My friend, and filmmaking partner, Jemma has set me the task of showing her documentaries she hasn’t seen so that we can look at visuals and filming techniques for a documentary we are currently in the research stage for. Jemma has largely always focused on current affairs TV docs, as that is her main area of interest, and has little knowledge when it comes to feature documentaries. I don’t see this as a bad thing and it means I get a chance to re-watch a lot of films I love, so I’ve begun trying to think of particular films or scenes that could help us with the filming process. Jemma is planning the first filming/recce trip in January and I can’t go so we’re really keen to be on the same page when it comes to the style of the film.

So far I’ve been going through some of the films I think it’s important to have seen in terms of style within documentary and also those that might be of help when it comes to choosing various shots we want for the film.

I re-watched Encounters at the End of the World tonight, which is fairly off-mark in terms of what might help us but it did help me think about the level of involvement a filmmaker should, or could, have within the story. We’re keen to have little presence in our film as it’s not relevant to the story and could actually hinder the importance of the journey the characters take if too much of our filmmaking process is evident. But Encounters really made me think and there is a particular scene within the film that is probably one of my favourite scenes in documentary full stop. It’s when we are introduced to the linguist in the green house and Herzog’s voiceover comes in and speaks over the stop of his story with “to cut a long story short…” Its something very few filmmakers would do and the voiceover is entirely his perspective, whilst preventing the character from getting his point across. Herzog then allows him to finish and then cuts away to give his own summary which shows nothing but respect for what the linguist has said.

“It occured to me that during the time we spent in the greenhouse at least 3 or 4 languages had possibly died, in our efforts to preserve endangered species we seem to overlook something equally important. To me it is a sign of a deeply disturbed civilisation where tree huggers and whale huggers in their weirdness are acceptable while no-one embraces the last speakers of a language.”

If you’re interested it’s at about 4 mins in of the clip after the jump.

It’s one of the things that makes me a fan of Werner Herzog’s style. I know a few people that really can’t cope with his films and on the surface you could possibly see him as too much of a presence, but for me it does nothing but add to the films. I really am not a fan of filmmaker’s doing their own voiceovers on the whole. I find that it can be really distracting if they aren’t part of the story and their voice just doesn’t work well. There are obviously exceptions to this and Werner Herzog, for me, is one because his filmmaking process, and fundamentally his personality, is always integral to the story and his experience of the subject matter tends to make the films far more accessible.

I’ve been a fan of his work for a long time but really struggled with him while I was doing my Masters. Early on in the course we had been told we were getting a list of mandatory films to watch and I was really excited to see what was on it and really delve into films that would help me in terms of learning about documentary. When we got the list it might as well have just said ‘ just watch every Herzog film’ and while that is great advice I had hoped for a greater range of styles, ages and approaches. I think it didn’t help that I was marked out of our class as ‘the Errol Morris fan’ which seemed to be seen as something that was a disadvantage to me. Every time a piece of my work was evaluated it was under the pretense that ‘well, you’re an Errol Morris fan’, which at the time seemed incredibly bizarre. We were very much taught that voiceover, talking heads and even music should be avoided wherever possible and that observational filmmaking was ‘proper’ documentary. I have always thought that the story, to a large extent, should determine the style and I found it very confusing that Herzog’s body of work was being rammed down my throat while also representing everything they were advising us against. But that’s education I guess.

I’m really keen to not do the same to Jemma and felt a pang of guilt when I remembered that the first thing I’d lent her was the Errol Morris boxset. But she told me this evening that she’d just watched Gates of Heaven for the first time and loved it. I can’t help but stand by that being the best possible starting point in terms of feature documentary, after all I’m ‘the Errol Morris fan’. But over the next few weeks I will definitely make sure we sit down and go through as many different styles and approaches as possible so she can begin filming with a clear idea of where we’re hoping to go with the film.

I tried to limit to 25 but it’s just impossible. This isn’t necessarily in any order, I hate the idea of saying one is better than the other, especially when you’re talking 10 years of filmmaking and also the sheer spread of importance and subject matter, feel free to call me a wimp.

1. The Fog of War (Morris, 2003) – trailer
2. The Staircase (de Lestrade, 2004) – trailer
3. When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (Lee, 2006)
4. Journeys with George (Pelosi, 2002)
5. Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst (Stone, 2004) – trailer
6. Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story (Forbes, 2008) – trailer
7. Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (2006) – trailer
8. Dark Days (Singer, 2000) – trailer
9. Power of Nightmares (Curtis, 2004) – Part 1/3
10. Grizzly Man (Herzog, 2005) – trailer
11. Please Vote For Me (Chen, 2007) – trailer
12. 49 Up (Apted, 2005) – trailer
13. Etre et Avoir (Philibert, 2002) – trailer
14. Aileen: Life and Death of Serial Killer (Broomfield, 2003) – trailer
15. Sergio (Barker, 2009) – trailer
16. King of Kong (Gordon, 2007) – trailer
17. Capturing the Friedmans (Jarecki, 2003) – trailer
18. Scottsboro: An American Tragedy (Anker & Goodman, 2001)
19. Control Room (Noujaim, 2004) – trailer
20. Abel Raises Cain (Abel & Hockett, 2005) – trailer
21. Jesus Camp (Ewing & Grady, 2006) – trailer
22. The English Surgeon (Smith, 2007) – trailer
23. Iraq in Fragments (Longley, 2007) – trailer
24. Chicago 10 (Morgen, 2007) – trailer
25. Paradise Lost 2: Revelations (Berlinger & Sinsofsky, 2000) – Part 1
26. Prodigal Sons (Reed, 2008)
27. Al Franken: God Spoke (Hedegus & Doob, 2006) – trailer
28. Excellent Cadavers (Turco, 2005)
29. Taxi to the Dark Side (Gibney, 2007) – trailer
30. Stevie (James, 2002)
31. The Weather Underground (Green & Siegel, 2002) – trailer
32. Born into Brothels (Briski & Kauffman, 2004) – trailer
33. The Gleaners and I (Varda, 2000) – trailer
34. Kurt Cobain About a Son (Schnack, 2006) – trailer
35. Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (Gibney, 2008) – trailer
36. Waltz with Bashir (Folman, 2001) – trailer
37. Avenge But One of My Two Eyes (Mograbi, 2005) – trailer
38. The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair (Epperlein & Tucker, 2006) – trailer
39. Billy the Kid (Venditti, 2007) – trailer
40. Man on Wire (Marsh, 2009) – trailer
41. Death in Gaza (Miller, 2004) – Part 1
42. Robert Capa in Love and War (Makepeace, 2003) – trailer
43. Bus 174 (Padilha & Lacerda, 2002) – trailer
44. The Devil and Daniel Johnston (Feuerzeig, 2006) – trailer
45. Standing in the Shadows of Motown (Justman, 2002) – trailer
46. Helvetica (Hustwit, 2007) – trailer
47. Beneath the Veil (Harrison, 2001) – clip
48. Cry Freetown (Samura, 2000) – trailer
49. Last Party 2000 (Chaiklin & Leitch, 2001) – trailer
50. The Bridge (Steel, 2006) – trailer

So, what have I missed?

After catching up on emails and various meetings my first stop was to see Nick Fraser introduce La Vida Loca, a film both he and I have been fiercely supporting after the tragic death of it’s filmmaker Christian Poveda in El Salvador. We showed it last month at the Frontline Club to an absolutely heaving audience.

From there we headed straight for what was obviously going to be the most entertaining and dramatic panel of the festival Campaigning Documentaries: The Thin Line Between Passion and Propaganda.

On the panel were Nick, Jess Search of BritDoc, Ceri Dingle from WORLDwrite, Kevin Toolis from Many Rivers Films and chair Claire Fox from the Institute of Ideas.

This was a session I particularly wanted to see as we had arranged to do it at the club with Nick but unfortunately at the last minute he couldn’t make it and our panel turned out to be incredible. It was chaired by Roger Graef (Films of Record) and saw Hamish Mykura (Head of Documentaries and More4), Havana Marking (Director of Afghan Star), and John Battsek (Executive Producer of The Age of Stupid) duke it out. The full video of that panel is here.

This was a slightly different type of line-up and was much more centred around the commissioning and place of campaigning docs. Everyone had expected Nick and Jess to completely butt heads but within the first five minutes they had united in opinion and were facing extreme opposition from Kevin and Ceri. I have to say it was slightly weird to see a battle between two of my previous employers, but that actually made it more fun as I had an idea of what was coming. Claire Fox was a very bizarre chair as she refrained from the usual role of moderating the discussion and instead provoked it to an extreme degree.

I live tweeted throughout the whole thing, much to the annoyance of a lot of people I’m sure. Sheffield provided hashtags for all the sessions so if you are interested then you can see them here #dfcampaigningdocs

Nick made a call to arms for industry to not lose the British tradition of the best investigative journalism and added that he hoped more NGOs can be inspired to fund really good, critical, independent documentaries.

Here are a few of my favourite quotes from the panel:

Nick Fraser: The problem with US filmmaking is too many trustafarians making docs, not the amount of campaign films

Jess Search: Long term social impact is more satisfying to a filmmaker than lone tv broadcast

Ceri Dingle: Its a shame Jess doesn’t realise how middle of the road her films are
Jess Search: Get the fucking list out!

After a brief break we made our way to the BritDoc Bar to see AJ Schnack and Debra Zimmerman’s A-Z Chatshow which was a lot of fun

The main discussion for Friday was about shorts and filmmakers having to do their own PR. AJ was very much against filmmakers touring with their films becoming standard practice as he felt that once one film was done he was very keen to get onto the next and would rather a distributor handled that aspect and got in touch when he was needed. Debra agreed saying it should be the filmmaker’s choice to tour with the film. There was a minor disagreement about the amount of women filmmakers in this year’s Cinema Eye nominations but they both agreed that often women producers are forgotten about when the director is male.

After this I ran over to the BBC dinner which was really nice, it was an absolute pleasure to get to talk to Chris Hedegus more and DA Pennebaker told me all about filming Monterey Pop with Albert Maysles, at which point I felt as though I was in documentary-geek heaven.

I woke up on the Saturday in a state of complete fear about the Frontline Club panel. Late the night before one of our panellists had had to drop out. Unfortunately putting on a panel that features war filmmakers means that often they have to quickly react to developing stories.

We had already lost one who was stuck up a mountain and this time we’d lost another to the big story in Equitorial New Guinea. Luckily Jules Williamson, who is an outstanding filmmaker, was at the festival and came on board at the last minute. I owe her a huge amount as her contribution actually gave the discussion far more depth as she came from the perspective of someone embarking on a project that had potential to be dangerous, rather than just past experience.

My summary of the panel is on my Frontline blog here.

The session went really well and we had a great Q&A. My stress levels instantly dropped and I really felt I could begin enjoying the festival. I had to persuade Jemma slightly that going to the tapeless filmmaking session would actually be interesting and it really was. All manufacturers were present and it was fascinating to hear about where they’re heading in the next few years and the possibilities within that.

We decided to head back to the BritDoc bar for the next A-Z and the stress of the day unleashed some sort of crazed desire to dance, which carried on until very early the next morning.  Luckily the next morning the bar was having sunday papers and bloody marys and, fortunately for me, they provided a virgin option. We then sheepishly attended a few remaining sessions, which included the amazing Leslie Woodhead talking about his history of making documentaries about Russia, before the very long drive home.

Overall the festival was manic but wonderful. There was a great atmosphere and the panels were fantastic. Huge thanks to the wonderful Doc/Fest team.

This year’s Sheffield Doc/Fest kicked off on Wednesday with the DFG’s DocDay, which is a great event for aspiring 16-19 year old filmmakers. I was asked to go along and mentor a group for the second half of the day. It was a really great session and the quality of their film ideas was incredibly high. We had to talk them through their pitch proposals and then select the best to be pitched to a panel. Our group settled on a really fun idea for a mockumentary but alas didn’t win.

After the 4 hour drive and the hectic afternoon of doc ideas bouncing everywhere we decided to have an early night in preparation for the full programme beginning the next day.

We woke up early, incredibly excited as we were heading off to interview Chris Hedegus and D.A. Pennebaker first thing. The interview went well and it was incredibly inspiring to hear them talk about their career and the ways in which they approach filmmaking. I decided to ask them towards the end the obvious question of whether there was anyone they wish they’d made a film about but hadn’t and I was given the unexpected, but superb, answer of Richard Nixon at Thanksgiving dinner. We filmed the interview and hopefully I should be able to get it up here soon.

The rest of the day saw a fantastic line-up of screenings and panels. The first we went to was Working Your Film, a session run by BritDoc’s Jess Search and joining her on the panel were Robert West, David Bond, and James Franklin. It was a really great session looking into how to approach the campaign/NGO side of documentaries and James Franklin’s masterclass in online marketing was particularly interesting. Afterwards Jess did a call for all organisations in the room that aim to support docs to stand up and I had a sudden out of character burst of bravery and talked about the different things we are trying to do at the Frontline Club. Whilst talking my nerves overcame me and I honestly have no idea what I said but I’m told it was good and lots of people came to talk about possible collaborations afterwards. We also got a shout out from Jess Search who said how much she loved the club which is a fantastic endorsement.

Our second panel of the day was Co-Producing with the Brits – Heaven or Hell? with Nick Fraser, Simon Dickson, Tom Koch, Hans Robert Eisenhauer and chaired by Films Transit’s Esther van Messel

Left to Right – Tom Koch, Hans Robert Eisenhauer, Esther van Messel, Nick Fraser and Simon Dickson

The session was a really in-depth look into the world of international co-production and the behind-the-scenes deals and negotiations that go on in the hope that films can find the funding to get made. There were a few disagreements about the difficulties involved in the way co-productions are now arranged but ultimately you were left feeling that these people truly would fight to find funding for films they believed in. There was an ever present cloud of doom hovering over the panel when the decline of available slots was mentioned but you did realise that there was a big battle going on to preserve the importance of documentary and the players involved in co-productions were at the forefront of it.

The rest of my day was spent in meetings with some really great filmmakers and also with people who had great ideas about projects they wanted the club to be involved with. We bowed out early and headed back to the hotel room but the rest of the festival made a beeline for the annual roller disco which also included AJ Schnack’s announcement of the 2010 Cinema Eye Nominees.

Tomorrow is possibly our businest day event-wise. I am going to try and take more photos and will hopefully get more time tomorrow to do another re-cap.

Aside from all of this I am covering the films at the festival for The Documentary Blog. Click the logo below to follow….

And if by any chance you’re reading this and you’re at the festival please excuse my shameless plug and make sure you check out the panel I’m producing on Saturday – Filmmaking on the Frontline: In association with the Frontline Club

Men of the City is the new feature documentary from Marc Isaacs’, a filmmaker with an incredible knack for managing to capture British life and people accurately. He filmed Men of the City over two years in the City of London, which for those who don’t know, is a square mile area within London itself and which is primarily the main business centre. The film focuses on four main characters, ranging from a high-end hedge fund manager to a street sweeper and we experience the crash through their journey and the effects it has on each of their lives. As is usual with Marc’s films no character is painted in either a sympathetic or negative light but merely presented as they are without judgement or assessment and again present is his ability to draw out the kind of on-camera admissions that most other filmmakers rarely eek out of their subjects.

Whether it was sheer luck or complete cunning to have started making a film in this area just before a major recession remains to be seen, but what it does mean is that Marc may have made the most insightful film we’ll see about the current economic situation and it’s effects.

Other recommended watching by Marc is The Lift, you can watch it in full at YouTube here and Second Run recently released a selection of his work available here

Men of the City will be shown as part of Storyville on BBC 4 on Saturday October 24th 2009 10.30pm

If you’re coming to Sheffield Doc/Fest you can see it’s showing at the following times:
Friday November 6th 17:05 Showroom 3
Saturday November 7th 12:15 Showroom 4

Francis Ford Coppola is an incredible filmmaker, he helped change the face of cinema and I have a huge amount of respect for him, however I was reminded of this quote from Hearts of Darkness recently.

This was Coppola’s prediction about the future of cinema and that cheap video cameras will allow just about anyone to make movies:

“To me the great hope is that now these little 8mm video recorders and stuff have come out, some… just people who normally wouldn’t make movies are going to be making them, and – you know – suddenly, one day, some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart – you know – and? make a beautiful film with her little father’s camera…corder – and for once the so-called professionalism about movies will be destroyed. Forever. And it will really become an art form.”

It irks me beyond belief. I may be being slightly over-sensitive, but why does he have to refer to the ‘unlikely filmmaker of the future’ as being fat?

Is it more of an achievement due to her being fat? Does the analogy work because it’s more unlikely that it would be a ‘fat girl’?

‘Fat Girl in Ohio’ is now used as term within filmmaking and there are production companies and blogs named as such.  I hope there is a future in which the idea of a ‘fat’ girl succeeding isn’t seen as more unlikely than her thinner counterpart, and more to the point, people realise that it’s unnecessary.

I’m really proud to be able to announce the Frontline Club’s Capturing Conflict Film Festival. The festival is something I have been working on for months and I really hope the lineup showcases a selection of the most important films about the risks journalists and filmmakers take in order to get their stories out.

The festival begins on the 7th September and the listings are below, for a more in-depth description of the films please visit the club’s main listings page here:

Tortured Truths – September 4, 7pm – book
Followed by a Q&A with Director and Producer Christine Garabedian

Russian Newspaper Murders – September 7, 7pm – book
Followed by a Q&A with Director Paul Jenkins

Death in Gaza – September 10, 7pm – book
Followed by a Q&A with Reporter Saira Shah

Unseen Gaza – September 14, 7pm – book
Followed by a Q&A with Jon Snow and Director Katherine Churcher

Somalia: Al-Qaeda’s New Haven – September 24, 7pm – book
Followed by a Q&A with Director James Brabazon

Cry Freetown – September 25, 7pm – book
Followed by a Q&A with Writer, Reporter and Cameraman Sorious Samura and Director Ron McCullagh

Mo & Me – September 28, 7pm – book
Followed by a Q&A with Salim Amin

I would be incredibly grateful if you could help us promote the film festival on your website or blog. Please use the code below to add the festival banner to your site.

I have spent the last few months seriously thinking about my current choices when it comes to my career. Having the career I want is incredibly important to me, not because I want huge success or to make vast sums of money, were that the case I have certainly picked the wrong profession. I want to make documentaries for a variety of reasons. Not only is it an industry and medium that fascinates and inspires me but I am intrigued by people, their stories and the variety of ways in which people live their life.

I believe that documentary, as with writing and photography, represents time documented for the future. I want to tell people’s stories and I want to make films that show aspects of our current time that I believe are important. However there is no set model for this career, I have studied the career paths of many filmmakers I admire, I have even been fortunate enough to ask a few and everyone has followed a different course.

There are several people I know very well, all of us starting our careers in the same company and all sharing the desire for the same end goal, to make films. We have all chosen different paths.

It is easy to obsess about time frames, why aren’t we filmmakers now? This is a question that has weighed on my mind for the last few months, should I be trying to achieve this now? Of course there are successful filmmakers in their twenties, but to be honest being one of them terrifies me. The more I have thought about it the more I realise that I want the process of becoming a filmmaker as much as I want to be one. I want to learn and make mistakes. I am in no hurry. The notion of not needing to achieve quickly initially made me think that I was giving up but I realise this is far from the case, I want to experience the process, and I am. I currently have two jobs within the industry and while they are not directly filmmaking they challenge and provoke me every day.

In a panel discussion on Friday, Havana Marking, the Director of Afghan Star, was asked by one of City University’s head lecturers what young graduates should do if they want to make films and change the world. Havana said that they need to learn, they need to get a job and learn how to be filmmakers. In addition to that they need to make films in their own time and then in ten years time they may get a commission to make their own film, maybe.

There were many young people in the audience when this was said and you could see the look of horror on their faces, the idea of having to wait ten years being too scary to comprehend. It is scary, it’s a long time and a huge gamble because it could never happen. I know that this is a career that is going to take time but I am enjoying each step I take and as much as I shouldn’t like sitting in front of my laptop on weekends clearing my inbox, watching screeners, and generally stressing about the amount of work I have, I am glad for the stress because it means that I am doing something I care about.

I found the image below today and it truly sums up how I feel about my life at the moment. The section in the middle should probably be bigger but it is a section I am really looking forward to travelling through.

© Indexed

We’ve now left Houston as Hurricane Ike is heading towards us. We’ve rented a motel room but everything’s full up as of tomorrow so hopefully we’ll be staying with some local people for the next few days.

It’s actually quite frightening, the confusion and uncertainty more than anything. The news is terrifying making you really feel as though you should evacuate whilst at the same time telling you not to leave. The reaction of the residents is very varied with many saying we should leave now and get further north and others saying it’ll be fine and just to go about our business.

We have no knowledge of hurricanes or even massive storms and that worries me. I am worried about driving anywhere during high winds and today we realised that Huntsville could lose power, which not only means potential boredom but no water and no air conditioning with very hot weather predicted.

We then went to Wal-Mart to rent a dvd and saw dozens of people clearing the shelves of food and water. We stocked up as best we could but we are left with an LED pen light, water and various crisps and nuts. Not the best preparation.

The hurricane has already disrupted our shoot and cost me a lot of money, lets hope that’s the only damage it does.

We picked up the hire car, which is an electric blue tonka toy/pimp mobile and set off.

After a great night’s sleep in our new Houston home we headed straight to Huntsville to get our bearings of the town, as it was Sunday there were very few people around and the town’s usual hubbub wasn’t there. However, it was a great way to drive around and show Kate the town. I found it incredibly surreal to be back there, a place I truly never thought I would return to.

The surreal feeling hasn’t faded and we are now facing day four. I was intending to blog every day but so far the days have blurred and so far I haven’t shot a single minute of footage or taken a single photo. We’ve spent time putting in ground work talking to people and re-finding people but I don’t know what has prevented me from filming.

In honesty I know that a large factor is that I am extremely exhausted and I think my body is limiting me. I haven’t really had any time off this year, a few days here and there but nothing substantial. I am used to working myself into the ground but the last few weeks have been particularly tiring and my body thinks it’s having a rest.

I am really enjoying being back in Houston and Huntsville and I can’t describe how wonderful it is to see everyone again, but I need to regain focus and not waste the opportunity. As is my nature I am playing down the situation and we have actually met some wonderful people that will really add to the film, one especially this morning but I don’t feel we have hit the ground running in the way that we did last time.

We have an interesting day tomorrow and I know we will film so perhaps a slower start will actually prove incredibly beneficial, I think it really will.

Now all we have left to concern ourselves with is the slight matter of Hurricane Ike to worry about.