Crewing (I'm really getting through these blogs tonight huh?)

A shoot is stressful enough, but the presence of a crew that listens to you and you know does not take terse direction personally, is well indispensable. There has to be a hierarchy or the project just might implode on itself as decisions are made or not made in that case. But when there is someone in charge, that person has to be knowledgeable and can't show indecisiveness or you'll loose your crew's respect. In addition, you can learn so much from your crew. They all know a few little tricks or techniques that you have never thought of, and their input can make your idea great.

Another important thing to remember when on a shoot where you are the director and how the crew listens to you is how your film subject, if its human, is how they perceive you. People are always more aware than you think and your interviewee or the owner of the location picks up on if you can lead your crew and what that says about you. If you are asking too many questions or just standing around, the subject/proprietor will think you are wasting his/her time in addition to your crews.

You know what, it being Christmas time and all, all you need to know about crewing and directing can be explained through it immortal genius of Charles Shultz and his seminal christmas special, A Charlie Brown Christmas. The special follows Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the gang as they put on the christmas play, and until Charlie grows a pair and starts acting like a director, the play is in shambles.  

Am I supposed to imagine my critics naked?

I think Mike mentioned to me one time, "well, when i hear people explain the problems/tech difficulties they encountered then it's hard to separate yourself from the critiquer and the filmmaker." I wholeheartedly agree with this and it is incredibly hard not to be sympathetic. However, I feel that one of the most useful things to keep in the back of your head through the whole process is and one that was mentioned on the first critique is...the film has to stand alone. It says what it says and you have to live with that. 

Getting the shit critiqued out of you is a new concept for me. I've handed in lab reports, I've gelled plates, I've even sang in front of people, but after any of these, i'm not put on trial afterwords. I wonder how our films would be different if we weren't critiqued afterwards. Would we have made the same film 3 times over? Probably not, but I'm sure we've all learned a lot, and in my opinion, the critique is the most useful part of the process.

I didn't think the hats worked that well, but then I missed the critique workshop (so take what i say with a grain of salt). People seemed to be striving for things to say in regards to their hat, when they should have been remarking on their feelings, likes/dislikes, and their interpretations individually. Because the hats were equally distributed and there were many different kinds, the critiquee was left with a hodgepodge of comments. The negative comments came in the same amount as the positives, so was it a bad film or a good film? Of course, everyone could figure something like that out, but my point is the critiquee couldn't come to a consensus on if the film portrayed their idea because the comments were equally distributed and delegated into categories. To make things less confusing, positive hats could be replaced with a simple thumbs up and the black hats with a rotten vegetable.

But sitting at that table, facing 15 critical pairs of eyes leering back at you with judgement poised on the tip of their tongues, I guess, was the most stressful part of some of my wednesdays. What's more is that you can't talk. And when we were finally able to talk, I felt like a downtrodden housewife who had just Tina Turnered her husband; liberated and free. For example, during the process film critique I just wanted to scream, "if you only knew!!!" Which brings me back to my original point. The 'silent era' taught us how to listen, and we knew if our film could stand alone. So, i'll go on record as saying, "i would be fine with going back to a simpler time. A time where there was less confusion. A time of silence." 

Bird People

I like birds. I don't like to bird watch. I liked my ornithology class. And I really liked my yellow parakeet, Woodstock. I even went to India where there is some of the best birdwatchin' in the world, but I refrained from getting up at 6:00 to go birding with my professors. I had a "life list" for about 6 minutes with 3 birds then I realized I will never look at this again. So my life list was a prestigious club consisting of some very charismatic characters. We had members like the rare chimney sweep, and well I guess just the sparrow (there were two of these.) 

My point is that I know what it is like to fake interest when being with a group of enthusiastic  birders. But maybe, that's why I enjoyed Bird People so much. In my bird watching experience I was too concerned with how much my neck hurt or that, that bird is too impatient and fidgety and I have other work to do. So Bird People allowed me a look into bird watching that I missed while being "too cool for school." 

As a film, Bird People is a sound Science film. And I agree with megan's comment that if we are going to sequester films into fiction and documentary, documentary and science, and even further... science and natural history; then we might need to rethink our labeling system. The amount of real science and Gitlin's characterization of birders blurs the already blurry lines of film genres. Consequently, if you wanna make Walter love you make a film like Bird People. It's been awhile since I've seen it so much of the specifics have left my mind, but I will say that the quest for the ivory billed woodpecker really tied the story together. And that is something to remember with well structured docs. Many of them revolve around an event or a goal-Dave Chappelles Bloc Party, Spell Bound, Word Wars, and although I like him, all of Moore's movies culminate into some narcissistic pilgrimage for some cause.

crew

I am certain that I’ve learned more working with other people while shooting than I ever could just talking about it in class. I feel like every time I film I remember one more thing I should do and manage to forget two others, so having other people around has always been helpful. I’ve never done anything this creative before so watching how other people approach making a movie - where they put cameras, what shots they want to get, the stories people have come up with - has been really interesting and educational. On my second shoot I explained to Federico and Danny what information I wanted in each scene and then they helped a lot (mostly set-up the camera and asked my opinion) on framing it. Between that and working on Danny’s crew for the same assignment I think I became a lot more comfortable with the camera. Before that I never would have thought of setting a camera up on a tripod on top of a counter to get a shot of someone fixing tea or opening a cash register. I had purposefully given up a lot of control on the second assignment, which I didn’t want to do again or I’d never learn, so I’ve forced myself to take control of (at least one) camera on the other two assignments. This meant leaving/trusting others to do sound and lighting, which I found oddly (Megan’s thoughts on group work echo my own) easy to do since I was so preoccupied with the camera. This gets at what could be detrimental to working in a crew - if you rely too heavily on other people’s opinions instead of taking control of your shoot you could loose what you were originally trying to say. Also, if clear instructions aren’t given when you’re part of a crew it can be frustrating trying to but not really knowing where to help. On this last assignment I feel like I asked an awful lot of my crew (Ian and Heather) but they did just what I asked and I realized I would like to work that much on someone else’s film. Since I still feel like I don’t know what I’m doing, I hesitate to volunteer to work with other people and have often just done what has been asked without putting forth my opinion. This is something I definitely have to work on if I’m going to continue to learn.

Criticándonos (Critiquing ourselves)

For me the critiques have been really enriching. While working as a photographer I had had a couple of critique sessions with magazine editors and I must say that I've learned how to digest the feedback I've been given. While editors have to say yes or no, publishable vs. not publishable (they will rarely give you an advice to strengthen your work), I've found extremely helpful having a bunch of people watching my projects and sharing their thoughts. 

I've also found the process of learning how to listen, how to accept and how to do critiques very interesting. At the beginning, when we weren't allowed to talk about our films, it was painful and sometimes "unfair"... I agree that every mistake will always be justifiable, thus making the critique a win or loose jury instead of an opportunity to hear everything that an audiences has to say. I believe that this method will, at the end, emulate that of the real world since we as authors will always be judged and criticized without having an opportunity to reply... Our work will be out there in front of thousands of eyes who won't bother to read what we have to say about the film, they are there to watch it and draw conclusions. It was also good to learn how to listen. A critique can sometimes be taken personally and that is unhealthy for a professional relationship and for one's tranquility. 

Later on the course we did the hat method which proved to be a really good exercise to think and talk about a film in a different way, with different eyes. Facts, creativity, what worked and what didn't work, will always be sources of comments for a further analysis of any text... 

Finally, the presentation of our rough cuts with a short briefing on where the project is at that time and on what is working and what is not, is a way of abstracting ourselves of the film and produce our own critique. For me that is really helpful. Sometimes being so embedded into an idea or so in love with some images may be one of the most difficult issues to resolve. 

It's now clear that abortion may be one of the solutions.

The Bird People

I had hoped to watch The Bird People again before writing this blog, but it's never at checkout...and so the time has come to blog anyway...

To me, The Bird People is a both a science and a natural history film. (I actually question the reasoning behind structuring our genre of filmmaking - "science and natural history filmmaking" - around the distinction of "science" versus "natural history" films. It seems like a somewhat problematic set of labels. For instance, aren't all natural history films also science films? isn't natural history a subset of science?) That being said, films like The Bird People and Roger Tiech's Devil's Teeth and The Man in the Grey Suit fit into our genre of documentary filmmaking (however it is you choose to label it). I guess I'm a little surprised how often we feel the need to apply an additional label - "experimental." These films aren't particularly avant-garde, but because they don't imitate the style of generic natural history films, we label them experimental. We are comfortable calling A Moose Named Madeline (Phil's movie) a natural history film, but we call Devil's Teeth an experimental natural history film. If it isn't cliche, it must be experimental? I don't think it's quite as simple as that, but I do fear that our categories are too narrowly defined. (And, to be clear, I don't think "experimental" is a derogatory term at all...just misapplied on occasion.)

Now that I've gotten that out of my system, here's my take on what seems like the most misunderstood aspect of The Bird People: the strange, deep voice you hear throughout the film is the voice of the birds themselves! They say something like "We watch you, watching us" early in the film...and my favorite piece of bird-speak, "Bodies go in, knowledge comes out!" during one of the museum sections. It makes perfect sense, if you think about it. Gitlin films the birds in such a way that they look like alien creatures, in close-up with weird colors and strange movement. And so, when he gives them a voice, they have a deep, Godly tone.

I first saw The Bird People sometime in 2005. Seeing it then was an interesting experience: Michael Gitlin had come to Cornell Cinema to talk about his film, Cornell's Lab of Ornithology had very recently rediscovered the ivory-billed woodpecker, and I was working in an ornithology lab (doing entomology stuff) and thus strangely immersed in upstate New York birder culture. I was also just beginning to feel disillusioned with the idea of a career in science, and starting to consider filmmaking as an alternative. At the time, I liked the film, but didn't completely know what to think about it. It was one of the only natural history films I had seen that didn't fall into the stereotype. And yet, all the science is there: mist-netting, field research, collecting, comparative anatomy, conservation biology. Watching it again recently, I realize that The Bird People is an incredibly solid film. Maybe it's not as accessible as March of the Penguins, but I think it's quite an achievement to make an artistic film, while still being true to the science and culture of birding.

Working as a Crew

It had taken me a long time to appreciate the benefits of collaboration. Throughout my entire learning life, "group work" has always been a false promise. The same was true in elementary school as was (mostly) true at Cornell University: group projects always meant extra work for me. Teachers, relying on the assumption that a group of people could produce more and higher quality work than a single individual, would have certain expectations for these projects. And so, not only did I have to do my own work, but often the work of several lazy peers. As an upperclassman at Cornell, I finally had more opportunities to work with people I respected and trusted. Sometimes they had had similar notions about "collaboration," and I found it funny to watch our various control freak impulses manifest and then subside as we realized, in turn, that we could actually rely on each other to get things done.

I vaguely remember thinking about these issues of trust and collaboration a couple of years ago...probably when I was first entertaining the notion of filmmaking. I had been conditioned all my life to believe: if you want something done right, you had better do it yourself. But, at long last, I needed to self-analyze and make an attempt to beat down my inner control freak as necessary. It was finally time to figure out who I trusted (and for what), so that we could get together and make something better than each of us could as individuals. And it has been a continual process. I'm much more likely to let (or encourage) people take an active role than I was in high school, for example. But it's still not always easy to recognize exactly when I need to ask for help.

I've had several great experiences crewing this semester. I really wish I had been able to work on more film shoots. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm very good at making myself available. I have too many hermit impulses, and so I'm just not around all that much. But every time I've worked on a crew, I've learned something new...and that's pretty great! I'll just echo a few sentiments that have been brought up by others: I prefer to meet in advance and get some idea of what's going to happen and what's expected; the sooner I know my particular role (sound, camera, etc) the better; technical problems are awful but fairly inevitable, and you need people around to help you work through them.