Documentaries take on so many forms these days it is difficult to categorize them within such a broad, singular genre. There is the provocative, opinionated form of Michael Moore. There is the understated, fly on the wall approach of cinema verite and direct cinema subscribed to by filmmakers like Frederick Wiseman. There is the personal narrative style used so adeptly by Ross McElwee. There is the more traditional historical documentary that comes alive in the work of Ken Burns, who has developed a whole new language for that style that has permeated much of the work that we see today. And then there are the hybrids who seem to defy any category, such as the very original and rich work of Errol Morris.
Documentary is no longer synonymous with the laboring, dry historical pieces that we once associated with the genre. It is as diverse as any area of cinema today. Despite the rise in popularity of so-called reality TV, there seems to be a hunger for true documentary that Big Brother and The Real World can't match. Whether we turn to movie theaters, television, DVD or the web to get this fix, there are an increasing number of avenues to seek out this work. And with the advent of inexpensive digital video formats and non-linear editing systems, just about anyone can take on a subject and explore the world of documentary.
What separates good documentary from bad documentary begins with the idea and the planning that goes into making a film successful. As Alan Rosenthal outlines in the reading "Shaping the Film", structure is as important in non-fiction film as it is in fiction. Without it, we risk losing our audience in a rambling and incoherent project that will leave them checking their watch and searching for the exits. Rosenthal is a veteran of the documentary world, and his prescription for success is rather simple. A good documentary must address four key elements: approach, style, form and structure. While these things seem fairly straightforward, they are also problematic because there is some overlap in each area. How do we differentiate style from approach, and likewise, where does form leave off and structure pick up? I don't think it's necessarily crucial for us to completely separate each of these areas as we consider how to plan our project. As long as we have a basic understanding of the elements to consider and we have a plan in place, we are much more likely to be successful.
Rosenthal begins the discussion with approach, which is a natural place for us to start in our own planning. He breaks approach down into two general categories: the essay and the narrative. Narrative is easy enough for anyone to understand. It suggests that our film has a story to tell with many of the conventions of story in place from character to plot, to setting and some progression of events. From this, certain themes may emerge and it may be as conventional or unconventional as we see fit. The essay is something that Rosenthal suggests is better suited to the short documentary and it centers more on a conceptual approach, which may involve taking a position on a more abstract or broad topic. Of course many films combine these two elements into one, so it is not necessary to think of the two as exclusive of one another.
The issue of style naturally grows out of the approach that one takes. Whichever approach you take to a subject, your style should match it. You may have a style that is provocative, which may fit a film that is political in nature. You may want to use a style that is more comic or humorous, which is obviously a more engaging way to entice your audience to identify with your approach. Whatever style you choose, it should be a natural fit rather than contrived. It's also important to consider the key or handle to your piece as Rosenthal points out. Some of us think of this more in terms of an angle. However it is described, it's important to find a character, event or place that ties the story together. It's something that your audience can identify with. It's also a way to tackle a broad subject with a more specific subset. It makes the story more personal and real to an audience if you give them a focal point they can identify with.
The structure and form of a piece go hand in hand, just as approach and style pair up nicely. As we consider the structure, we must ensure that the way events are ordered make logical sense so that the audience can follow them. Screenwriters of fiction films frequently talk about a three act structure to a film with the plot being established in the first act, the action and conflict building throughout the second act and finally a resolution occurring by the third act. Documentary should follow a similar structure, though we may think of it in slightly different terms. However we think of the structure, there should be a progression of events, and usually some sort of change that takes place from beginning to end. On a small scale, the structure may take on the "day in the life" approach, or we may follow a subject over a longer period of time. We may use the present to reflect the past and vice versa. As the structure comes into focus, we can develop the form of the film by laying out the elements we may have outlined in our treatments into a more detailed script. Frequently, this is done for documentaries using a two column format where the visual elements are described on the left side of the page and the corresponding audio elements are on the right side of the page.
While every project is different and every filmmaker's approach varies in how to plan and execute their ideas, it is important to spend the time to lay the groundwork. Careful planning will alleviate headaches in future stages of production and lead to a more successful outcome.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Knowing Asperger's from "Adam"
There has been quite a bit of talk about Autism in recent years as more and more children are being diagnosed with some form of the disorder. I'm not sure if it should even be called a disorder because in truth, it's just a different way of looking at and thinking about the world. Who is to say what is "normal" these days and what is abnormal? We now understand from years of research that Autism is an umbrella with a whole spectrum of traits that fall under it. One of the diagnoses that falls within that spectrum is something called Asperger's Syndrome, which is a particular form of Autism that usually denotes a higher level of social functioning and intelligence than some of the more severe cases of those who are non-verbal or unable to function in social settings at all.
I have a personal stake in this subject because I have a brother who was diagnosed with Asperger's and has spent his life trying to find his place, struggling with the routine of daily life despite a high degree of intelligence and capability. When I heard an interview with the writer of the film Adam a few months back, I was intrigued. Since the topic of Autism was first broached in the film Rain Man a number of years ago, there seems to be a greater awareness, but it is still accompanied by a limited understanding of the range of effects it has on people's lives. Film has the unique capacity to bring about greater understanding because of its ability to tell a story as well as realistically portray elements of a character in the context of that story.
The story centers around the main character for which the film is named, who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome. I say he suffers from it, not in the sense of a disease or illness, but more as an obstacle he must overcome in his interactions with people. Writer and director Max Mayer uses different devices to put the audience in the position of his character and help us to understand what life is like inside his head. The film begins with Adam standing at a gravesite as the casket is being lowered into the ground. He stands by helplessly, though we are not privy to the details of just what his relationship is to the person that has died. As we begin to get a glimpse of Adam's world, from the neatly ordered closet to the freezer filled with a row of a dozen or so identical boxes of macaroni and cheese, we get our first hints of what is going on. Adam stands in somewhat of a daze before the white refrigerator, staring at a dry erase board that lists various household chores. He takes a marker and crosses out the space at the bottom that reads "Dad's chores", and somberly goes about the business of cleaning up. That simple sequence reels us in emotionally as we realize that not only has he lost his father, but how utterly unequipped he is to deal with this reality.
Throughout the film, there are various scenes where the audience is put inside Adam's head with visual and auditory cues. The images and sounds are filtered and distorted in ways that sometimes might be used to suggest a dream sequence or some drug induced state, but we realize that these are part of Adam's normal reaction to situations that might not phase most of us, but for him are traumatic. The plot focuses on his relationship with a woman named Beth and the various ways that he struggles to connect socially with people in his life. These situations are frequently comic, though at times heartbreaking. There is the conversation that he has at a party with a woman who unsuspectingly engages him in a discussion about astronomy only to find herself trapped by Adam's detailed dissertation on different types of telescopes. When he meets Beth's parents at a small off-Broadway theater, he nervously recounts a detailed list of dates and performances in the history of the theater. These scenes are presented in a way that isn't mocking, but rather lets us in on the nature of the disorder with a sense of humor about it. In another scene, Adam is mistaken by police as having some malicious intent as he stands next to the playground at the school where Beth teaches. He becomes agitated as he is forcibly dealt with, unable to explain himself, bailed out of the situation only after Beth comes out to set the police straight.
The film is beautifully shot, with striking camera angles, carefully blocked scenes, characterized by gorgeous lighting that is both dramatic and naturalistic at once. The flow of the narrative is well structured, though at times gets bogged down by unnecessary subplots that distract from the central narrative. While it is for the most part realistic, there are certain cliches and devices that come across as a bit overwrought. By in large, I think it is a genuine portrayal of a character whose plight is more common that we might realize. It's not your average, conventional love story, and I think it would be difficult for anyone to not be moved by Adam's character and what he goes through. These are the sort of films that are challenging to make because they have a message that is central to the story and while it's important to get that message across, you don't want to beat your audience over the head with it. I think the filmmaker manages to walk the balance nicely in a way that both lets us inside this world that may be unfamiliar to us, while telling a simple story that is engaging to any viewer, no matter their point of view.
I have a personal stake in this subject because I have a brother who was diagnosed with Asperger's and has spent his life trying to find his place, struggling with the routine of daily life despite a high degree of intelligence and capability. When I heard an interview with the writer of the film Adam a few months back, I was intrigued. Since the topic of Autism was first broached in the film Rain Man a number of years ago, there seems to be a greater awareness, but it is still accompanied by a limited understanding of the range of effects it has on people's lives. Film has the unique capacity to bring about greater understanding because of its ability to tell a story as well as realistically portray elements of a character in the context of that story.
The story centers around the main character for which the film is named, who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome. I say he suffers from it, not in the sense of a disease or illness, but more as an obstacle he must overcome in his interactions with people. Writer and director Max Mayer uses different devices to put the audience in the position of his character and help us to understand what life is like inside his head. The film begins with Adam standing at a gravesite as the casket is being lowered into the ground. He stands by helplessly, though we are not privy to the details of just what his relationship is to the person that has died. As we begin to get a glimpse of Adam's world, from the neatly ordered closet to the freezer filled with a row of a dozen or so identical boxes of macaroni and cheese, we get our first hints of what is going on. Adam stands in somewhat of a daze before the white refrigerator, staring at a dry erase board that lists various household chores. He takes a marker and crosses out the space at the bottom that reads "Dad's chores", and somberly goes about the business of cleaning up. That simple sequence reels us in emotionally as we realize that not only has he lost his father, but how utterly unequipped he is to deal with this reality.
Throughout the film, there are various scenes where the audience is put inside Adam's head with visual and auditory cues. The images and sounds are filtered and distorted in ways that sometimes might be used to suggest a dream sequence or some drug induced state, but we realize that these are part of Adam's normal reaction to situations that might not phase most of us, but for him are traumatic. The plot focuses on his relationship with a woman named Beth and the various ways that he struggles to connect socially with people in his life. These situations are frequently comic, though at times heartbreaking. There is the conversation that he has at a party with a woman who unsuspectingly engages him in a discussion about astronomy only to find herself trapped by Adam's detailed dissertation on different types of telescopes. When he meets Beth's parents at a small off-Broadway theater, he nervously recounts a detailed list of dates and performances in the history of the theater. These scenes are presented in a way that isn't mocking, but rather lets us in on the nature of the disorder with a sense of humor about it. In another scene, Adam is mistaken by police as having some malicious intent as he stands next to the playground at the school where Beth teaches. He becomes agitated as he is forcibly dealt with, unable to explain himself, bailed out of the situation only after Beth comes out to set the police straight.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
The Sound and the Fury
Many promising film projects have been sunk, not because the idea was not developed or the filmmakers lacked skill, but because they did not take the time to properly consider the lighting and a sound aesthetics necessary to make the piece work. Whether they were in a hurry and just didn't take the time, or perhaps they just never considered these elements to be as important as the rest of the content, poor lighting and poor sound will be a detriment that will dog even the most ambitious projects.
Consider your world without one or the other of these elements. Without light, there are a great many hours of the day that we could not function. We might as well just head off to bed in the winter sometime after we finish our early bird special for dinner, and then sleep in until 8 the next morning. And if we cannot hear clearly, the most mundane tasks that involve communicating with others become so arduous and painful, we would just as soon withdraw from most things in life altogether. Of course there are those in the blind and deaf communities who cope with these challenges everyday, but not without a good deal of learning and some struggles along the way.
I think most of us who have good vision and hearing are thankful for these abilities, though we often take them for granted. But as we consider our audience, we should consider their reliance on these senses to comprehend and enjoy our films. And so it should go without saying that lighting and sound are cornerstones to any video or film project.
As we have discovered through our readings this semester, both elements are incredibly complex with all sorts of decisions to make, techniques to master and equipment to understand. We must consider aesthetics and formal properties of these elements, as well as the more pragmatic concerns of execution. What mics and lights should we use for a particular situation? How do we light out in the field, away from a power source? Is it possible to always set up proper lights and mics in situations where we are running and gunning, as we often say in the news business when we have to keep up with a very active subject. There is no perfect solution that will handle every situation that we face. That is why we must understand each aspect of the process so that we can make informed decisions in whatever circumstances we find ourselves shooting in.
Consider your world without one or the other of these elements. Without light, there are a great many hours of the day that we could not function. We might as well just head off to bed in the winter sometime after we finish our early bird special for dinner, and then sleep in until 8 the next morning. And if we cannot hear clearly, the most mundane tasks that involve communicating with others become so arduous and painful, we would just as soon withdraw from most things in life altogether. Of course there are those in the blind and deaf communities who cope with these challenges everyday, but not without a good deal of learning and some struggles along the way.
I think most of us who have good vision and hearing are thankful for these abilities, though we often take them for granted. But as we consider our audience, we should consider their reliance on these senses to comprehend and enjoy our films. And so it should go without saying that lighting and sound are cornerstones to any video or film project.
As we have discovered through our readings this semester, both elements are incredibly complex with all sorts of decisions to make, techniques to master and equipment to understand. We must consider aesthetics and formal properties of these elements, as well as the more pragmatic concerns of execution. What mics and lights should we use for a particular situation? How do we light out in the field, away from a power source? Is it possible to always set up proper lights and mics in situations where we are running and gunning, as we often say in the news business when we have to keep up with a very active subject. There is no perfect solution that will handle every situation that we face. That is why we must understand each aspect of the process so that we can make informed decisions in whatever circumstances we find ourselves shooting in.
Friday, September 17, 2010
New Muslim Cool
It's not something that many of us associate with Islam these days, a sense of cool. We are not used to thinking of calmness, even keel or a peaceful demeanor. Nor does it evoke the meaning in the other sense of the word, hip to modern culture, even cutting edge. The portayal of Muslims in mainstream American culture is typically that of angry bearded men, burning the American flag, gathering en masse to shout slogans like "death to America" in Arabic. They are terrorists, and our sworn enemy. I wouldn't suggest for a moment that this is in any way representative of most of the 2.5 billion Muslims around the world, but one might think that if their only point of reference was CNN or Fox News.
The documentary New Muslim Cool (originally broadcast on POV last summer, now available for viewing on the website) takes on these stereotypes, without apology and without reservation. The filmmaker, Jennifer Maytorena Taylor, introduces the audience to Jason Perez, a Puerto Rican rapper, and former drug dealer who has turned his life around through his conversion to Islam. Perez now goes by a Muslim moniker, Hamza, and has devoted much of his time reaching out to gang members and drug dealers to offer them an alternative to the lifestyle he knows firsthand.
Of course, this conversion is not without its troubles. We witness a raid on the mosque where he worships and later we see him stripped of his access to a prison ministry that has allowed him to reach out to both Christian and Muslim inmates. We see a cultural divide between himself and his family, who all have retained the Catholic faith that Jason himself grew up with. And then of course there is the stigma that he carries with him each day.
It's a very timely piece considering the heightened sensitivity (or insensitivity depending on how you look at it) regarding Muslims around the anniversary of 9/11. We still have tens of thousands of troops stationed in predominately Muslim territories, creating animus towards our nation. We have a debate over the building of a mosque and Islamic cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero. We have a pastor who has threatened to burn copies of the Koran in public. We have a significant segment of our population that believes our President is a "secret Muslim", despite his continued profession of Christian faith, and use this suspicion as a sort of smear campaign, suggesting that it would somehow make him unfit to serve. This from many who call themselves Christians, yet seem to spew such venom toward their fellow man who does not think as they do.
No matter where you come down on any one of those issues, I think we can all agree that these are troubling times. Does our Christian faith however, not dictate that we should love our brothers and sisters, no matter what they believe? Hamza is no more of a terrorist than you or I, and yet when we see him prostrate on a rug, chanting prayers or walking down the street with his wife by his side wearing a hijab, we squirm uncomfortably. They're not real Americans. They couldn't be. If they were, they'd think just like us. The only trouble is, who among us has found the key to being American? What makes one of us more right that the other? After all, isn't it in large part this very same brand of religious persecution that led our founding fathers (and mothers) to leave their homeland and begin anew here in this new land of opportunity?
The film doesn't resolve these questions, and despite some of the obstacles that Hamza faces and overcomes, I don't think it begins to address these deep cultural divisions. It falls short of portraying a complete picture of just how deeply the mistrust and anger is felt among those who believe that all of Islam is anti-American, or at the very least, something to be suspicious of. It's one story among many. But it's a place to begin the discussion at the very least, with the hope that someday we truly can co-exist as one nation, better yet, one world.
Of course, this conversion is not without its troubles. We witness a raid on the mosque where he worships and later we see him stripped of his access to a prison ministry that has allowed him to reach out to both Christian and Muslim inmates. We see a cultural divide between himself and his family, who all have retained the Catholic faith that Jason himself grew up with. And then of course there is the stigma that he carries with him each day.
It's a very timely piece considering the heightened sensitivity (or insensitivity depending on how you look at it) regarding Muslims around the anniversary of 9/11. We still have tens of thousands of troops stationed in predominately Muslim territories, creating animus towards our nation. We have a debate over the building of a mosque and Islamic cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero. We have a pastor who has threatened to burn copies of the Koran in public. We have a significant segment of our population that believes our President is a "secret Muslim", despite his continued profession of Christian faith, and use this suspicion as a sort of smear campaign, suggesting that it would somehow make him unfit to serve. This from many who call themselves Christians, yet seem to spew such venom toward their fellow man who does not think as they do.
No matter where you come down on any one of those issues, I think we can all agree that these are troubling times. Does our Christian faith however, not dictate that we should love our brothers and sisters, no matter what they believe? Hamza is no more of a terrorist than you or I, and yet when we see him prostrate on a rug, chanting prayers or walking down the street with his wife by his side wearing a hijab, we squirm uncomfortably. They're not real Americans. They couldn't be. If they were, they'd think just like us. The only trouble is, who among us has found the key to being American? What makes one of us more right that the other? After all, isn't it in large part this very same brand of religious persecution that led our founding fathers (and mothers) to leave their homeland and begin anew here in this new land of opportunity?
The film doesn't resolve these questions, and despite some of the obstacles that Hamza faces and overcomes, I don't think it begins to address these deep cultural divisions. It falls short of portraying a complete picture of just how deeply the mistrust and anger is felt among those who believe that all of Islam is anti-American, or at the very least, something to be suspicious of. It's one story among many. But it's a place to begin the discussion at the very least, with the hope that someday we truly can co-exist as one nation, better yet, one world.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
The Images of 9/11
I think for most people, the images of 9/11 are painful memories. For some, they are too painful to consider reliving. These are images of planes flying into towering skyscrapers, flames shooting out, black smoke billowing out into the blue sky. They are the tears and expressions of shock looming on the faces of helpless onlookers. There is the gray dust with a brownish tinge and flecks of black projectiles pouring into the streets, covering everything in its path in a thick layer of ash. Emergency workers struggling to breathe push forward toward the disaster, while everyone else runs in droves away from the scene. We're inundated with images everyday, and we've become desensitized to it, but on this day, it all takes on a different tone.
Perhaps it's because I'm an artist, a filmmaker and a photojournalist, but it's the images of this day that define it for me. When I see the footage, it's so unbelievable, shocking, even nine years later, I can't help but be drawn in by it. I don't have a personal connection to the events of that day. I didn't know anyone who worked in the buildings that were attacked, or that were on the planes. I had been to New York before the attacks and I've been back since, and nothing feels any different about the city to me. My own recollections that tenuously connect me to that day, aside from the television coverage that most of us experienced come from two sources. I had been at a wedding in Maine the weekend before and was driving back home Monday night, the 10th. On my way back to Rochester, I was passing by Albany at the point on the Thruway where one can head south toward New York or continue west home. For a fleeting moment I looked at that sign and thought I could take that turn and head south, just for the night. I'm not exactly sure why, but it seems that no matter how far I am from New York, when I see that sign, I always have that same thought. I guess it has to do with the draw of the city as a center of art and culture, that somehow being there will fulfill some dream that I have about being a part of that energy. Of course, as quickly as the thought entered my mind, it left, and I continued home.
The second source of connection actually happened the day after on the 12th of September. It was my first day at a new job, my first job since graduating college the previous May. It wasn't just any job though. It was at a television station, the ABC affiliate, where one might think I would have suddenly found myself surrounded by chaos. On the contrary, it was about as quiet as a newsroom could get, something I have not experienced in the nine years since. Everyone was a bit in a daze, staring at the images on the monitors spread all over the room, with nothing to do but watch, much like the rest of the world. Every bit of coverage for those first few days was done by the networks, 24 hours a day for the first few days. It wouldn't be until later that week that we would even have the opportunity to cover anything from a local angle. And so all we could do was watch.
I suppose this is a big part of the reason why I connect to the images, difficult as they might be to see. They are the reality of what happened, and sometimes we must face reality if we expect to overcome it. In a lot of ways, I dread these anniversaries, because I know I'll have to cover the countless ceremonies, or talk to family members of victims. Perhaps I'll have to cover another story about the proposed mosque near Ground Zero. Or maybe it will be more fallout from a proposed Koran burning. Whatever the story, it feels like a distraction, and in many cases it just doesn't ring true to me.
Everyone deals with these things in their own way. There's no right or wrong way to deal with it. So after avoiding it all day, I flipped on the History channel this evening to catch a program filled not with interviews and ominous narration, but raw footage from dozens, if not hundreds of cameras around the city that day, minute by minute, accompanied by 911 calls, unfiltered commentary of the people behind the cameras, natural sounds and reactions of people on the street. It took me back in a different way. It didn't tug at my heart strings in a manipulative way. It didn't make me angry in a false sense. It allowed me to experience it again, purely through the video footage, captured in real time, without a lot of the slick graphics and polish, without commercial interruption and without someone else's ideas about what I should feel.
I'm sure that for those of us who lived through it, whether we were there in the thick of the disaster, or we were halfway around the world watching it unfold on TV, these things will never be easy to watch. I'm sure that we will always commemorate it in some way, and deal with it in our own way. And so for me, I deal through seeing. I remember through watching and observing. I understand the world through images, when others might turn away. When we pick up a camera, we must realize what power we hold in our hands. There is no way of knowing when we might find ourselves documenting something important, even historic.
The second source of connection actually happened the day after on the 12th of September. It was my first day at a new job, my first job since graduating college the previous May. It wasn't just any job though. It was at a television station, the ABC affiliate, where one might think I would have suddenly found myself surrounded by chaos. On the contrary, it was about as quiet as a newsroom could get, something I have not experienced in the nine years since. Everyone was a bit in a daze, staring at the images on the monitors spread all over the room, with nothing to do but watch, much like the rest of the world. Every bit of coverage for those first few days was done by the networks, 24 hours a day for the first few days. It wouldn't be until later that week that we would even have the opportunity to cover anything from a local angle. And so all we could do was watch.
Everyone deals with these things in their own way. There's no right or wrong way to deal with it. So after avoiding it all day, I flipped on the History channel this evening to catch a program filled not with interviews and ominous narration, but raw footage from dozens, if not hundreds of cameras around the city that day, minute by minute, accompanied by 911 calls, unfiltered commentary of the people behind the cameras, natural sounds and reactions of people on the street. It took me back in a different way. It didn't tug at my heart strings in a manipulative way. It didn't make me angry in a false sense. It allowed me to experience it again, purely through the video footage, captured in real time, without a lot of the slick graphics and polish, without commercial interruption and without someone else's ideas about what I should feel.
I'm sure that for those of us who lived through it, whether we were there in the thick of the disaster, or we were halfway around the world watching it unfold on TV, these things will never be easy to watch. I'm sure that we will always commemorate it in some way, and deal with it in our own way. And so for me, I deal through seeing. I remember through watching and observing. I understand the world through images, when others might turn away. When we pick up a camera, we must realize what power we hold in our hands. There is no way of knowing when we might find ourselves documenting something important, even historic.
Friday, September 10, 2010
"Off and Running"
It seems like a fitting title for a film that is kicking off the new season of POV, the documentary series on PBS that began Tuesday night. Off and Running is a new film directed by Nicole Opper and produced by Sharese Bullock. It's the story of the Klein-Cloud family, with a particular focus on Avery, the adopted daughter of Tova and Travis, a lesbian couple that lives in Brooklyn. That in itself, might seem a bit hard to swallow for some, but that doesn't begin to tell the story. Tova and Travis are white and Jewish, Avery is black, and she also shares the home with her two other adopted siblings, Rafi, born to a crack addicted mother, with a mix of black and Puerto Rican roots, and young Isaiah, or Zay-Zay as he's called in the film, whose ethnicity is Korean. To say this family embodies the spirit of multiculturalism would be an understatement. We'd all like to believe this is part of the fabric of American culture to accept all of this diversity and embrace it as beautiful. As the film shows, the truth is more complicated.
It begins with Avery, nearing the end of her time in high school, writing a letter to her birth mother with the hopes of connecting with her in order to learn more about the family that she came from. She grew up going to Hebrew school, the lone black face among a crowd of white, learning about her adopted mothers' Jewish culture. Up to this point, she has embraced it, but now is beginning to search for something more about her own identity as a young African American woman. As the film progresses, we see her with her black friends, going about her daily life, writing to her birth mother, attempting at each turn to grasp just what it means to be a part of a culture that matches her outward appearance. At one point, she sits in a counselors office and is faced with the question of whether or not she feels black. "I don't even know what that means," she answers in earnest.
The title is a play on this struggle, but also draws from her main passion in life: running. From a very young age, as we learn in the film, Avery has had incredible success running track and cross country, and it seems to be the one thing that keeps her centered. As her coach and teammates encourage her, we are privy to the ups and downs of her training, which is more of a backdrop to the main struggles of her personal life. Running to her is an outlet, and a way out. It is her ticket to a college education and a future that is almost certainly better than the one she would have had if she were not given up for adoption.
It's a story that is fascinating on so many levels. There are so many important issues that it touches on from culture, race and religion to our changing ideas about family and the nature of our relationships. It tests our understanding and tolerance for these varying points of view as they are presented. It challenges us to have compassion for people in situations we may disagree with on moral or religious grounds. It forces us to face the human side of the story.
From a filmic standpoint, I always find it interesting to look at documentaries, mainly because it is my main method of working. I always examine the way a film is shot and edited. Does it follow the conventions of the medium or strive to blaze new trails? What elements are used to convey story? Is it told through the viewpoint of the filmmaker, the subjects of the film, or some omniscient narrator? Although I would certainly have made a number of different choices in the way it was shot and certain editing decisions, there was a lot to appreciate here. There were some really beautiful sequences that acted as a wonderful backdrop to the story, reinforcing visually what we are hearing from the people in the story. The film opens with a nice montage of Avery gearing up for a run intercut with shots of all the trophies that decorate her room. Later we see shots of her running in silhouette against a beautiful skyline. There are little details like the gorgeous macro shots of raindrops clinging to wooden clothespins. And then there are all the moments the filmmakers captured. Unfiltered discussions between Avery and her adopted parents about her birth mother, or similar talks with her friends and siblings. We see the sweet moments between Avery and her younger brother Zay-Zay as she kisses him goodnight. We see the raw emotion she feels when she thinks of her older brother Rafi, now away at college.
There is such beauty in this type of a portrait of family life. As an audience, I think there is a sense of privilege in having had the opportunity to view such intimate moments of a person's life. It makes us look at ourselves and ask certain questions. It makes us think about those around us that we might be tempted judge and rethink a view we may have based purely on politics or our own prejudices. This is the power of documentary and of film as an art form. It is a medium that truly has the power to transform lives. And it is for this reason that we must take care in how we choose to use it.
The title is a play on this struggle, but also draws from her main passion in life: running. From a very young age, as we learn in the film, Avery has had incredible success running track and cross country, and it seems to be the one thing that keeps her centered. As her coach and teammates encourage her, we are privy to the ups and downs of her training, which is more of a backdrop to the main struggles of her personal life. Running to her is an outlet, and a way out. It is her ticket to a college education and a future that is almost certainly better than the one she would have had if she were not given up for adoption.
It's a story that is fascinating on so many levels. There are so many important issues that it touches on from culture, race and religion to our changing ideas about family and the nature of our relationships. It tests our understanding and tolerance for these varying points of view as they are presented. It challenges us to have compassion for people in situations we may disagree with on moral or religious grounds. It forces us to face the human side of the story.
From a filmic standpoint, I always find it interesting to look at documentaries, mainly because it is my main method of working. I always examine the way a film is shot and edited. Does it follow the conventions of the medium or strive to blaze new trails? What elements are used to convey story? Is it told through the viewpoint of the filmmaker, the subjects of the film, or some omniscient narrator? Although I would certainly have made a number of different choices in the way it was shot and certain editing decisions, there was a lot to appreciate here. There were some really beautiful sequences that acted as a wonderful backdrop to the story, reinforcing visually what we are hearing from the people in the story. The film opens with a nice montage of Avery gearing up for a run intercut with shots of all the trophies that decorate her room. Later we see shots of her running in silhouette against a beautiful skyline. There are little details like the gorgeous macro shots of raindrops clinging to wooden clothespins. And then there are all the moments the filmmakers captured. Unfiltered discussions between Avery and her adopted parents about her birth mother, or similar talks with her friends and siblings. We see the sweet moments between Avery and her younger brother Zay-Zay as she kisses him goodnight. We see the raw emotion she feels when she thinks of her older brother Rafi, now away at college.
There is such beauty in this type of a portrait of family life. As an audience, I think there is a sense of privilege in having had the opportunity to view such intimate moments of a person's life. It makes us look at ourselves and ask certain questions. It makes us think about those around us that we might be tempted judge and rethink a view we may have based purely on politics or our own prejudices. This is the power of documentary and of film as an art form. It is a medium that truly has the power to transform lives. And it is for this reason that we must take care in how we choose to use it.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
The Art and Ardor of Screenwriting
It is perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of any creative process: setting aside all of the distractions that life presents and just doing it. In the realm of writing, and screenwriting in particular, there are a thousand reasons why that masterpiece of a manuscript never quite leaves the hard drive of the maker's computer. There is always some tweak that needs to be made, some additional scene that needs to be added before it will be complete enough to spit it out onto paper and pass it on to the hands of someone who might actually have the ability to bring this story to the screen.
Screenwriting in particular, perhaps more than any other type of writing, demands the highest level of craft, skill and concentration. Just as a novelist or playwright, the screenwriter has to be able to come up with a compelling idea, breathe life into characters and develop them in a way that engages readers, and tell a story that captivates. Of course this is only the beginning. They also have to be able to visualize what this would look like on the screen, write those directions into the script following a specific format, while still writing something that someone would actually want to read. Anyone who has ever flipped through a screenplay or two would acknowledge, that is perhaps the most daunting aspect of the process, and one of the main reasons why so many screenplays end up in the recycling bin before the reader ever gets to the final pages.
Syd Field lays these difficulties out in his book on screenwriting, Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting. Field offers important guidance not just on the technical aspects of how one goes about putting a screenplay together, but also the more pragmatic concerns of those struggling with the problem of finding the time to devote to writing. The excerpt I chose to look at begins with a full chapter on this subject, of how one goes about sitting down to write, and the invitable obstacles that will keep a writer from his work. Spouses, children, the need to work and make a living are just a few distractions many of us have. Then there are the mental blocks. He lists those brick walls, and the pitfalls to avoid, pitfalls he has no doubt fallen into himself. There's the problem of thinking of all sorts of new ideas and questioning whether the current idea is worth working on, or if it should be abandoned in favor of these fresher ones. At times, there is the sudden urge to clean and organize our space, an urge never before experienced in the five years prior as the mess of papers piled up, but now seems so important. There are always things that seem more pressing that allow us to put off writing until tomorrow. Of course, tomorrow never comes. Sometimes we do get started, and then hit a wall after 15 or 30 pages. Sometimes we breeze through and hit a wall when we reach the last 15 or 30 pages. As Field describes these scenarios that for many will sound all too familiar, he doesn't judge, but rather acknoweldes that these are real and natural problems that occur for every writer. But if we are to have success, we have to fight through it.
Field drives home the point that we should all sit up and pay attention to if we want to write screenplays and be taken seriously. It's a simple idea, but one that seems to elude so many who set out to write a screenplay. A writer's job is to write the screenplay. That is, a writer must do all the things mentioned above about developing character and story. The writer's job is not to figure out how to film the story, and therefore, there should be no need to see the word camera in the screenplay, unless of course it's a story about a photographer. The job of figuring out where to place a camera and how to shoot a scene belongs to the director and cinematographer of the film, not the writer. Now, many writers also direct their own scripts. Take Woody Allen, Spike Lee or Wes Anderson for example. They can afford to be specific about camera angles in their own screenplay because ultimately they are the ones responsible for getting it to the screen. For us mere mortals however, the focus should be on the writing.
And so the next natural question that Field poses is, if we are concerned with visualizing what we should see on screen, but we can't use the word camera, how do we accomplish that feat? The answer is quite simple. Figure out your subject, and write about that. If you're tempted to say "the camera tracks with John as we walks down the street to his car", instead consider who the subject of the shot is. John is the subject, so your focus should not on what the camera does, but on what John does. All you need to say is "John walks down the street to his car", and let the director figure out if he wants to shoot it with a tracking shot, a wide shot, a sequence of several different angles, or whatever other combination he chooses. That is not your problem. Your only concern is to make sure the director knows the action that must be conveyed to move the story along.
There is one last point that I think is important for every writer to remember, and that is to let go of the notion that any idea is so precious that it cannot be cut without the script absolutely falling apart. If there is a line or scene that you are enamored with, that you feel is written with such brilliance that you sit back and behold it, reading it over again and again, chances are, it may need to go. There's a saying that I love to reference, once uttered by William Faulkner, that I think illustrates this point about as well as anything: "in writing, you must kill all your darlings". I love it because it is such a straightforward way to remind us that as artists, nothing can be precious. I also happen to have a poster that that you may see hanging in my office later this semester if I ever get around to framing it. It lists ten rules to live by as an artist, and it was created by local sculpter Wendell Castle. The one that sticks out for me is "if you are in love with an idea, you are no judge of its merits". Both of these quotes get at the same idea. The point is, sometimes we must make painful choices in service to story, rather than making the story service our egos, and force the audience to be the one to experience pain.
Screenwriting in particular, perhaps more than any other type of writing, demands the highest level of craft, skill and concentration. Just as a novelist or playwright, the screenwriter has to be able to come up with a compelling idea, breathe life into characters and develop them in a way that engages readers, and tell a story that captivates. Of course this is only the beginning. They also have to be able to visualize what this would look like on the screen, write those directions into the script following a specific format, while still writing something that someone would actually want to read. Anyone who has ever flipped through a screenplay or two would acknowledge, that is perhaps the most daunting aspect of the process, and one of the main reasons why so many screenplays end up in the recycling bin before the reader ever gets to the final pages.
Syd Field lays these difficulties out in his book on screenwriting, Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting. Field offers important guidance not just on the technical aspects of how one goes about putting a screenplay together, but also the more pragmatic concerns of those struggling with the problem of finding the time to devote to writing. The excerpt I chose to look at begins with a full chapter on this subject, of how one goes about sitting down to write, and the invitable obstacles that will keep a writer from his work. Spouses, children, the need to work and make a living are just a few distractions many of us have. Then there are the mental blocks. He lists those brick walls, and the pitfalls to avoid, pitfalls he has no doubt fallen into himself. There's the problem of thinking of all sorts of new ideas and questioning whether the current idea is worth working on, or if it should be abandoned in favor of these fresher ones. At times, there is the sudden urge to clean and organize our space, an urge never before experienced in the five years prior as the mess of papers piled up, but now seems so important. There are always things that seem more pressing that allow us to put off writing until tomorrow. Of course, tomorrow never comes. Sometimes we do get started, and then hit a wall after 15 or 30 pages. Sometimes we breeze through and hit a wall when we reach the last 15 or 30 pages. As Field describes these scenarios that for many will sound all too familiar, he doesn't judge, but rather acknoweldes that these are real and natural problems that occur for every writer. But if we are to have success, we have to fight through it.
Field drives home the point that we should all sit up and pay attention to if we want to write screenplays and be taken seriously. It's a simple idea, but one that seems to elude so many who set out to write a screenplay. A writer's job is to write the screenplay. That is, a writer must do all the things mentioned above about developing character and story. The writer's job is not to figure out how to film the story, and therefore, there should be no need to see the word camera in the screenplay, unless of course it's a story about a photographer. The job of figuring out where to place a camera and how to shoot a scene belongs to the director and cinematographer of the film, not the writer. Now, many writers also direct their own scripts. Take Woody Allen, Spike Lee or Wes Anderson for example. They can afford to be specific about camera angles in their own screenplay because ultimately they are the ones responsible for getting it to the screen. For us mere mortals however, the focus should be on the writing.
And so the next natural question that Field poses is, if we are concerned with visualizing what we should see on screen, but we can't use the word camera, how do we accomplish that feat? The answer is quite simple. Figure out your subject, and write about that. If you're tempted to say "the camera tracks with John as we walks down the street to his car", instead consider who the subject of the shot is. John is the subject, so your focus should not on what the camera does, but on what John does. All you need to say is "John walks down the street to his car", and let the director figure out if he wants to shoot it with a tracking shot, a wide shot, a sequence of several different angles, or whatever other combination he chooses. That is not your problem. Your only concern is to make sure the director knows the action that must be conveyed to move the story along.
There is one last point that I think is important for every writer to remember, and that is to let go of the notion that any idea is so precious that it cannot be cut without the script absolutely falling apart. If there is a line or scene that you are enamored with, that you feel is written with such brilliance that you sit back and behold it, reading it over again and again, chances are, it may need to go. There's a saying that I love to reference, once uttered by William Faulkner, that I think illustrates this point about as well as anything: "in writing, you must kill all your darlings". I love it because it is such a straightforward way to remind us that as artists, nothing can be precious. I also happen to have a poster that that you may see hanging in my office later this semester if I ever get around to framing it. It lists ten rules to live by as an artist, and it was created by local sculpter Wendell Castle. The one that sticks out for me is "if you are in love with an idea, you are no judge of its merits". Both of these quotes get at the same idea. The point is, sometimes we must make painful choices in service to story, rather than making the story service our egos, and force the audience to be the one to experience pain.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
POV
For those of you who are home tonight and looking for something good on TV, the new season of POV premiere's on PBS at 10PM. The first doc is a piece called "Off and Running" about a young black girl who grows up in Brooklyn under the care of her adoptive parents, a white, Jewish, lesbian couple. At some point, she decides to reach out to her biological mother to discover more about her identity as a young black woman, and to understand where she comes from.
If you're interested in documentary, it's a series you definitely want to check out. It runs every Tuesday night, and if you miss it, there are usually several replays throughout the week. You can also view the docs online after they screen on TV.
If you're interested in documentary, it's a series you definitely want to check out. It runs every Tuesday night, and if you miss it, there are usually several replays throughout the week. You can also view the docs online after they screen on TV.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
The Materiality of the Medium
In the digital world we live in, we are inundated with images and information at every turn. It becomes difficult, even impossible, to parse even a small quotient of this data into any semblance of meaning. It is part of that double edged sword that technology's advance presents to each of us. On the one hand, we have a plethora of choice, and at our very fingertips, there is quite literally the answer to nearly any query we can conjure, not to mention the ability to peruse nearly any film, television show, song, periodical or book we desire on demand. With this bounty comes the burden of constant bombardment from all sides with ads, noise, and demands in return for our time, personal information and mental capacity. Modern life almost cries out for some escape from time to time into a world free from email, texts, social media and the like, if nothing else for a moment of relaxation and reflection on the more basic needs of human welfare.
It is in this frame of mind that I have been pondering my own readings of John Belton's interpretation of video's history and Tess Takahashi's article on the material nature of film in an era of digital breakthrough. There are several common threads that run through both pieces, though each takes a slightly different approach, and of course were written in different contexts. Belton's view of video as a medium takes the interesting angle of looking at its shared history not with cinema, but with the transmission and recording properties of technologies such as the telegraph and telephone, as well as the phonograph. In his view, "video is not cinema, it only looks like cinema."
One of the features of video and television that he sees as distinguishing it from film is its inherent immediacy. Television broadcasts can be sent around the world instantaneously, allowing for the transmission of events as they take place. As I write this, millions of videos are being recorded on cell phones and as quickly as they are recorded, they are then uploaded to the internet for all the world to view them. A film on the other hand takes more careful preparation, time to light and shoot for proper exposure, and then processing and editing and more processing before it can be viewed at a later date.
Now many would look at the quality of most videos on You Tube and by comparison say that what is found in a movie theater is of a much higher ilk, and therefore worth the time and effort taken to produce them. While I would generally agree, according to Belton, the two have very little relationship to one another. He does make a distinction between the use of video as a medium of transport for television broadcasts and its direct relationship to the process when used as an artistic medium. Video art, like film, has the power to transform, but in his view, this is despite the medium rather than because of it. Video art is an outgrowth of art that was previously made by artists in other media, such as film. When video is used in this transformative way, it ceases to be television, but rather a copy of film.
In the piece by Tess Takahashi, there is no discussion of television and video per se. Her concern lies more with the divide between the analog materiality of film and the computerized format of digital media that comprises video. Her points cross over to many of the avenues that Belton proposes in his study of the subject. Like Belton, she invokes the seminal ideas of Roland Barthes and Walter Benjamin. Barthes' idea was that film is indexical, that it implies a guarantee of presence at the time and place a photograph and likewise a film was made. This is not necessarily the case with digital media, which can be manipulated with ease, creating a seeming reality out of fiction. Takahashi also brings into question the paradox of Benjamin's arguments about the nature of film as he wrote about it in his famed essay "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". Benjamin had argued that for film and photography to be called art debased the very notion of art, saying that by its very nature it falls more into a category of "common entertainment". The fact that it can almost endlessly reproduce identical copies and be viewed en masse as opposed to the more solitary experience of looking at traditional works of art such as painting also made it less valuable.
Takahashi turns that argument on its head, citing a number of examples of artists employing alternative practices with film such as hand processing, physically manipulating the film itself and using various chemicals and substances to achieve unpredictable and one of a kind results. She almost directly challenges Benjamin's position essentially asking the question, is this not art? She goes on to question how much we can trust the veracity of digital media, which can so easily be manipulated and possesses none of the material qualities that film has. Perhaps by this logic we should also differentiate between films made with traditional analog methods, and modern films, which are digitized, altered in various ways and then committed back to their medium of origin.
In many ways, these points are made moot by the fact that most of us base our decision to use digital technology for reasons of availability, cost and efficiency rather than any ideological basis. That is not to say that the discussion is not a useful one to have. I think it's important to consider these ideas as we delve into the making of art using digital technology. Too often, we take for granted the difference of sitting down on the couch and watching a movie on DVD versus getting in the car and heading to the theater to see one. That is not to say that DVD technology should be looked down upon, or that film is inherently preferable to digital video, but that we need to understand the differences in the application of each and consider the history of that technology as we use it in our work.
It is in this frame of mind that I have been pondering my own readings of John Belton's interpretation of video's history and Tess Takahashi's article on the material nature of film in an era of digital breakthrough. There are several common threads that run through both pieces, though each takes a slightly different approach, and of course were written in different contexts. Belton's view of video as a medium takes the interesting angle of looking at its shared history not with cinema, but with the transmission and recording properties of technologies such as the telegraph and telephone, as well as the phonograph. In his view, "video is not cinema, it only looks like cinema."
One of the features of video and television that he sees as distinguishing it from film is its inherent immediacy. Television broadcasts can be sent around the world instantaneously, allowing for the transmission of events as they take place. As I write this, millions of videos are being recorded on cell phones and as quickly as they are recorded, they are then uploaded to the internet for all the world to view them. A film on the other hand takes more careful preparation, time to light and shoot for proper exposure, and then processing and editing and more processing before it can be viewed at a later date.
Now many would look at the quality of most videos on You Tube and by comparison say that what is found in a movie theater is of a much higher ilk, and therefore worth the time and effort taken to produce them. While I would generally agree, according to Belton, the two have very little relationship to one another. He does make a distinction between the use of video as a medium of transport for television broadcasts and its direct relationship to the process when used as an artistic medium. Video art, like film, has the power to transform, but in his view, this is despite the medium rather than because of it. Video art is an outgrowth of art that was previously made by artists in other media, such as film. When video is used in this transformative way, it ceases to be television, but rather a copy of film.
In the piece by Tess Takahashi, there is no discussion of television and video per se. Her concern lies more with the divide between the analog materiality of film and the computerized format of digital media that comprises video. Her points cross over to many of the avenues that Belton proposes in his study of the subject. Like Belton, she invokes the seminal ideas of Roland Barthes and Walter Benjamin. Barthes' idea was that film is indexical, that it implies a guarantee of presence at the time and place a photograph and likewise a film was made. This is not necessarily the case with digital media, which can be manipulated with ease, creating a seeming reality out of fiction. Takahashi also brings into question the paradox of Benjamin's arguments about the nature of film as he wrote about it in his famed essay "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". Benjamin had argued that for film and photography to be called art debased the very notion of art, saying that by its very nature it falls more into a category of "common entertainment". The fact that it can almost endlessly reproduce identical copies and be viewed en masse as opposed to the more solitary experience of looking at traditional works of art such as painting also made it less valuable.
Takahashi turns that argument on its head, citing a number of examples of artists employing alternative practices with film such as hand processing, physically manipulating the film itself and using various chemicals and substances to achieve unpredictable and one of a kind results. She almost directly challenges Benjamin's position essentially asking the question, is this not art? She goes on to question how much we can trust the veracity of digital media, which can so easily be manipulated and possesses none of the material qualities that film has. Perhaps by this logic we should also differentiate between films made with traditional analog methods, and modern films, which are digitized, altered in various ways and then committed back to their medium of origin.
In many ways, these points are made moot by the fact that most of us base our decision to use digital technology for reasons of availability, cost and efficiency rather than any ideological basis. That is not to say that the discussion is not a useful one to have. I think it's important to consider these ideas as we delve into the making of art using digital technology. Too often, we take for granted the difference of sitting down on the couch and watching a movie on DVD versus getting in the car and heading to the theater to see one. That is not to say that DVD technology should be looked down upon, or that film is inherently preferable to digital video, but that we need to understand the differences in the application of each and consider the history of that technology as we use it in our work.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Ran
Frequently, in a filmmaker's later years, the vigor and inventiveness of youth has faded, and what audiences are left with is a shadow of greatness. Perhaps still worth a look, but only a passing glance at best (see Woody Allen). Not so with Kurosawa. Ran is among his finest hours (nearly 3 hours actually). And that is saying something when considering the breadth of his work. He directed more than 30 films over a 50 year period, and several are now looked upon as classics not just among Japanese films, but among all films.
The most striking aspect of the work is the brilliant color, which fortunately had been well preserved for this viewing at the Dryden with a newly struck print from the original camera negative. The costumes were handmade over a period of three years, well deserving of the Academy Award designer Emi Wada received in 1986. Despite being a samurai film that centers around escalating conflict between rival factions of a family, there is not an abundance of bloodshed. It's not what you'd call gratuitous by any means. When Kurosawa does choose to show such things, he does it with gusto. He makes a point of sending streams (and I do mean streams) of bright vermillion shooting through the air and splattering on walls, floors and anything else that happens to get in the way. Let's face it, samurai are not out to do their dirty work in a pleasant way.
Ultimately, Ran is about the drama of an aging father, trying to pass on a legacy to his sons, none which possess the guts that he has. This is what is truly captivating about the story. The rest is secondary. For what might be considered by some to be a war film, it is rather slow moving. Through much of the film, the action exists more within the tension created by characters' interactions that any sort of physical combat. And as any person with parents and siblings knows, there are few things in life more dramatic than familial squabbles. 25 years after its release Ran still feels fresh, and is quite breathtaking to see on the big screen. How many of the films made today will we saying that about a quarter century from now?
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