Subject, story filmmakers

Ever since This Is Spinal Tap, student films about performance, filmmaking, writing, and music have relied on the hybrid form loosely called the mockumentary. This is a form that both evokes realism and pokes fun at it. Not quite as intense as the satire, the mockumentary criticizes gently the subject of the film, which is often the media as it interacts with, and often creates, a star. In this sense, the mockumentary is a self-reflexive and self-critical form, as the "mock" in the word suggests. If your idea centers on the relationship between the public and a character, and if the media can play a role in the story, the mockumentary is an amusing and often insightful form. 

There is simplicity in a moral tale. All elements—character, plot, and tone— put the unfolding of a narrative in the service of the moral. Metaphor, exaggeration, unnatural events and characters can all be brought to bear on the moral purpose of the story. Even a filmmaker as grounded in realism as Bergman found in The Seventh Seal (1956), for example, that he had to move away from realism. The moral tale—no man can escape mortality—is his subject, and so death and a plot specifically about the spread of Bubonic Plague, the "Black Death," are his instruments. 

The power of documentary films comes from the fact that they are grounded in fact, not fiction. This is not to say that they re "objective." Like any form of communication, whether spoken, written, painted, or photographed, documentary filmmaking involves the communicator in making choices. It s therefore unavoidably subjective, no matter how balanced or neutral the presentation seeks to be. Which stories are being told, why, and by whom What information or material is included or excluded What choices are made concerning style, tone, point of view, and format "To be sure, some documentarists... 

We re surrounded by subjects that offer potential for documentary storytelling. Current events may trigger ideas, or an afternoon spent browsing the shelves at a local library or bookstore. Some filmmakers find stories within their own families. Alan Berliner made Nobody s Business about his father, Oscar Deborah Hoffinan made Confessions of a Dutiful Daughter about her mother s battle with Alzheimer s. Even when you re very close to a subject, however, you ll need to take an impartial view as you determine whether or not it would make a film that audiences will want to see. This is also tme when you adapt documentaries from printed sources a story may read well on paper, but not play as well on screen. In making the series Cadillac Desert, drawn from Marc Reisner s book of the same name, producer Jon Else chose three of the roughly 40 stories in Reisner s book Else and his team then conducted their own research and determined the best way to tell those stories on film. 

Is the story visual, and if not, can you make it visual This is an important question whether you re telling a modern-day story that involves a lot of technology or bureaucracy, or you re drawn to a historical story that predates the invention of still or motion picture photography. A film subject that doesn t have obvious visuals requires additional foresight on the part of the filmmaker you ll need to anticipate exactly how you plan to tell the story on film. The opposite may also be true a subject can be inherently visual—it takes place in a spectacular location or involves state-of-the-art microscopic photography, for example—without containing an obvious narrative thread. 

The downside, Else notes, is that "it s very, very tough to do any kind of cinema VOTte film—which involves really discovering the story—inexpensively." Even when filmmakers carefully select a subject for the strength of its characters and the potential of a strong narrative line, the films, such as Salesman or Control Room, are built on an observational approach that takes considerable time to shape in an editing room. 

U.S. filmmaker Liane Brandon s 1972 film, Betty Tells Her Story, consists of two 10-minute interviews, played in sequence. Brandon had met the film s subject when both were consulting for the Massachusetts Department of Education, and was drawn to a story Betty told about buying a dress and then losing it before she had a chance to wear it. "I borrowed Ricky Leacock s camera, and John Terry, who worked with Ricky at M.I.T., volunteered to do sound," Brandon says. At Betty s house, the crew loaded the first of three 10-minute black-and-white film magazines, and Brandon asked Betty simply to tell her story. "The first version that you see in the film is the first take that we did. I never told her how long a magazine was, but somehow she ended the story just before we ran out of film." It was basically the story as Betty had first told it to Brandon a witty anecdote about a dress she d found that was just perfect—and how she never got to wear it. 

Except in films where the filmmaker s investigation, at least in part, drives the film, narration is generally not the best way to contradict an interviewee. The subject says, "No one knew about those documents," and a disembodied voice interrupts, No one knew It seemed unlikely. So how do you contradict people on screen You find another interviewee to offer a rebuttal, or you film scenes that contain evidence contradicting the interviewee s statement. Let the individuals, facts, and story speak for themselves, and trust that audience members can decide the tmth for themselves. 

The idea that you can respect the privacy of your subjects and still present an honest story might surprise some filmmakers. Do your students ever ask about that ... 

I m not sure I m the best person to resolve that argument, not that you re asking me to. My responsibility with Man on Wire, with that subject matter, was to make the best possible film experience out of that, because it was such an experience for those involved. Here s this completely blank, empty canvas for a hundred minutes and you need to fill that canvas in the best way you can, tell the story as you see it. Now, another filmmaker would have made a very different film out of Man on Wire they could have seen very different things in the narrative or very different emphases. So for me, it s obviously a very personal interpretation of the story. And that s true of the film I m making now. It s, in a sense, my version of the story. By definition, it s selective. It ignores certain things and stresses other things, but that s true I think of any documentary film. 

I think the key to all good filmmaking—whether the/re documentaries or features, and I ve made both—is to understand the rhythm. How the story unfolds, when you stop and breathe, when you gallop forward, when you bombard with information, and when you have one single striking fact that you want to expose. And that comes, I guess, from really knowing the subject matter inside out. You know where the emphasis should be and what the real story is, the dramatic story. 

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