Part 3: Round One of Interviewing
As the saying goes, the best story is the story you can get, so for my project, the fact that Boston is the hub for a universe of writers who knew and admired Andre Dubus was crucial. Moreover, Dubus, born and raised in Louisiana, had spent most of his adult life working and residing in Haverhill, Mass., which was about an 80-minute car ride for me.
I had chosen to tell a story that followed very clear narrative lines: Dubus had spent his early adulthood struggling to succeed as a short story writer, wrestling with such themes as faith, duty, courage and family. He had by middle age reached a level of readership that hadn’t matched the broad critical acclaim of his work, and was struggling. Then, on a late night in July 1986, he stopped as a Good Samaritan to assist at an accident scene on the highway from Boston, and had been struck by an oncoming car, which not only killed the man next to him but resulted in horrible injuries to Dubus, who lost one leg and the use of the other. The last part of the story was Dubus’s struggle with coming to terms with the accident and his God, his writing that chronicled those struggles, and the final crescendo of acclaim that finally came to him.
After meeting his son, the novelist Andre Dubus III at the PEN awards in Boston in 2005, I contacted Andre to size up his interest in, and support of, such a project. He liked it and referred me to his older sister Suzanne, who runs a shelter for battered women in Newburyport, Mass.
Suzanne, like all the Dubuses, is a masterful storyteller, something I suspect is in the blood. By the finish of my one-hour on-camera interview with her, I knew I had a story worth telling. Suzanne, as with everyone I interviewed, would show amazing candor about the life of Andre Dubus, a man whose faults and screw-ups were as breath-taking as his writing, which indeed was the place he tried to make sense of his own behavior. That evening, I arranged with “Young Andre” to come to his home the next week, where I interviewed him for two hours. Within those three hours of tape I had the spine of the story, the birth-to-death story of his life, told well. I knew that I was now going to be looking for people to help fill gaps, or elaborate on stories I’d heard, or speak to the man’s writing.
Over the next four months I conducted about two dozen interviews. Some of the considerations included where to shoot, the “location” question that tends to be less an issue for news-video shooters, who tend to frame tightly and leave background out. One of the advantages of higher-quality video is the ability to set the subject in an environment that’s appropriate to the conversation, and it had its hurdles.
I’ve always like the Errol Morris film A Brief History of Time, which tells the story of Stephen Hawking, the physicist who been stricken with ALS, better known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. The film features a variety of scientists, most British, recalling Hawking’s early life and work as they sit comfortably in their well-appointed British studies. I only learned later that Morris, funded for the project by Stephen Spielberg, had used his Hollywood-sized budget to actually contstruct sets. Each of those cozy British parlors, with their woodfires flickering so welcomingly, were fake.
But for the rest of us, we shoot where we can, and each shoot led to a variety of efforts to find the right spot, or at least no a bad spot, to shoot. It required interview subjects to be amenable as well. I interviewed Stephen Haley and Jack Herlihy in Dubus’s favorite bar, where one of his finest short stories (“Rose”) is set. I interviewed his Bradford College teaching colleague Peggy Walsh in the classroom where Dubus taught - not an easy task, because Bradford closed in 2000 and its campus held by a land company. But after numerous calls, we were able to get the room opened, and brought a broom and paper towels to make it somewhat presentable. Probably a small touch no one else noticed, shooting in that room, but it made me happy.
I also tried to vary composition of subjects. Some were to the left of the frame, others to the right (an important framing rule of thumb is not to place your subject’s face dead-center in the frame, which leaves way too much dead space above the head). I tried some in daylight, others at night, some indoors and some out. I also interviewed some people in offices so small I couldn’t set up the umbrella light I was then using. I had to shoot in existing light, usually from the window, to lesser results.
One easier way to go is to find an event where multiple interview subjects gather. I interviewed Dubus’s ex-wife and his youngest two daughters at their home. I interview Stephen and Jack in the bar. And I also attended the Newburyport Literary Festival, where I grabbed some people I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten. One was Richard Russo, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of “Empire Falls,” who did a reading at the festival, at the Newburyport Congregational Church. He agreed to be interviewed, and I set up quickly at the back pew. That I interviewed Russo in a church as he discussed the famous Dubus work “A Father’s Story” – in which the protagonist wins an argument with God – was a nice bit of serendipity.
At the end of the two dozen interviews, it was July of 2006 and I had enough to cut a feature-length film. I also knew there were a nuber of other people I now wanted to interview who lived outside of the region. Unlike a print piece, where a phone interview would suffice, I had to go to these people.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Making the film: Part 2
Part 2: Assembling the technology
For the journalist moving into low-budget documentary filmmaking, it seems to me that there are two primary types of documentaries, and two kinds of people doing them.
The interview-based documentary involves mostly sit-down interviews. This sort of interview is not unlike a standard print-reporting piece – once you’ve set up camera and lights and positioned a microphone, you just talk, a one-on-one conversation. Interview based docs tend to then use secondary media – stills, archival film clips,
The action-based documentary follows events or situations as they happen. For these kinds of works, the emphasis is on seeing something happen; interviews may be slotted in later, or used in voice-over, or grabbed during lulls in the action.
Each type can be highly successful:
Examples of interview-based docs have to start with virtually anything by Ken Burns. The Civil War was really, at its heart, a string of sit-downs with the added feature of photos and voice-over readings of letters or print items of the day. Brief History of Time, the Errol Morris doc on physicist Stephen Hawking based on his book of the same name, is another interview-based film in which people sit and recollect events, or add perspective. Alex Gibney’s Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room is a more recent model of success of an interview-based doc.
Examples of action-based documentary include the wildly successful March of the Penguins, said to have cost $4 million. But a successful, low-budget example, is Jesus Camp, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s 2006 Oscar-nominated piece on the Kids on Fire Evangelical Christian summer camp, which works mostly on just watching the kids in their camp activities.
If one thinks of these two types of docs as the poles on the spectrum, then one also finds many docs that combine the two, mixing action and interviews. War Photographer, Christian Frei’s study of legendary photojournalist James Nachtwey, is one I think of that’s near the middle.
I’ve come to the conclusion that print reporters or writers moving to work in documentary form do best with interview-based docs, while photojournalists moving into docs succeed best in action-based works. While the former type of film is, in essence, a visual feature story, the latter is a moving version of the picture stories and photo essays that skilled photojournalists do so well.
As a writer with some still-photography experience, I chose an interview-based subject, particularly because I’d be working alone. Having chosen the short-story writer Andre Dubus (1936-1999) as my topic, I went about assembling my equipment, based on my budget. Here were some considerations:
Format
One area in which I departed from modeling my approach after filmmaker Mary Mazzio was in format. She chooses to shoot 35mm color film, which remains the standard for feature films. It’s also wildly expensive – Spectra Film, a supplier, specs 1,000 feet of 35mm film with processing at $1,579, and 1,000 feet is only about 10 minutes of shooting. A 63-minute mini-DV tape costs $8. So film was immediately out.
The next consideration was digital video. While the general format of DV has all but killed off old analog (magnetic) videotape, the variety of formats within DV is wide and sometimes confusing. But as a basic, there are three types: DV, HDV and HD.
DV, also called “Standard Definition” these days, is the least expensive and probably easiest to work with in editing. DV shoots an images with 480 horizontal lines, and has an image quality far superior to the home video formats (such as High-8) that were more common in the 1990s. The key to shooting any video, but especially standard-def, is really good lighting. Great lighting will improve a low-end format more than great format will help a shot with low-end lighting. Some well-known documentary and feature-filmmaker have actually chosen standard def over other formats.
HD, on the other end of the spectrum, generally shoots an image of 1080 lines, more than double the quality of standard. Until even three or four years ago, however, true HD was, cost-wise, out of reach for virtually all low-budget filmmakers. A low-end HD camera could cost $30,000 or more. Within that format were manufacturer-based subformats such as HDCam and XDcam (Sony), or D5-HD and DVCPro-HD (Panasonic), which I’ll discuss more later.
HDV was the middle ground, and ingenious but tricky format: It works on so-called “group of pictures” technology (sometimes called “interframe encoding”), in which the camera imprints a “default image,” then in the next five to 15 frames (depending on the camera) only imprints what has changed from the default frame. It allowed 1080 lines with a lower demand on the processing abilities of the camera.
HDV, sometimes called “the poor man’s HD,” brought the costs down considerably. In 2005, an entry-level HDV camera was around $5,000; these days the market is saturated with sub-$1,000 HDV cameras made mostly for amateur use (I’ll get back to that).
What I learned about HDV was this: While a basic frame of HDV can look as clear and crisp as true-HD, certain uses test its good nature. In a sit-down interview, especially if the subject is well-lighted and sitting still, there is very little substantive change between the “imprint” frame and the succeeding frames. Therefore, the video looks nearly HD-sharp. But action – whether it be a lot happening in a fixed frame (you’re shooting a football game from a tripod) or a moving frame (a quick panning move across a fixed landscape), you begin to see jumpiness and breakup.
(One format that wasn’t available then was h.264, also known as AVCHD. This highly compressed format is being used on the new generation of tapeless, card-storage cameras. While it was introduced as an amateur HD format, and can be difficult to edit, the next few years are sure to bring either a refined h.264 or a more advanced tapeless format. One disadvantage is that if you delete or corrupt the file, your video is gone. Tape remains a fairly reliable storage medium, which can make for backup on which you can depend.)
Because I was doing an interview-based work, I chose HDV. I then had to decide which camera to purchase, which led to more considerations.
Camera
There are several dominant brands putting out so-called “prosumer” camcorders – JVC, Sony, Canon and Panasonic seem to be dominating – and within those there were further choices to be made. But as I played with my budget, I came to these conclusions: I was willing to spend about $5,000 for a camera, wanted to shoot my doc within a 10-month window, and hoped I could then sell off my camera used for $3,000 within the year, for an effective camera budget of $2,000. This seemed preferable to the rental rate for most higher-quality HDV cameras, which can run about $200 to $250 a day. Camera rentals are most used by people making films with actors, in which one might plan to shoot a 15-minute short film with a four-consecutive-day shooting schedule.
As I looked around, I made some basic choices:
1) Manual Focus or Autofocus? Autofocus is a wonder of technology, but can also drive you crazy. One of my students found this when he shot a 10-minute short doc on an Iraq War vet living in a van behind the local gas station. The subject of the film was engaging and perceptive; he sat in the driver’s seat of his vehicle chattering away about his life and experiences. Problem was, he smoked, and tended to wave his cigarette around for emphasis. Every time he did, the autofocus camera picked up the hand and took the subject’s face out of focus. While many cameras give an autofocus on/off option, many also treat the manual focus as a notion, providing difficult or imprecise controls. I decided to stick with manual focus: I would seat my subject, focus up, and turn on the camera. For an action-based doc, some photojournalists with great follow-focus skills might also use a manual focus. Autofocus might be a best bet for less experienced action shooters: For example, a favorite doc of mine in Jonathan Nossiter’s 2004 Mondovino, about the struggle of small French and Italian estate winemakers against massive corporate vineyards. He used a standard-def Sony PD-150 with autofocus, and there are many instances in which things get choppy. But I always feel the rough edges of the film lend to it a raw spontanaiety as he wanders the vineyards with the winemakers.
2) One-chip or three-chip? A one-chip camcorder takes all information on a single sensor, while a three-chip has three layered sensors, individually processing reds, blues and greens. Three-chips have greater color quality, and increased sharpness. So it might be that a three-chip standard def camera such as the Canon GL2 might actually yield better overall image than a one-chip HDV camera such as the JVC HD10. And, some cameras use a one-chip “CMOS,” which some say are better than the standard “CCD” chips.
3) Controls or no? While a sub-$1,000 HDV one-chip camera such as the Canon HV30 can yield brilliant images in some instances, it can really fail at others. These kind of palm-size camcorders tend to fail in instances, for example, in which there is high latitude – a simultaneous presence of bright brights and dark darks – or low light. Because you can’t manually adjust very easily, these cameras can take over control. More “pro” cameras give you easy access to such features as video gain (the ability to adjust for light levels), white balance (to adjust for daylight, standard indoor, or fluorescent), gamma level (to create a more film-like effect that emulates warmer tones of a movie) and sound-recording levels. When Dad is buying a camcorder for the baby’s first birthday party, fewer buttons make sense. For a more professional approach, more buttons can sometimes save the shoot.
4) Removable or fixed lens? I more minor consideration, but remember that even if you shoot HD, a lesser lens can bring down the quality. Most camcorders have a one-piece construction, only a few allow lens upgrading.
5) The “i” or the “p”? This is one of the most-confused of elements. In simplest form, “i” in such designations as “1080i”stands for “interlaced,” the standard-television format in which images are rolled over the next – if you shoot a photo of an interlaced television, you can see the bottom half of the outgoing frame as the top half as the succeeding frame. The “p” stands for “progressive,” which works like real film – each is a stand-alone frame, the way a movie runs as 24 complete frames per second. Two years ago, JVC introduced the first HDV camera to shoot at 24p, which had two presumed advantages: First, for a filmmaker who might eventually want to transfer the video to real film for theatrical exhibition, it made the process easier (although a video-to-35mm transfer runs about $300 a minute. Secondly, and more subtly, there is the theory that progressive video has much more of the look and feel of film for a viewer.
My choice: In March of 2006, I spent $5,200 on the JVC gy-HD100u. Manual-focus, 24p, 3-CCD, removable lens, HDV. While it was the only one of its kind on the market little more than two years ago, there are dozens like it available now. And, the next wave is that of true-HD sub-$10,000 camcorders that may knock HDV completely out.
Lighting
Having done what most people do, which was to allot most of my budget to the camera, I began to search for cheap lighting. I found a kit for under $100 on eBay that had a lightstand, a 500w “hot” bulb, and an umbrella reflector. For another $25, I got a round collapsible reflector with white on one side and gold on the other, with a small stand to position it.
This setup worked for the first half of the 40 interviews I was to conduct for the film. But they were hot, bright to distraction for the interview subjects, and the umbrella took a while to set up.
For the second half of the shoot, I invested in a light that was portable, somewhat inexpensive, had a more even tolerable light, and emitted no heat. It was a Flolight FB-220, which ran me about $400. The light uses color-correct fluorescent bulbs (not the greenish-cast fluorescents we find in our kitchens) and sets up in less than a minute – I’d pop it in the stand, plug it in and turn it on. The Flolight is a less-expensive version of the KinoFlo lights used on many television and movie sets.
Later, I coughed up another $500 for my favorite light of all, a Flolight LED500. This light is little more than the size of a large book, is virtually unbreakable, fits in nearly any tight space, and weighs about six pounds while putting out the equivalent of the ungainly 500-watt hot light/umbrella I started with. In a pinch it can also run (briefly) off my camera battery. On my current project, I find myself using the LED500 about 90 percent of the time, usually just with a reflector on the other side.
Sound
Sound quality may be more important to image quality, particularly if the documentary is more for online or webcasting. While more traditional filmmakers have sound recordists who capture separately to a deck, then synch sound to video, that to me seems an artifact of the shoot-on-film era. Virtually all camcorders have the capability of recording clean, clear sound in digital format. It’s the microphone that matters more.
Lavalier or shotgun? The lavalier microphone is also known as a “lapel” mic, the small clip-on one sees on the edges of the subjects jacket or short. These pick up good sound, and in their placement over the chest do a nice job of registering the low end of the sound range. They can also pick up “p” pops caused by the subject expelling air onto the mic, and if the subject turns one’s head too much the levels can fade in and out.
A shotgun mic is usually either set up on a stand (most often above the subject’s head, just out of frame) or is held by a boom operator holding the mic near the subject with a telescoping boom six or eight feet long. Shotguns need to be powered for best effect, either by a separate power source or by a battery inside the mic, usually one or two AA’s.
I chose a Sony ECM-55B, a lavalier that costs about $400, which is cheap (I hear the newer 44B is down around $200) and runs on a single AA battery. It’s been my workhorse. Because in my doc, my voice does not appear on audio, I only needed one.
Much later, I bought a shotgun, the Rode NTG-1, for $249. It picks up good sound and can be out of the frame, something some filmmakers seem to think is important and others do not.
Wired or wireless? For an action-oriented doc, the choice can come down to either having the mic tether to the camera by wire (more mics use a heavy XLR stereo cable, which essentially costs about a dollar a foot). Wireless set-ups get into the thousands of dollars, and as one can see on many a reality show, still require the pack that juts from one’s beltline.
Mixed or direct? If the film were to have two or more people on-screen, the choices are either to have a boom operator moving the mic quickly from one person to the next, or to try to position a shotgun mic on a stand at an even distance, or to run multiple mics, which would then go through a mixer. The mixer has slider scales to balance sound, and then a single cable running to the camera input. Again, this is where money gets steeper. The lowest-end Audio Technologies field mixer, which can take in up to three mics simultaneously, costs just under $700. I did my film more cheaply. In one instance in which I interviewed two of Dubus’s friends at a local bar (the owner opened up at 8 am so I could record without the intrusion of crowd noise), I simpled mic’d one guy with the lav and interview him, then moved the mic to the other guy and interviewed him. It seemed to work out fine.
Accessories
The primary accessory for most shoots is a decent tripod. Since I was shooting with fixed camera that was fairly light, I simply borrowed a very old Leica still-camera tripod from my brother. The advantage, when ne is doing a project alone, is portability; the disadvantage is in picking up vibration. I usually slung a camera bag over it to try to make it more stable.
My shots didn’t involve panning and tilting, so I didn’t need a video tripod. But those usually come I either ball-head versions, which are less expensive, or fluid heads. Ball heads can be had for under $200. A friend who shoots video tells me this rule-of-thumb: Always put your money on the ballhead instead of the legs. A good ballhead on aluminum legs is fine; a cheap ballhead on titanium legs is throwing money away.
Fluid heads are heavy (25 lbs. or more), expensive ($1,000+) and smooth as silk. They’re always better for effect; a filmmaker lent me his fluidhead for a project and I barely used it, simply because I was struggling to lug this thing in and out of buildings.
Cases, bags and storage are necessary expenditures. A foam-lined case is a must for the camcorder; a tough nylon shoulder bag works for the tripod. I found a lot of this stuff at very low cost at an online supplier called Amvona.com. I haven’t had any complaints yet. I also bought two light stands there for about $25 apiece.
If you’re shooting in the field, lots of batteries are a must. When I bought my camcorder from B&H Photo Video in New York (another supplier I’ve bought tons of stuff form with nothing but good results), it had a rebate deal in which I got an Endura i/o battery with bracket and charger (a $1,500) equivalent) that can run a good two hours on a charge. I’ve used this continually; a replacement Endura runs $200, and I have yet to bite. The Anton-Bauer battery is similar. But for most interview situations. I’m simply plugging into an AC outlet, so if I hadn’t gotten the Endura for free, I likely would not have bought it.
And finally, I invested $60 in a luggage carrier. I could stack the camera case and light case on it, and then bungee a bag with my tripod and light stands on that. It all fits in my trunk and can be wheeled down the street. In my current project, in which I’m shooting a lot in Manhattan, I drive to a commuter-rail station, park there, and wheel the kit onto the train. I come out onto the concourse of Grand Central Terminal, a one-man crew who can get decent footage at a fraction of the cost.
Equipment Summary
For roughly $6,000, I’d assembled an initial kit that worked for me. It was portable enough for me, would allow me to shoot under the conditions I foresaw, and was simple enough for me to operate with good results. I expected to recoup $3,000 by selling the camera at the end of the project, so my overhead was $3,000. And having spent a bit going on about equipment, it goes to an initial premise: Equipment should be invisible. You want it neither to signal your amateurishness or overshadow the content. For a writer doing documentary work, what mattered was still, and always, the story.
For the journalist moving into low-budget documentary filmmaking, it seems to me that there are two primary types of documentaries, and two kinds of people doing them.
The interview-based documentary involves mostly sit-down interviews. This sort of interview is not unlike a standard print-reporting piece – once you’ve set up camera and lights and positioned a microphone, you just talk, a one-on-one conversation. Interview based docs tend to then use secondary media – stills, archival film clips,
The action-based documentary follows events or situations as they happen. For these kinds of works, the emphasis is on seeing something happen; interviews may be slotted in later, or used in voice-over, or grabbed during lulls in the action.
Each type can be highly successful:
Examples of interview-based docs have to start with virtually anything by Ken Burns. The Civil War was really, at its heart, a string of sit-downs with the added feature of photos and voice-over readings of letters or print items of the day. Brief History of Time, the Errol Morris doc on physicist Stephen Hawking based on his book of the same name, is another interview-based film in which people sit and recollect events, or add perspective. Alex Gibney’s Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room is a more recent model of success of an interview-based doc.
Examples of action-based documentary include the wildly successful March of the Penguins, said to have cost $4 million. But a successful, low-budget example, is Jesus Camp, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s 2006 Oscar-nominated piece on the Kids on Fire Evangelical Christian summer camp, which works mostly on just watching the kids in their camp activities.
If one thinks of these two types of docs as the poles on the spectrum, then one also finds many docs that combine the two, mixing action and interviews. War Photographer, Christian Frei’s study of legendary photojournalist James Nachtwey, is one I think of that’s near the middle.
I’ve come to the conclusion that print reporters or writers moving to work in documentary form do best with interview-based docs, while photojournalists moving into docs succeed best in action-based works. While the former type of film is, in essence, a visual feature story, the latter is a moving version of the picture stories and photo essays that skilled photojournalists do so well.
As a writer with some still-photography experience, I chose an interview-based subject, particularly because I’d be working alone. Having chosen the short-story writer Andre Dubus (1936-1999) as my topic, I went about assembling my equipment, based on my budget. Here were some considerations:
Format
One area in which I departed from modeling my approach after filmmaker Mary Mazzio was in format. She chooses to shoot 35mm color film, which remains the standard for feature films. It’s also wildly expensive – Spectra Film, a supplier, specs 1,000 feet of 35mm film with processing at $1,579, and 1,000 feet is only about 10 minutes of shooting. A 63-minute mini-DV tape costs $8. So film was immediately out.
The next consideration was digital video. While the general format of DV has all but killed off old analog (magnetic) videotape, the variety of formats within DV is wide and sometimes confusing. But as a basic, there are three types: DV, HDV and HD.
DV, also called “Standard Definition” these days, is the least expensive and probably easiest to work with in editing. DV shoots an images with 480 horizontal lines, and has an image quality far superior to the home video formats (such as High-8) that were more common in the 1990s. The key to shooting any video, but especially standard-def, is really good lighting. Great lighting will improve a low-end format more than great format will help a shot with low-end lighting. Some well-known documentary and feature-filmmaker have actually chosen standard def over other formats.
HD, on the other end of the spectrum, generally shoots an image of 1080 lines, more than double the quality of standard. Until even three or four years ago, however, true HD was, cost-wise, out of reach for virtually all low-budget filmmakers. A low-end HD camera could cost $30,000 or more. Within that format were manufacturer-based subformats such as HDCam and XDcam (Sony), or D5-HD and DVCPro-HD (Panasonic), which I’ll discuss more later.
HDV was the middle ground, and ingenious but tricky format: It works on so-called “group of pictures” technology (sometimes called “interframe encoding”), in which the camera imprints a “default image,” then in the next five to 15 frames (depending on the camera) only imprints what has changed from the default frame. It allowed 1080 lines with a lower demand on the processing abilities of the camera.
HDV, sometimes called “the poor man’s HD,” brought the costs down considerably. In 2005, an entry-level HDV camera was around $5,000; these days the market is saturated with sub-$1,000 HDV cameras made mostly for amateur use (I’ll get back to that).
What I learned about HDV was this: While a basic frame of HDV can look as clear and crisp as true-HD, certain uses test its good nature. In a sit-down interview, especially if the subject is well-lighted and sitting still, there is very little substantive change between the “imprint” frame and the succeeding frames. Therefore, the video looks nearly HD-sharp. But action – whether it be a lot happening in a fixed frame (you’re shooting a football game from a tripod) or a moving frame (a quick panning move across a fixed landscape), you begin to see jumpiness and breakup.
(One format that wasn’t available then was h.264, also known as AVCHD. This highly compressed format is being used on the new generation of tapeless, card-storage cameras. While it was introduced as an amateur HD format, and can be difficult to edit, the next few years are sure to bring either a refined h.264 or a more advanced tapeless format. One disadvantage is that if you delete or corrupt the file, your video is gone. Tape remains a fairly reliable storage medium, which can make for backup on which you can depend.)
Because I was doing an interview-based work, I chose HDV. I then had to decide which camera to purchase, which led to more considerations.
Camera
There are several dominant brands putting out so-called “prosumer” camcorders – JVC, Sony, Canon and Panasonic seem to be dominating – and within those there were further choices to be made. But as I played with my budget, I came to these conclusions: I was willing to spend about $5,000 for a camera, wanted to shoot my doc within a 10-month window, and hoped I could then sell off my camera used for $3,000 within the year, for an effective camera budget of $2,000. This seemed preferable to the rental rate for most higher-quality HDV cameras, which can run about $200 to $250 a day. Camera rentals are most used by people making films with actors, in which one might plan to shoot a 15-minute short film with a four-consecutive-day shooting schedule.
As I looked around, I made some basic choices:
1) Manual Focus or Autofocus? Autofocus is a wonder of technology, but can also drive you crazy. One of my students found this when he shot a 10-minute short doc on an Iraq War vet living in a van behind the local gas station. The subject of the film was engaging and perceptive; he sat in the driver’s seat of his vehicle chattering away about his life and experiences. Problem was, he smoked, and tended to wave his cigarette around for emphasis. Every time he did, the autofocus camera picked up the hand and took the subject’s face out of focus. While many cameras give an autofocus on/off option, many also treat the manual focus as a notion, providing difficult or imprecise controls. I decided to stick with manual focus: I would seat my subject, focus up, and turn on the camera. For an action-based doc, some photojournalists with great follow-focus skills might also use a manual focus. Autofocus might be a best bet for less experienced action shooters: For example, a favorite doc of mine in Jonathan Nossiter’s 2004 Mondovino, about the struggle of small French and Italian estate winemakers against massive corporate vineyards. He used a standard-def Sony PD-150 with autofocus, and there are many instances in which things get choppy. But I always feel the rough edges of the film lend to it a raw spontanaiety as he wanders the vineyards with the winemakers.
2) One-chip or three-chip? A one-chip camcorder takes all information on a single sensor, while a three-chip has three layered sensors, individually processing reds, blues and greens. Three-chips have greater color quality, and increased sharpness. So it might be that a three-chip standard def camera such as the Canon GL2 might actually yield better overall image than a one-chip HDV camera such as the JVC HD10. And, some cameras use a one-chip “CMOS,” which some say are better than the standard “CCD” chips.
3) Controls or no? While a sub-$1,000 HDV one-chip camera such as the Canon HV30 can yield brilliant images in some instances, it can really fail at others. These kind of palm-size camcorders tend to fail in instances, for example, in which there is high latitude – a simultaneous presence of bright brights and dark darks – or low light. Because you can’t manually adjust very easily, these cameras can take over control. More “pro” cameras give you easy access to such features as video gain (the ability to adjust for light levels), white balance (to adjust for daylight, standard indoor, or fluorescent), gamma level (to create a more film-like effect that emulates warmer tones of a movie) and sound-recording levels. When Dad is buying a camcorder for the baby’s first birthday party, fewer buttons make sense. For a more professional approach, more buttons can sometimes save the shoot.
4) Removable or fixed lens? I more minor consideration, but remember that even if you shoot HD, a lesser lens can bring down the quality. Most camcorders have a one-piece construction, only a few allow lens upgrading.
5) The “i” or the “p”? This is one of the most-confused of elements. In simplest form, “i” in such designations as “1080i”stands for “interlaced,” the standard-television format in which images are rolled over the next – if you shoot a photo of an interlaced television, you can see the bottom half of the outgoing frame as the top half as the succeeding frame. The “p” stands for “progressive,” which works like real film – each is a stand-alone frame, the way a movie runs as 24 complete frames per second. Two years ago, JVC introduced the first HDV camera to shoot at 24p, which had two presumed advantages: First, for a filmmaker who might eventually want to transfer the video to real film for theatrical exhibition, it made the process easier (although a video-to-35mm transfer runs about $300 a minute. Secondly, and more subtly, there is the theory that progressive video has much more of the look and feel of film for a viewer.
My choice: In March of 2006, I spent $5,200 on the JVC gy-HD100u. Manual-focus, 24p, 3-CCD, removable lens, HDV. While it was the only one of its kind on the market little more than two years ago, there are dozens like it available now. And, the next wave is that of true-HD sub-$10,000 camcorders that may knock HDV completely out.
Lighting
Having done what most people do, which was to allot most of my budget to the camera, I began to search for cheap lighting. I found a kit for under $100 on eBay that had a lightstand, a 500w “hot” bulb, and an umbrella reflector. For another $25, I got a round collapsible reflector with white on one side and gold on the other, with a small stand to position it.
This setup worked for the first half of the 40 interviews I was to conduct for the film. But they were hot, bright to distraction for the interview subjects, and the umbrella took a while to set up.
For the second half of the shoot, I invested in a light that was portable, somewhat inexpensive, had a more even tolerable light, and emitted no heat. It was a Flolight FB-220, which ran me about $400. The light uses color-correct fluorescent bulbs (not the greenish-cast fluorescents we find in our kitchens) and sets up in less than a minute – I’d pop it in the stand, plug it in and turn it on. The Flolight is a less-expensive version of the KinoFlo lights used on many television and movie sets.
Later, I coughed up another $500 for my favorite light of all, a Flolight LED500. This light is little more than the size of a large book, is virtually unbreakable, fits in nearly any tight space, and weighs about six pounds while putting out the equivalent of the ungainly 500-watt hot light/umbrella I started with. In a pinch it can also run (briefly) off my camera battery. On my current project, I find myself using the LED500 about 90 percent of the time, usually just with a reflector on the other side.
Sound
Sound quality may be more important to image quality, particularly if the documentary is more for online or webcasting. While more traditional filmmakers have sound recordists who capture separately to a deck, then synch sound to video, that to me seems an artifact of the shoot-on-film era. Virtually all camcorders have the capability of recording clean, clear sound in digital format. It’s the microphone that matters more.
Lavalier or shotgun? The lavalier microphone is also known as a “lapel” mic, the small clip-on one sees on the edges of the subjects jacket or short. These pick up good sound, and in their placement over the chest do a nice job of registering the low end of the sound range. They can also pick up “p” pops caused by the subject expelling air onto the mic, and if the subject turns one’s head too much the levels can fade in and out.
A shotgun mic is usually either set up on a stand (most often above the subject’s head, just out of frame) or is held by a boom operator holding the mic near the subject with a telescoping boom six or eight feet long. Shotguns need to be powered for best effect, either by a separate power source or by a battery inside the mic, usually one or two AA’s.
I chose a Sony ECM-55B, a lavalier that costs about $400, which is cheap (I hear the newer 44B is down around $200) and runs on a single AA battery. It’s been my workhorse. Because in my doc, my voice does not appear on audio, I only needed one.
Much later, I bought a shotgun, the Rode NTG-1, for $249. It picks up good sound and can be out of the frame, something some filmmakers seem to think is important and others do not.
Wired or wireless? For an action-oriented doc, the choice can come down to either having the mic tether to the camera by wire (more mics use a heavy XLR stereo cable, which essentially costs about a dollar a foot). Wireless set-ups get into the thousands of dollars, and as one can see on many a reality show, still require the pack that juts from one’s beltline.
Mixed or direct? If the film were to have two or more people on-screen, the choices are either to have a boom operator moving the mic quickly from one person to the next, or to try to position a shotgun mic on a stand at an even distance, or to run multiple mics, which would then go through a mixer. The mixer has slider scales to balance sound, and then a single cable running to the camera input. Again, this is where money gets steeper. The lowest-end Audio Technologies field mixer, which can take in up to three mics simultaneously, costs just under $700. I did my film more cheaply. In one instance in which I interviewed two of Dubus’s friends at a local bar (the owner opened up at 8 am so I could record without the intrusion of crowd noise), I simpled mic’d one guy with the lav and interview him, then moved the mic to the other guy and interviewed him. It seemed to work out fine.
Accessories
The primary accessory for most shoots is a decent tripod. Since I was shooting with fixed camera that was fairly light, I simply borrowed a very old Leica still-camera tripod from my brother. The advantage, when ne is doing a project alone, is portability; the disadvantage is in picking up vibration. I usually slung a camera bag over it to try to make it more stable.
My shots didn’t involve panning and tilting, so I didn’t need a video tripod. But those usually come I either ball-head versions, which are less expensive, or fluid heads. Ball heads can be had for under $200. A friend who shoots video tells me this rule-of-thumb: Always put your money on the ballhead instead of the legs. A good ballhead on aluminum legs is fine; a cheap ballhead on titanium legs is throwing money away.
Fluid heads are heavy (25 lbs. or more), expensive ($1,000+) and smooth as silk. They’re always better for effect; a filmmaker lent me his fluidhead for a project and I barely used it, simply because I was struggling to lug this thing in and out of buildings.
Cases, bags and storage are necessary expenditures. A foam-lined case is a must for the camcorder; a tough nylon shoulder bag works for the tripod. I found a lot of this stuff at very low cost at an online supplier called Amvona.com. I haven’t had any complaints yet. I also bought two light stands there for about $25 apiece.
If you’re shooting in the field, lots of batteries are a must. When I bought my camcorder from B&H Photo Video in New York (another supplier I’ve bought tons of stuff form with nothing but good results), it had a rebate deal in which I got an Endura i/o battery with bracket and charger (a $1,500) equivalent) that can run a good two hours on a charge. I’ve used this continually; a replacement Endura runs $200, and I have yet to bite. The Anton-Bauer battery is similar. But for most interview situations. I’m simply plugging into an AC outlet, so if I hadn’t gotten the Endura for free, I likely would not have bought it.
And finally, I invested $60 in a luggage carrier. I could stack the camera case and light case on it, and then bungee a bag with my tripod and light stands on that. It all fits in my trunk and can be wheeled down the street. In my current project, in which I’m shooting a lot in Manhattan, I drive to a commuter-rail station, park there, and wheel the kit onto the train. I come out onto the concourse of Grand Central Terminal, a one-man crew who can get decent footage at a fraction of the cost.
Equipment Summary
For roughly $6,000, I’d assembled an initial kit that worked for me. It was portable enough for me, would allow me to shoot under the conditions I foresaw, and was simple enough for me to operate with good results. I expected to recoup $3,000 by selling the camera at the end of the project, so my overhead was $3,000. And having spent a bit going on about equipment, it goes to an initial premise: Equipment should be invisible. You want it neither to signal your amateurishness or overshadow the content. For a writer doing documentary work, what mattered was still, and always, the story.
Making the film: Part I
Part 1: Preproduction
That fall of 2005, I was at creative loose ends. I was doing some magazine pieces and some short-story writing, but was looking for something more sustained, having finished a long project: My novel Warp & Weft had been published and that April, it was awarded the PEN New England-L.L. Winship Award, with the ceremony for both the Winship and the Pen-Hemingway (won that year by the phenomenal Nigerian poet and novelist Chris Abani) held at the Kennedy Library in Boston.
Fortuitously, the master of ceremonies was the novelist Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog and son of the late, great short story writer Andre Dubus, a “writer’s writer” who’d lived a veering, tragic and finally triumphant life. When I’d begun writing short stories in the early 1990s after leaving newspapers for academia and freelance writing, the elder Dubus had been a model of writing for me. That I should win the PEN-Winship, given that he had won the first one in 1975 and given that his son was handing me that award, represented a really wonderful circularity to my efforts in fiction writing. It also occurred to me, driving home that evening, that Dubus would be a wonderful subject for a documentary.
I’d explored several other options, with middling results. This topic, however, seemed to fit for several reasons: originality, accessibility and affordability.
The novelist Toni Morrison, when asked why she wrote what she wrote, once replied that it was because “If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it.”
In more direct terms, it helps if what you choose to do has not been done. The pack mentality of so much daily journalism often leads to endless variations on a theme; indeed, the two dominating topics of documentaries I see on the film festival circuit are 1) Some aspect of the Iraq War, and 2) Some aspect of global warming. If you are the person to make the best of these – say, the $2 million Academy-Award-Winning “No End In Sight,” no problem. But of you are an unfunded, as-yet-highly-skilled, otherwise-gainfully-employed would-be documentary filmmaker, it helps to fill a niche that doesn’t exist, but wants to.
I began to explore what had been done on Dubus. I found, to my surprise, that not only had no documentary film been done on the man, but no biography had yet appeared in the time since his death in 1999. But, conversely, three things had happened that were very positive: Two films had been made from his work, Todd Field’s “In The Bedroom” (2001) and John Curran’s “We Don’t Live Here Anymore” (2004); Andre Dubus III’s novel had become a best-seller, Oprah book, and acclaimed film, which had created interest in the elder Dubus’s work. I also knew that there was a subculture of college and high school writing teachers who swore by Dubus as the model of what great short story writing should be.
So my working theory was that even a rough-edged film about a good topic was going to have some legs. To paraphrase Toni Morrison, it was a film I’d pay to see, except that it didn’t exist.
So, having gotten on track with a topic, I found myself using two models of approach, one involving topic, and the other involving audience.
The first model was the 1995 documentary film “Brian Wilson: I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times,” by Don Was. One might not remember Was as half of the 1980s pop group Was Not Was, but most people born after 1980 seem to recall their one big hit “Walk The Dinosaur” (the YouTube version is here, but don’t hate me if you involuntarily find yourself humming it for the next two days).
I saw the film on VHS on the big-screen of a friend who by trade is a pharmacist but by avocation is a music aficianado. The film works, in my opinion, because a) the filmmaker knows music, and therefore brings intelligence to the proceedings, b) the film does not simply chronicle the meteoric Wilson’s struggles with mental illness but rather explores how it made his music what it was, and c) Don Was understood that his audience was not broadly general as “everyone,” not as narrowly specific as “musicians,” but was as “broadly specific” as my pharmacist friend who had insisted I watch it with him.
The second model was the Boston documentary filmmaker Mary Mazzio. Mary is a former U.S. Olympic rower whose production company, 50 Eggs, first produced “A Hero For Daisy (1999)” which explored female athletes and the landmark Title IX decision that opened up women’s collegiate athletics. But it was her most recent project, “Lemonade Stories” (2004) that intrigued me.
“Lemonade Stories” is about entrepreneurs, and her film, which runs 48 minutes, has a star cast – Richard Branson of Virgin, Home Depot founder Arthur Blank, Def Jam Records Russell Simmons and USA Network founder Kay Koplovitz, and others. The way Mary got these big hitters to sit for interviews was nearly genius. The film is about entrepreneurs and their mothers, and who of these people was not going to support honoring their mothers’ support and love? People who would not have otherwise picked up the phone gladly agreed to participate.
The second and more important element of Mary’s shrewdness was that of funding and distributing. She worked a partnership with Babson College, a Boston-area institution with special curricular interest in entrepreneurship. Babson paid for the project and then got the benefit of both having the premiere of the film on the Babson Campus, as well as future attachment when the film plays.
In terms of distribution, Mary has marked her film for classroom use. The 48-minute running time allows a one-hour class time to assemble, have the professor introduce, and press Play. Babson College has further created study guides that help instructors use the film more effectively as a learning resource. And Mary has become a well-paid speaker at colleges and universities, taking a fee to discuss what she learned on the topic of entrepreneurship.
So, with a topic and game plan assembled, I then began to try to figure out how I was going to gather the equipment I need.
That fall of 2005, I was at creative loose ends. I was doing some magazine pieces and some short-story writing, but was looking for something more sustained, having finished a long project: My novel Warp & Weft had been published and that April, it was awarded the PEN New England-L.L. Winship Award, with the ceremony for both the Winship and the Pen-Hemingway (won that year by the phenomenal Nigerian poet and novelist Chris Abani) held at the Kennedy Library in Boston.
Fortuitously, the master of ceremonies was the novelist Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog and son of the late, great short story writer Andre Dubus, a “writer’s writer” who’d lived a veering, tragic and finally triumphant life. When I’d begun writing short stories in the early 1990s after leaving newspapers for academia and freelance writing, the elder Dubus had been a model of writing for me. That I should win the PEN-Winship, given that he had won the first one in 1975 and given that his son was handing me that award, represented a really wonderful circularity to my efforts in fiction writing. It also occurred to me, driving home that evening, that Dubus would be a wonderful subject for a documentary.
I’d explored several other options, with middling results. This topic, however, seemed to fit for several reasons: originality, accessibility and affordability.
The novelist Toni Morrison, when asked why she wrote what she wrote, once replied that it was because “If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it.”
In more direct terms, it helps if what you choose to do has not been done. The pack mentality of so much daily journalism often leads to endless variations on a theme; indeed, the two dominating topics of documentaries I see on the film festival circuit are 1) Some aspect of the Iraq War, and 2) Some aspect of global warming. If you are the person to make the best of these – say, the $2 million Academy-Award-Winning “No End In Sight,” no problem. But of you are an unfunded, as-yet-highly-skilled, otherwise-gainfully-employed would-be documentary filmmaker, it helps to fill a niche that doesn’t exist, but wants to.
I began to explore what had been done on Dubus. I found, to my surprise, that not only had no documentary film been done on the man, but no biography had yet appeared in the time since his death in 1999. But, conversely, three things had happened that were very positive: Two films had been made from his work, Todd Field’s “In The Bedroom” (2001) and John Curran’s “We Don’t Live Here Anymore” (2004); Andre Dubus III’s novel had become a best-seller, Oprah book, and acclaimed film, which had created interest in the elder Dubus’s work. I also knew that there was a subculture of college and high school writing teachers who swore by Dubus as the model of what great short story writing should be.
So my working theory was that even a rough-edged film about a good topic was going to have some legs. To paraphrase Toni Morrison, it was a film I’d pay to see, except that it didn’t exist.
So, having gotten on track with a topic, I found myself using two models of approach, one involving topic, and the other involving audience.
The first model was the 1995 documentary film “Brian Wilson: I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times,” by Don Was. One might not remember Was as half of the 1980s pop group Was Not Was, but most people born after 1980 seem to recall their one big hit “Walk The Dinosaur” (the YouTube version is here, but don’t hate me if you involuntarily find yourself humming it for the next two days).
I saw the film on VHS on the big-screen of a friend who by trade is a pharmacist but by avocation is a music aficianado. The film works, in my opinion, because a) the filmmaker knows music, and therefore brings intelligence to the proceedings, b) the film does not simply chronicle the meteoric Wilson’s struggles with mental illness but rather explores how it made his music what it was, and c) Don Was understood that his audience was not broadly general as “everyone,” not as narrowly specific as “musicians,” but was as “broadly specific” as my pharmacist friend who had insisted I watch it with him.
The second model was the Boston documentary filmmaker Mary Mazzio. Mary is a former U.S. Olympic rower whose production company, 50 Eggs, first produced “A Hero For Daisy (1999)” which explored female athletes and the landmark Title IX decision that opened up women’s collegiate athletics. But it was her most recent project, “Lemonade Stories” (2004) that intrigued me.
“Lemonade Stories” is about entrepreneurs, and her film, which runs 48 minutes, has a star cast – Richard Branson of Virgin, Home Depot founder Arthur Blank, Def Jam Records Russell Simmons and USA Network founder Kay Koplovitz, and others. The way Mary got these big hitters to sit for interviews was nearly genius. The film is about entrepreneurs and their mothers, and who of these people was not going to support honoring their mothers’ support and love? People who would not have otherwise picked up the phone gladly agreed to participate.
The second and more important element of Mary’s shrewdness was that of funding and distributing. She worked a partnership with Babson College, a Boston-area institution with special curricular interest in entrepreneurship. Babson paid for the project and then got the benefit of both having the premiere of the film on the Babson Campus, as well as future attachment when the film plays.
In terms of distribution, Mary has marked her film for classroom use. The 48-minute running time allows a one-hour class time to assemble, have the professor introduce, and press Play. Babson College has further created study guides that help instructors use the film more effectively as a learning resource. And Mary has become a well-paid speaker at colleges and universities, taking a fee to discuss what she learned on the topic of entrepreneurship.
So, with a topic and game plan assembled, I then began to try to figure out how I was going to gather the equipment I need.
Making the film: Intro
In the summer of 2005, looking not only for a new project but for a learning opportunity, decided to make a feature-length documentary film. I had little money, no experience and moderate technical expertise; as a longtime print journalist, author and college professor, I did have two things that mattered most: The ability, honed over my decades at the keyboard, to tell a story, and the time and willingness to bog myself down in the learning curve. I also had already come to the most basic conclusion about the work before starting: That I wanted to work alone, as I had as a writer and as the photojournalists I’ve admired have with a certain singularity of vision.
In the fall of 2007, my film premiered at The Rhode Island International Film Festival, where it took a first place; it subsequently showed at five more film festivals to excellent response, including coverage by The Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Associated Press, Boston Magazine and half-dozen other print outlets, as well as numerous online sites.
I spent money to make it, but I’ve also made that money back, and have moved from the red to the black of profitability before I’ve even fully explored all the distribution possibilities.
A decade ago – probably five years ago – this would not have been possible. I’d have loved to do documentaries a long time ago, but my decision to do so came to be when the rising line that represented discretionary income intersected the falling line that represented the cost of technology that could put me in the game.
I also learned some lessons on the way, and used many lessons that I learned in my newspaper days.
To that end, this piece is an attempt to share what happens when a writer decides to jump into filmmaking with little or no money, and why he is glad he did…
In the fall of 2007, my film premiered at The Rhode Island International Film Festival, where it took a first place; it subsequently showed at five more film festivals to excellent response, including coverage by The Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Associated Press, Boston Magazine and half-dozen other print outlets, as well as numerous online sites.
I spent money to make it, but I’ve also made that money back, and have moved from the red to the black of profitability before I’ve even fully explored all the distribution possibilities.
A decade ago – probably five years ago – this would not have been possible. I’d have loved to do documentaries a long time ago, but my decision to do so came to be when the rising line that represented discretionary income intersected the falling line that represented the cost of technology that could put me in the game.
I also learned some lessons on the way, and used many lessons that I learned in my newspaper days.
To that end, this piece is an attempt to share what happens when a writer decides to jump into filmmaking with little or no money, and why he is glad he did…
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