A good list, but don’t be fooled. You may have to adjust your shooting to an entirely different situation. Suppose the mouse dies. Your camera can’t continue, and you can’t call for the “prop person” to bring another one. Your aim in shooting is to “cover” the entire situation, with appropriate and visually interesting material, not simply to follow the list of shots existing in the script. And, what’s more, you will find that the long list of shots in the script is often useless as a guide to the real situation. The producer-writer simply wasn’t there when things were going on. This is a “content script,” not a shooting script.
There are documentaries that are more similar to the narrative script and shooting that we’ve been discussing in other chapters: educational films, using actors; industrials; in-house promotional films. These often call for detailed scripts that are to be followed the same way that narrative scripts are followed. But, even there, you may find on location a scene or a shot that has to be filmed or videotaped even though its place in the script is not to be found. You would be wasting money if you did that in a normal film (it doesn’t follow the strip board or the budget), but you would be neglecting your job as a documentary director if you didn’t get those shots while shooting a documentary. In point of fact, some directors of dramas will take such “wild” shots during their films, with the gut instinct that they will “work” later. The difference in documentary work is that dozens of shots like that are called for, taken, and used, even in the most scripted of documentaries.
Which brings us back to the most hard-and-fast rule I know of in documentary shooting, one laughed about and bandied about, yet still true.
There are never enough cutaways.
This is true no matter how much material you have shot. I don’t know why, but it is almost universally a fact. A ratio of shot to used footage of 12:1, 20:1, 50:1? It doesn’t matter. You always come up short with the number or right kind of cutaways, because cutaways are the basic cutting matter of documentaries. They allow you to make transitions, to make points, to cut out vapid parts of interviews. So, shoot more than you can possibly use. Your editor will bless you for it.
EDITING
In chapter 10 we discussed the relationship between an editor and the director of a dramatic film. We hinted that in a documentary there was a large difference. This shows up in two distinct ways.
One There are large areas of a documentary where the footage that comes in may be inadequate to the task. This happens when you have been unable to shoot material to cover a scene because people have gone home, not shown up, been boring, been uncooperative, and so on. An editor, then, is required, to “find” footage to cover the sequence. Of course, it helps if a director has thought of this in advance and provided a variety of shots (from that daily “shot list” described previously). But the director may have not done that, or—and this often happens—the editor may simply feel that those shots don’t cover the problem. It then becomes a creative task on the editor’s part to find the shots, from elsewhere in the footage, to cover the narration. If the narration isn’t crucial, the editor may suggest abandoning it. If, on the other hand, the editor and director don’t like the footage that’s available and the narration is truly important, another alternative may be to go to a “stock footage house” and purchase footage to cover. Editors can be very adept at doing this and can match stock film to the footage shot by the director.
Two Because the shape of a documentary often changes dramatically between the first and the last days of the shoot, what is actually required by a film editor in a documentary is a rewriting of the script. Usually this will be done by the producer, but the editor may be the first person to call attention to the shapelessness of the film, or may find the key to the new script that no one else could find. For this reason, it is as important here to leave the editor alone with that mass of film as it is in narrative filmmaking—often, more important. Let him or her find the problems and then suggest a variety of solutions. In actual fact, it is difficult for a director to participate in the editing of a documentary, since the producer must take over to see that the film or videotape suits the script needs, and since the editor is often a stand-in for the director at that point, suggesting the kinds of creative additions that the director suggested in the field during shooting.
As a producer-director, however, you will be there, and you must bring the same kind of flexibility to this edit as to all others.
There’s a lot more to be said about documentaries for which there isn’t room in this book. If they are your area of interest or you want to learn more about them, many good books on documentaries are available (see the Selected Bibliography).
13
Getting There
The scene: A large office in a Manhattan building. The cast: A public television executive producer and a young woman named Marsha applying for a job.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Your resume looks fantastic, Marsha, but, frankly, I couldn’t take the chance of having you direct something as big as this. You haven’t directed before.
MARSHA
Look at the rest of my experience: I’ve produced two plays, been executive producer of my own film . . . and I’ve been an actress.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
That’s an awful lot for someone as young as you.
MARSHA
What am I supposed to do? How can I get a job as a director without having had one already—I mean, you don’t expect me to have directed five films before you hire me to direct my first one.
. . . (The executive producer’s eyes start to glaze over. He’s heard this before.) I’ve got all the experience I thought I needed. Come on! I’m good. I know what I’m doing. I’ll do it for less than scale . . .
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
I’ll think about it, talk to my staff. Your resume looks awfully good . . . .
SLOW FADE TO BLACK
IS THERE A CATCH-22?
To some extent, there is. You can’t get a job as a director unless you’ve already directed. Well, that’s almost true. Many first-time directors are people who have been given a chance to direct or who have demanded a chance to direct because they have had a lot of experience in the industry (as actors, writers, producers, and so on), or because they have written a script that someone wants produced, and they just can’t be turned down. This is especially true of feature films, but also of television series. On the other hand, if you’ve had no experience and have never produced or directed even a student film, it’s unlikely that someone is going to take a chance on your ideas on a project that costs upward of a quarter of a million dollars. Yet, obviously, most people who want to be directors are young people, and many have that glimmer in their eye early on, before they’ve spent years accumulating experience. What do you do, how do you get an assignment directing?
Beginnings When I was young, at one of my early jobs, working as an associate producer on a children’s television series at MGM, I really wanted to be a director. So did a friend of mine, who was also working on such a series. We knew that our respective bosses weren’t going to give us the chance to direct, so we set out to do something about it.
A secretary in our office had sent us to see some rather extraordinary puppeteers, and we decided to make a film about their work. After numerous discussions, we saw the piece as a kind of circus into which many of their weird creations would fit. We selected a weekend on which all of us could do the shooting and borrowed someone’s storefront down at the beach, a location that had enough electric power and enough space for the crab dolly we intended to rent. But the dolly, camera, and lights cost as much money as we could afford to spend on the project, so a little ingenuity had to be used for film, developing, editing, and processing.
From the film laboratory owned by MGM we acquired—free of charge—the “short ends” (remnants) of 35mm film that had been turned in, unexposed, because they were too short to use for a professional shoot. With film in hand and a promi
se that the studio’s lab would process for us at cost, we set to work. A van was borrowed. The dolly was rented on Friday, because we knew full well that we could have it for a Saturday rental and return it on Monday morning without being charged for our Sunday shoot. Lights were rented and a basket of food packed. Friends and relatives were coerced into accompanying us to the beach.
My friend and I had been on the sets of movies for two years, but it wasn’t until we reached our set that I fully realized that only he had ever operated the equipment we would be using. (I had been prohibited by union rules from touching most of it.) We then discovered that the camera we had rented—a 35mm Arriflex—was too light to weigh down the heavy hydraulic lift on the crab dolly. We hadn’t thought about getting a dummy sound track because we knew that sound would be “laid in” later, so everything was recorded silent, something that gave us a problem later when editing (trying to remember which song which puppet sang at which time!). Nevertheless, the weekend was successful; by the end we had used up all the film that had been given to us, and we were excited by the circus film we had created. Next: editing.
We had learned, that winter, that all the editing rooms at the studio were left open at night. Getting on the lot was no problem (everyone knew us at the gates), so three nights a week we came back after dinner and started editing, using different moviolas and rewinds each time, so that no one editor would begin to notice his equipment had been used. I was a novice at editing, too, so I would watch my friend, begin to learn things from him, and slowly acquire some of the procedures. (I also acquired a healthy respect for the apprentices and assistant editors I had seen splicing and cutting away.) My slowness, however, gave me a chance to remain slightly objective about my partner’s work, and I soon began to see that the film lacked one important element: a story. We plowed on, beginning to realize that what we had might be amusing, but by itself was only a “short,” if that. (In the 1950s, movie theaters still played short subjects with feature films.)
The film needed music. We recorded off our own records onto quarter-inch tape, then rerecorded onto wider magnetic track at the studio, again gratis. The music helped, but now the film needed voices. We dubbed in our own, speeding them up to match the puppets’ movement. With a burst of energy, we ended the film with little patches of material from earlier scenes, a kind of “Russian montage.”
Sneaking into a mix session after one of our employer’s television episodes had finished, we mixed the five tracks down to one and sent the film off to the lab for a cheap answer print. The mixers told us they loved the film, but we had begun to have sinking feelings about it. “Maybe we’re too close,” we told ourselves, with false optimism.
Now that it was finished, what should we do with it? We had put ourselves out on a limb by not telling our bosses about the film, correctly assuming that they might resent our spending creative energy on our own work, or that they might think that using studio equipment and manpower for free endangered their position at the studio. So we had no choice at this point but to try to sell the film at other studios. We got appointments, but it became clear that we wouldn’t make a sell. Depression set in. Finally, we showed it to the head of MGM, asking him not to tell our employers. He promised not to and said he found the film quite amusing. The next day, our employers returned from a selling trip to New York City. They had lunch with the head of the studio, who told them about our film. I have no idea how it happened, but they seem to have gotten the wrong impression and thought we had actually tried to go behind their backs to sell the film; the next day we were both fired.
Lessons Was all that necessary? Yes, and no. It’s necessary to get your feet wet. It’s not necessary to be foolhardy—though it is probably a good idea to be a little reckless, a little bold, a little tougher than you think you are (or ought to be) because it’s a tough, reckless, bold, often thoughtless industry you’re trying to break into. And you’re even trying to get one of the glamour jobs in that tough, bold, reckless industry. Are there any rules? I think there are.
One Make a film or videotape. Any film. Any videotape. The introduction of inexpensive digital cameras and home-editing gear has made that so easy now that you can do it in your spare time or while studying film. It doesn’t matter: just get your creative energy out on tape and—if you’re as good as you think you are—it’ll show. Something is needed before a raw, untried person is going to be given a job in the industry, certainly as a director!
Two Get into an allied field. Direct plays. Produce plays. Study acting. Find your way into CBS as a typist (I did) or as a page or as an assistant to the producer. Work in cable television. Write scripts and submit them. In fact, writing is one of the most successful ways to become a director. A script is often the item that gets you into someone’s office, though a thousand would-be scriptwriters are also asking the question, “How do I get someone to look at my script?”
Three Use your contacts. Everyone knows someone who knows someone who may know someone who was or is or will be in a field allied to the field you want to get into. You must use them, not callously, but adroitly and politely, to help you get interviews and jobs. If you’re as brilliant and as potentially talented as you think, you’ll get a job and move up in it, and you’ll be noticed or make yourself noticed. But if you don’t get that first job—in some area—you won’t be able to persuade people to let you direct.
Are there any surefire tricks? I don’t know. Everything’s been tried once, and probably succeeded—at least once. Hard work and talent help, but not always. Luck, certainly. Oh, yes, there is a fourth rule:
Know what you’re doing!
Unions and Nonunions Marsha, in the little scenario above, had done a lot of work in the world of drama, but she probably wasn’t a member of the Directors Guild of America. If the executive producer had wanted to get out of hiring her easily; he might have said, “You’re not a member of the DGA.” What are the rules about union membership? Does everyone have to belong? How do you get in?
It is perfectly possible to do many things in the film and television industry without ever joining a union. For instance, even in the networks, producers and associate producers aren’t unionized. In much of the cable industry, in some “independent filmmaking” (feature films not made by the “majors,” low-budget television production, and so forth), in educational, industrial, closed-circuit, university filmmaking, or television work, many, if not most, positions are nonunion. That includes the director, but also most of the other jobs, such as grip, D.P., electrician, art director, and so on. I know many competent and active directors who have never joined the DGA.
There are, on the other hand, many films that are totally union. That means for everyone from the secretary to the director. There are different unions. The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) covers most of the craftspeople, such as grips, camera people, and electricians, as does a rival union, the National Association of Broadcast Engineers and Technicians (NABET). There are unions for makeup people and costumers, unions for drivers (the Teamsters), and so on. The DGA covers assistant directors, production managers, and directors in film, and directors, associate directors, and floor managers in television.
If you’re going to go to work as a director for a public television station, it’s unlikely, except in some of the big cities (New York, Washington, Los Angeles), that you will have to join the DGA. That’s not true of many commercial stations, even small ones, but the sure way to find out is to ask. It’s certainly not true of the networks, or of the major motion picture companies. There, all directors are union members.
But how do you join the DGA? It’s complicated, and you really have to ask for the local rules but, in general, it goes like this.
If you are asked to direct, even if you haven’t directed before, you will be permitted to join if you have the initiation fee of several thousand dollars, and you pay quarterly dues ($50 in 2001). If you want to join as an assistant director, the initiati
on fee is less, but you have to show that you are competent in certain areas, (that is, you have to take a test). In all cases, a few members of the DGA have to sign your application. (Someone has to say you’re “wanted” by the profession!) So, if Marsha is wanted by the big-city PBS station, she can direct if she joins the DGA. And she can join just by paying the right fees. But if someone hasn’t said they want her, then she can’t get in, even if she wants to pay the fees, unless she has a terrific directing background—that’s the catch-22 part.
To make matters more complicated, it’s likely that the DGA will ask the E.P. why he wants to hire someone who isn’t already a member since there are already some very competent people who can direct and are members.
Some E.P.s use the fact that people aren’t members of the DGA as an excuse, as a way to “prove” they aren’t any good as directors. The only way around that is to show them a film or videotape that you’ve produced or directed in some situation where you didn’t have to be a member of the DGA.
By the way, is being a member of the DGA proof that you’re a good director? Not necessarily. It’s proof that you’ve done some professional work, and it’s certainly proof that you’ve been well compensated for your work, for one thing the DGA does is to look after its members in terms of pay and fringe benefits. But there are members of the DGA who are not directors (they’re production managers, associate or assistant directors, floor managers, and so on) and there are director members who have done a limited amount of directing, and, of course, there are hack directors who have done a lot of directing but aren’t very good. And why not? It’s like any other artistic field.
Will it help a budding director to join the DGA as an assistant director or production manager? Probably not. Those jobs, as I’ve suggested previously, are more logistical adjuncts to the producer than true assistants to the director. They don’t deal with script content, “vision,” editing, or any of the other things directors need to train in. It probably won’t even help you to join the DGA for the prestige, if you could get in and had the initiation fee, unless you have a film to show. So, follow the rules I suggested in the first part of this chapter. Keep your eye open for jobs such as continuity person, film editor, or writer, that will get you closer to your goal, though any entry-level job such as intern, production assistant, or assistant producer may give you the foothold you need.
Directing for Film and Television Page 22