Matt Radecki and Doug Blush will be the lead presenters at IDA's first Tech Day event on the evening of October 27 at the AFI Mark Goodson Screening Room in Los Angeles. For more information: documentary.org/tech-days Documentaries often take a very long time to complete—much longer than the typical narrative film. The recently released Finders Keepers, for instance, took seven years. Same for Hoop Dreams. It took two years just to edit the classic Grey Gardens. The sheer length of time required to make a documentary puts a premium on workflow. Get it right and you’ll wind up with a movie in
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To understand the technical genius of film editors, tune in to The Food Channel and take a look at the competition reality show Chopped. It seems entirely unrelated, but really, the parallels of this program to the methodologies of film editors are similar, if not uncanny. It’s a helpful analogy in explaining the technical mastery of these artists. First, Chopped takes several chefs, hands them a basket of very distinct and limited ingredients, and instructs them to prepare a meal using those items only. Some chefs are ill-prepared and caught off-guard. In a Darwinian sense, they’re eliminated
Before he made Cartel Land, director/cinematographer Matthew Heineman had never shot in a conflict zone. His work had focused mainly on US domestic issues in such films as Our Time and Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare. He’d been shooting in Arizona, documenting the self-appointed guardians of the US-Mexico border, and after four months, he began to hear about vigilantes in Michoacán, Mexico, fighting for their lives and for protection against a corrupt government and the drug cartels that have all but decimated modern Mexico. “I've never been in a place where bullets were
Cinematographers Joan Churchill, ASC ( Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer), Kirsten Johnson ( CitizenFour) and Buddy Squires, ASC ( The Central Park Five), share a collective set of core goals and values for filmmaking. Their job is to serve the director’s vision by getting at the center of the story the director wants to tell. They do this by establishing an empathetic, trusting relationship with the subject. Making technical choices on style, size or type of camera, camera lens and lighting based on the story are only part of the job. Churchill, Johnson and Squires approach these
For filmmakers, drone cameras are a tool with potential to shape the work—or even define it—with breathtaking footage from surprising physical locations. But drone operators face material and legal risks, and the learning curve to proficient operation is steep. Jay Ward Brown, a former public affairs programming producer at PBS, is an attorney with the Washington, DC law firm Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, LLP. His practice is devoted to media and entertainment clients, and he happens to own a drone. He explains that operating the machine is harder than it looks, and getting it right requires
Engaging with Reality: Documentary and Globalization By Ib Bondebjerg Intellect/Chicago University Press $28.50, 288 pps. ISBN: 978-1-78320-189-1 In his book Engaging with Reality: Documentary and Globalization, Ib Bondebjerg, professor of film and media studies at University of Copenhagen, offers us a fresh perspective on the role of documentary in society, the broader issues of globalization, and how these documentaries engage in global challenges. Bondebjerg’s inspiration for the book came from Christoffer Guldbrandsen’s 2006 documentary The Secret War, a critical investigation into the
Growing up in Broomfield, Colorado, I vaguely knew that the nearby nuclear weapons plant Rocky Flats existed. As a family, we sometimes worried about drinking contaminated water and would occasionally even glimpse a protest. But radiation is an abstract notion for kids. As someone says in the 1982 film Dark Circle, “You can’t see it, you can’t feel it.” Dark Circle, directed by Judy Irving, Christopher Beaver and Ruth Landy, is one of the most poignant films about the military industrial complex ever made. Sequences include interviews with a man who survived Nagasaki, footage of hideous
Dear IDA Community, Change can be hard. It can be terrifying, even paralyzing. It can also be exhilarating, inspiring and rejuvenating. After 28 years living in New York and 16 wonderful, often thrilling years at POV, I decided to welcome change, overcome the fear and embrace the inspiration. After just a few short weeks in Los Angeles and taking up my new role at IDA, I am already feeling the rejuvenating effects of change. In many ways, these first weeks have been similar to my work at POV. I’ve spent countless hours listening to filmmakers and the various tribes involved in our documentary
Dear Readers, Over the years, we haven’t committed as much editorial content to technical issues and information as we would like. So, in a step towards more consistency, we devote this issue, in part, to the nuts and bolts of the process of making a documentary, from cinematography to editing. And as we develop issues of the magazine in concert with the rest of the services that IDA is providing to you, the Fall edition jibes with IDA's first Tech Day event, on the evening of October 27 at the AFI Mark Goodson Screening Room in Los Angeles, during which editors Matt Radecki and Doug Blush
Eclipse 43: Agnès Varda in California Released by The Criterion Collection At the Cannes Film Festival this past May, the indomitable French filmmaker Agnès Varda was awarded an honorary Palme d’or—the first woman to earn such an honor. It was the most recent in a string of much deserved accolades going back over her long distinguished career, which began in 1954 with the release of her first film, La Pointe Courte, which established her as a stylistic precursor to the French New Wave. Today, at 87, she remains a dynamic contributor to the world of avant-garde film and art. Her work is not as