

A vital first step, when you first have an idea for a film, is to make a working hypothesis. This helps fashion a through line of logic to connect your initial convictions, your characters and their main issue, and the realizations, thoughts, and feelings that you want to engender in your audience. Project 2-DP-3 Basic Working Hypothesis Helper (in the Appendix) poses a series of prompts for you to fill in, so it ends up looking something like this:

1. In life I believe that [your life principle concerning this subject] sometimes you have to trust other people’s authority and judgment in order to grow.
2. My film will show this in action by exploring [situations] the circumstances leading up to a young marine’s first parachute jump, of which he is very afraid.
3. My central characters are [their characteristics] Louis, a rather sheltered young man; his protective mother, Zelda; and his sergeant, who drives the marine beyond what he feels capable of doing.
4. What each wants to get, do, or accomplish: Louis wants to prove himself but is afraid, his mother wants to save him from fear and danger, and his sergeant wants to show him he can do more than he thinks.
5. The main conflict in my film is between Louis’ love and loyalty to his mother and his need to prove his manly independence.
6. I expect my film’s structure to be determined by the pace and sequencing of marine training that leads up to the parachute jump.
7. Ultimately I want my audience to feel Louis’ inner struggle to master his terror and his joy at overcoming it by floating like a bird in the air.
8. … and to realize that everyone has tests they must pass in life in order to gain self-respect.

As you research, as you shoot, and even as you edit, you will need to revise your hypothesis as a way to keep control over the meaning and direction of your evolving film. This is a fascinating exercise.

Research Overview

Your object during research is to assemble a shooting plan, budget, and rough schedule. Below are the common steps. Don’t fret if you are forced to take them out of order or must tackle several at once. Explanations like mine must arrange things logically, but life is often messy and circular. During research consider the overall film and:

• Test the viability of your original idea by making a new hypothesis.
• Designate a purpose for each scene in the film’s likely narrative.
• Imagine the different possible outcomes once you start filming.
• Think and rethink the possible meanings your film could deliver.
• Develop a detailed proposal that outlines your intended content, theme, style, and outcomes.
• Pitch your film to gauge its impact on an audience, raise funds, or otherwise gather support.
• Assemble all the human and material resources you need to begin shooting.

During research for particular scenes or situations:

• Analyze each situation for its significance and filmability.
• List the exposition (basic information) each scene must convey. Without this, your audience can’t attain your level of understanding.
• Observe characteristic activity so you can:
  • Figure out shooting that is characteristic, telling, and brief.
  • Know when anything abnormal or potentially dramatic starts happening.
  • Get to know participants.
  • Explain your motivation and purposes for making the film.
  • Become known and trusted.
  • Understand roles people have adopted.
  • Decide who represents what and narrow your choices.
  • Decide who will be communicative and effective.

Inventory

From research and forming a film in your head, now make an inventory of materials you’ll need to shoot. Use the list of sound and picture materials at the beginning of Chapter 6, Elements and Grammar, as a reminder. Your inventory—really a shopping list—for a short film might look something like this:

Dramatic Content Helper

Now try using Project 2-DP-1 Dramatic Content Helper (in the Appendix). It will help you locate the dramatic ingredients that all stories need and set you up to direct them well. There’s no set formula for making good documentary, but successful ones often contain the elements of drama (characters, situation, conflict, confrontation, and resolution). The Helper’s questions help you dig out those hiding in any film idea you have under consideration. You won’t be able to answer all the questions, but merely trying will prod your imagination.

The Outline

Now take your Working Hypothesis and the material generated by the Dramatic Content Helper and turn them into an outline. This is a narrative in the present tense, active voice that walks the reader, one sequence at a time, through the experience of seeing and hearing the intended film. You’ll need to introduce the characters, the main character’s situation and “problem,” and then show by what situations the film develops and with what likely outcome. Where imponderables may affect the meaning of the film in different ways, write about these, too.

Documentary Proposal

Anyone making documentaries spends considerable time and effort competing to get funding or other support for their projects. Writing a documentary proposal is the means by which you do this, and each is going to be different according to the film and the approach. Unfortunately, this means that there are no reliable models to emulate. You can, however, get a great deal of information about independent producers’ past applications by thoroughly exploring the Independent Television Service’s Web site (www.itvs.org/index.htm).

A basic documentary proposal has to say in as few as 2–3 pages what your documentary is about, who its characters are, what world they live in, and what issues they are struggling with. You must also indicate the film’s approach, style, and likely outcomes. This is not easy when you intend to film anything that is uncertain of outcome, so you must guess at likely outcomes and say what development is likely to take place in your central characters. Most important is to describe your target audience and to establish why you have a passion to make this particular film. Any fund or foundation to which you apply will also ask for a rough budget.

Use Project 2-DP-5 Basic Proposal Helper to flush out the information, and then transpose and rewrite your materials until your writing:

• Progresses in logical steps
• Includes all the necessary fundamentals
• Is free of all repetition
• Reads effortlessly

In Book II, Chapter 23: Proposing an Advanced Documentary there is a more advanced proposal process that makes use of Project 2-DP-6 Advanced Proposal Helper.

Style and Content Questionnaire

The Project 2-DP-2 Style and Content Questionnaire (Figure 7-1) will help you develop ideas for style and shooting. (You will find a blank to photocopy in the Appendix.) Aim to give each sequence a distinct mood, purpose, and meaning. Even interviewees need a meaningful setting and meaningful lighting. The challenge is to accentuate the intrinsic identities and contributions of each part of the material. Don’t worry about the material’s order, since that won’t be final until editing. Include archive footage, too, even though it’s a given and can only be altered in postproduction (hue, contrast, color saturation and balance, etc.). Archive material also contributes mood and information.

If this looks too much like fiction, remember that it’s only a set of ideals. You want to bring some vision and expectation to the shots you expect to cover, not just make do with whatever shapes up. Documentary planning is usually overly ambitious, given that some material may be grab shooting, but good things happen because you dream them into existence.

FIGURE 7-1 Specimen Style and Content sheet for first three sequences of a documentary about a child’s visit to her grandparents. (See Project 2-DP-2 in the Appendix for a blank to photocopy.)

Luck Favors the Prepared Mind

Plans for documentaries are full of imponderables, but defining what you’d ideally like often makes the gods smile. Being well prepared lets you see alternative possibilities as you shoot and also, rather mysteriously, often attracts extraordinary luck.

Scheduling

To schedule a short film, break your material into intended sequences and allot time for each. Expect to cover perhaps two lengthy sequences in a day of work, provided you can get from one to the other without too long a journey. Setting up lights rather than shooting under available light also slows things down.

Beginning directors often expect to cover too much in a given time and end up shooting for inhumanly long hours. After a few grueling days, work gets sloppy and the crew resentful. So err on the light side, because a crew in good shape is always ready to shorten a given schedule by working longer days, while a crew suffering from terminal fatigue may rebel at the idea of two extra hours. Treat your crew reasonably and they will rise to crises selflessly.

If you have exteriors that depend on a certain kind of weather, schedule them early and have interior shooting standing by in case you need it. If your film depends on a success with a particular scene or situation, plan to shoot it early in case it proves difficult or impossible and makes the rest of the film moot.

Location Agreement

For each privately owned location you will need a signed permission before you shoot. Called a location agreement (Figure 7-2), you’ll need one to shoot in any building or on any piece of land that is not a public thoroughfare. Whether it’s an empty church, a public park, or city transportation, each comes under the jurisdiction of a guardian body to which you are supposed to apply. This is to regulate shooting on their property and to protect yourself against being sued. Say you shoot someone on a bus who just happens to be running away with someone else’s wife. Their shot just happens to appear on national television, and he sues the bus company for allowing you to invade his privacy. Guess who the bus company sues?

You obtain a signature on an individual release form after shooting. One appears in Chapter 9, Basic Camera Equipment. Fuller, more legally binding, and downloadable forms for location and individual release appear in Chapter 24, Preparing to Direct. They come from Michael C. Donaldson’s excellent Clearance and Copyright: Everything the Independent Filmmaker Needs to Know (2003, Silman-James Press).

FIGURE 7-2 Location release form, courtesy of Michael C. Donaldson’s Clearance and Copyright: Everything the Independent Filmmaker Needs to Know (2003, Silman-James Press). Download a copy from [email protected].

Budget

As an eye-opener, assess what your film would cost if you had to rent equipment and pay everyone (see project box). Use your Internet research skills to find daily rates for professionals and their equipment. Allow a 5-day week of editing for every 10 minutes of final screen time. Give yourself a shooting ratio of 24:1, which means that you’ll need stock on which to shoot (cassettes, disks, solid-state memory, etc.) that is 24 times your intended screen length of 10 minutes. Thus, you’ll need 24 × 10 = 240 minutes, or 4 hours of stock.

Shocked at your budget grand total? Films cost big money, which is why surviving as a maker requires a practical mind equipped with basic business skills.

Documentary makers often detest all the time it takes to get projects funded and then, once they’re made, the further energy it takes to distribute them in order to recoup their cost. If you do well, you’ll look for a producer who actually likes doing this kind of work. Believe it or not, they do exist. Few independent documentary makers achieve this level of success and come to accept—and even excel at—the job of finding and administering funds. Saving precious resources becomes a preoccupation for everyone in the crew.

Meanwhile, prepare to travel the festival circuit with any film of winning caliber so you can negotiate with distributors and make contacts over leveraging new projects.

This chapter’s work should get you thinking about how to make a living from filmmaking. If you haven’t yet studied Part 8: Career Track, now is the time to face reality and lay your plans.

Going Further

See Michael C. Donaldson’s Clearance and Copyright: Everything the Independent Filmmaker Needs to Know (2003, Silman-James Press) to better understand the legal restraints that hedge the professional filmmaker. For research in more depth see Chapter 21, Advanced Research, and Chapter 23, The Advanced Documentary Proposal, for more information on defining a film’s point of view. Also see:

Bernard, Sheila Curran. Documentary Storytelling: Making Stronger and More Dramatic Nonfiction Films. Boston: Focal Press, 2007.