One of my favorite days during my time in grad school–and really of all time (in a thankfully long list of favorite days)–was the day my 30-minute documentary premiered at the IU Cinema. It was the culmination of almost a year of work, and the thing I was most proud of during my 2 year program.
It was made more awesome by the fact that as I walked up to the theater, there were a ton of supportive people waiting for me, and I kept saying to myself, “Oh, I know them!” as people continued to trickle in (forgetting that I had, in fact, sent tickets to most of those people and begged them to come). It was seriously the greatest feeling.
My crew is the cute one.
After the three docs from my class ended, all of the crews went on stage for a short Q&A session. One precocious young attendee asked, “Why do you like making movies?”
I have no idea what my answer was, or if I even answered (we took turns), but now–after some reflection–I can firmly say: I have no idea.
Movies are goddamn magical. Who doesn’t love getting swept up in the sounds and images of a great Western, or an epic period drama, or a sparkly vampire romance (kidding! kind of!)? Even more than I love escaping into a movie for a few hours, I love thinking about, knowing about–and above all being a part of–what goes on under the top hat to make that movie magic.
It takes a group of people (sometimes a HUGE GROUP) of extremely talented, very specialized people, coordinated over months, years, and sometimes countries to pull that bunny out (I’m sticking with this magic theme, deal with it.). There is some serious craftsmanship put into a movie, and usually (hopefully, in the best cases) some serious love and passion. It’s one industry totally insulated from our robot overlords–you can’t automate and take the human out of movie-making.
PRODUCING
And the more I learned about making movies as a kid, the more I knew it was what I wanted to do. I started making photo essays during sleepovers, usurping my friends’ camcorders, and directing all of our school projects. I convinced my dad that we toootally needed one of our own like, NOW. For my education. Which I did totally use for more school projects, but also for numerous music videos starring Beanie Babies and divers other now-embarrassing projects.
And while I always imagined myself growing up to work on huge feature films, or on the set of a popular scripted TV show, I never thought about nonfiction. Documentaries are boring, often heavy, depressing, and just so much. I didn’t want to waste my time watching that nonsense, much less waste exponentially more of my time making it. And then forcing others to watch it. WATCH IT. Watch my documentary film. You will be greatly saddened and exhausted by its gravitas and you with feel guilty for not doing anything about that thing I made a documentary about and not using words like gravitas more often.
Documentaries were a little bit like jazz to me: no one really liked them, and those who claimed they did were just pretentious snobs and absolutely the worst kind of people.
But, gradually, I came to appreciate documentaries for the tremendous amount of work that goes into them and for the incredible stories they tell. You know that saying, “Truth is greater than fiction”? I have so much respect for people who can find those fascinating stories that just couldn’t be made up.
My crew in the edit room
And the work. Oh the work. So much time spent researching, working with your subjects, asking the right questions, being there at the right time to catch that one thing that will make the whole movie (which usually means being there all the time always just in case). And then taking the mountain of footage you have, sifting through it and creating a cohesive, interesting story out of basically nothing? Major, serious, the utmost props, man. It’s an incredible feat and when it’s done right, I’ll wager there’s no fictional story that can top it.
Ermahgerd transcripts.
So now, yes, I like making documentaries and hope to continue to do so. I’d still like to make some narrative pieces too, if you’re asking. Please hire me. But I would be proud to make a career out of making documentaries that are entertaining while they secretly, sneakily teach you about something you didn’t know or make you think about something you hadn’t before. Ninja reflection and personal growth. You’ll never see it coming and then IT WILL BE TOO LATE.
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