"If this piece of film dies, a human thought dies with it. If I can do something to preserve that thought, isn't it worth doing?" That observation was made by Kemp Niver, a former law enforcement officer and head of security for a Hollywood studio. Niver was explaining what motivated him to switch career paths and dedicate himself to the restoration and preservation of some 3,000 black-and-white films produced between 1894 and 1912. He was recognized with an Academy Award for technical achievement in 1954. For most of the history of the motion picture and television industries, the efficacy of
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In April 2002, I was videotaping an animal rights protest in Beverly Hills, California, for an independent documentary I am producing titled Chattel. During the demonstration, the Beverly Hills Police showed up. I, along with the protestors and another filmmaker, was detained, put in a line up and photographed. The officers then confiscated my DV camera and videotape. When everything was finally returned to me several days later, the camera and part of the videotape had been damaged. During the time I was detained, the police were intimidating––and convincing––telling me I could not touch my
Dear IDA Members, Writing for the media arts industry can be a noble and ennobling profession, and can be a lucrative one as well. But when writing nonfiction—documentaries, strands, limited series and, yes, reality TV—pay is too often minimal, and benefits are too often even less. On-screen credit for a job well done is something that the Documentary Credits Coalition has successfully fought for over the past 15 months. The top ten nonfiction cable networks made close to $2 billion in profits in 2002 from both advertising and subscriber fees. We want the nonfiction writer to have financial
Dear Readers: Music fuels a documentary—it punctuates and primes the story, it underscores the emotional current, it dramatizes, it manipulates time. In this issue, we look at two of the most vital elements when it comes to music for documentaries: choosing and working with a composer, from veteran documentary composer Miriam Cutler; and clearances and rights, in a primer offered by David Powell, whose company, The Music Bridge, is all about that very subject. We also look at three music documentaries—DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus' Only the Strong Survive and Paul Justman and Allan Slutsky's
There are countless ways to use the camera and the editing room to get at the truth. But I like best the nonfiction movies that open up the possibilities—movies that provoke the audience to find their own feelings on the subject. Take Errol Morris' The Thin Blue Line. Possibilities start as soon as the "Blue" in the title card is red. The opening credits name a production designer. You can't have that in a documentary! Then, a few minutes into a sincere interview with accused killer Randall Adams, there's a cut to a staged shot of a look-alike gun. Wait—that's not even the gun! Then there's a
Berga: Soldiers of Another War is an elegy in two senses. The personal "what might have been" aspect of the story haunted and motivated Charles Guggenheim to make the documentary about his US Army unit, the 106th Division in World War II. "I can remember their faces just like yesterday," he says in his narration of the film. "They went overseas and I didn't, and some of them didn't come back. I've been thinking about it for 50 years, wondering why it didn't happen to me. That's why I had to tell this story." Ironically, what was in his system while he was getting something out of his system
Like many documentarians, Malcolm Leo got his start at David L. Wolper Productions along with Mel Stuart, Jack Haley Jr., William Friedkin, David Seltzer and Walon Green. Born in New York and educated at North Hollywood High School and University of California, Santa Barbara, he grew up in the twin surf and music cultures that shaped the sensibilities of American youth throughout the 1960s. His work reflects that period which–– though some mislabel it nostalgia––was actually a revolutionary period of experimentation, growth and social drama. Leo's films create a mood as well as a history of
Filmmakers have often told me that they find the scoring process to be one of the most daunting aspects of making movies. Even the most seasoned admit everything from discomfort to panic when they try to communicate their ideas for music in their film. In the documentary world, these feelings can be even more pronounced, the fear being that musical accompaniment to real-life footage can be inappropriate or manipulative. But one need only look at such stellar examples as Aaron Copland's score for The River to realize how much the right music can increase the power of a documentary. Thorough
Suppose one of those Oscar nominees that went on stage in solidarity with Michael Moore this year didn't really think that President Bush was a "fictitious president," as Moore stated. Yet not to join Moore up there meant not just being out of the glitter but saying, as a member of our small world of documentaries, that your beliefs might be––forbid the thought––different from Michael Moore's. Documentaries are certainly comprised of truth, not repackaged fiction, and that truth goes in waves from politically correct to incorrect. The trend has been to the Left usually, from Pare Lorentz's The
CameraPlanet, the New York City-based producer and distributor, and Discovery Communications, Inc., the cable giant located in Silver Springs, Maryland, announced a new joint venture in a press teleconference in March that would encourage theatrical exhibition of a slate of documentaries prior to their being showcased on Discovery Channel. The partnership, tentatively entitled "Discovery Docs," will involve projects that would be distributed theatrically first through CameraPlanet. Discovery and CameraPlanet will work with some of most prominent filmmakers in the documentary field, including