More Heads Talk About Kubrick

Veteran film composer Gerald Fried talks about scoring all of the early Stanley Kubrick pictures from "Day of the Fight" to "The Killing," and "Paths of Glory." He met Kubrick as a kid over a baseball game in the Bronx. Did the other players resist playing with Kubrick because of Asperger? Fried also scored many episodes of "The Man From UNCLE." Another sideways Napoleon connection.

A Napoleon script's hiding place

This article from eight years ago, Mar 12, 2000, describes the storage facility where a copy of a draft of Kubrick's Napoleon script was found.

Kansas salt mine warehouse preserves nation's treasures
By ROXANA HEGEMAN | Associated Press Writer

HUTCHINSON -- The original film negative for "The Wizard of Oz." A collection of New York newspapers dating to the assassination of President Lincoln. Secret U.S. government documents. Thousands of medical research biopsies encased in wax. All these -- and so much more -- are buried 645 feet beneath the Kansas prairie in a vast underground salt mine warehouse teeming with treasures and oddities from across the nation. "It's a kind of Noah's Ark -- without the animals," says Lee Spence, president of Underground Vaults & Storage, Inc.

The Hutchinson company has built a thriving business in the mined-out sections of the salt mine, where temperature and humidity stay at near ideal conditions for preserving paper and film brought here from around the world. The caverns, accessible only by a rumbling mine elevator, are safely beyond the reach of tornadoes, floods and earthquakes. These salt deposits -- formed 230 million years ago as the inland sea that once covered Kansas evaporated -- are now being wired with the latest technology to give companies around the world high-speed data access to records stashed within a prehistoric formation underneath Kansas wheat fields.

Wearing a hardhat and carting his requisite canister of oxygen, Spence steps onto the mine elevator -- actually, more of a hoist with an aboveground operator to run it -- for the minute-long ride. He flips off his flashlight for a few seconds, and blackness engulfs the lurching contraption. "See how black it can get," he says. It is clear he enjoys showing off his realm to visitors. The flashlight back on, he aims the beam at a mass of wires running alongside the hoist. These link the world below to civilization above. This is how they run the lines down to link the computers, he explains. The elevator slows to a stop at the bottom, the equivalent of 60 stories below ground. The salt bed -- discovered in 1889 while drilling for oil -- is 100 miles long by 40 miles wide, and 325 feet thick. A miner greets him. "How's the weather up there?" It is common question for those who spend their waking hours deep in the bowels of the earth. The temperature here stays at around 65 degrees Fahrenheit, and the humidity is between 40 and 45 percent year round.

For the next 30 minutes, it is the warehouse's turn to use the elevator, and the mine's conveyor belt and rock crushing equipment are mostly quiet now as he passes them. Spence quickly reaches a doorway below the sign for Underground Vaults and steps inside. The low salt ceiling and antique mining equipment greet visitors for a few feet, before opening up to 10-foot ceilings and a friendly receptionist answering the phones. For a moment, you could almost forget you were sandwiched inside a salt formation. The rough rock walls and ceilings are painted white to keep the salt dust down. The cement floors are level. There is a lunchroom with a refrigerator and microwave for workers. And bathrooms. The storage vaults use only a few of the caverns left behind from salt mining activities. The company has available 800 acres of mined-out space, but so far has used just 12 acres of it. Another 26 acres are under development now, Spence said.

Meanwhile, The Hutchinson Salt Co. continues its mining operations just 1 1/2 miles away in the same formation, with warehouse employees sharing the mine elevator and much of the infrastructure that brings fresh air, electricity and phones deep underground. Among the biggest customers are California movie companies, who find the Kansas salt mines ideal for storing original film negatives along with all the outtakes from their productions. Spence stops at one of the salt bays and points out a few titles: "Journey to the Center of the Earth," "Gone With The Wind," "Ben Hur," and "Star Wars." All the Mash television episodes are stored down here, as are old silent movies.

In the past two months alone, 20th Century Fox has sent 22 truckloads of film here. "It is so cheap to store down here -- a lot cheaper than California," he says. It costs companies $3 a square foot to store their records here. That compares to between $20 and $30 a square foot for storage in places like California, where companies have to build a building, run air conditioning and heating and provide security systems. None of those costs are incurred in the salt mines, where temperatures are naturally constant and access is limited to the one operator-controlled mine elevator, he says.

That makes it a favorite resting place for oil and gas companies to stash their seismic data and leases. Insurance companies keep their original policies here. Government offices store property records and parking tickets, among a slew of other documents. Architects put their blueprints here. A California company stores its old stock certificates in old wooden fruit crates. Hospitals and doctors keep old medical patient files here. Accountants store tax records. Even the federal government has a locked salt bay down here for its secret paperwork. And the salt warehouse also caters on a limited basis to individuals. There are a couple of old wedding dresses down here that have been passed down from generation to generation. Coin collections are stored here, someone even left a collection of newspapers dating to the early 1800s.

It can cost as little as $130 annually for a bit of storage space down here. About 65 warehouse employees work underground -- pulling record requests from companies, computerizing records for others and bringing more boxes down. The company runs two below ground shifts daily. Among those employees is Shirley Byard, who has worked 14 years underground. Her job is to keep the complex presentable and the kitchen done up, as she puts it. "We are like family here," she says. "If we get an oddball (employee) down here, they don't last." It takes some getting used to working below ground. Except for an emergency, the elevator out only runs at specified times each day. And after a day's work you can taste the salt on your skin.

The warehouse firm, which has a 99-year renewable lease with the salt mine, has been stashing things here since 1959. The idea to store archives underground was sparked by one of the company's directors who served in World War II, Spence says. He remembered that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had stored lots of items in an underground shelter as a way to preserve them. The privately held company has $8 million in gross revenues and 1,500 customers, Spence says. It also has an underground complex in Kansas City, Mo., which is accessible by truck and runs aboveground records centers in Topeka and Wichita.

The warehouse company slogan is "For Security. Forever." It's nice to know that the script is as safe against catastrophe as Dr. Strangelove was in his mineshaft, at least until the lease runs out on the storage facility.

Kubrick's Daughter Documents the Making of The Shining

Vivian Kubrick was seventeen years old when her father was making "The Shining." I have posted below her the documentary she shot behind the scenes during the production of the movie, along with her commentary track.

Watch closely for the moments Stanley Kubrick is directing Shelley Duvall during the world record for the most takes for one movie scene. Is this further evidence that Kubrick suffered from Asperger?

Directors List Favorite Kubrick Films

TimeOut Magazine in London recently asked twelve directors to talk about the Stanley Kubrick film they admired most. Their replies are listed below.

Mike Kaplan (director of ‘Never Apologise: A Personal Visit with Lindsay Anderson’ and Kubrick’s head of marketing from 1968-1973) on ‘Killer’s Kiss’ (1955)(Moody B-thriller set in the back alleys, nightclubs and warehouses of 1950s New York): ‘I love the tactile feel of New York in the movie. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but movies that leave an impression on me often do so through their feel and sense of place, and this one certainly did. The scene I remember best is where Irene Kane and Frank Silvera walk through Times Square and eventually come down that long flight of stairs: the look and feel are just perfect. One of the hallmarks of Stanley’s films is that they all have a visceral impact: even back in 1955 it was there. You also have the constant police sirens in the background, which is really the sound of New York. There’s no doubt that after “Fear and Desire”, which Stanley wouldn’t let people see, “Killer’s Kiss” is the film that established his reputation and set his career rolling.

Neil Hunter (‘Lawless Heart’ and ‘Sparkle’) on ‘The Killing’ (1956)(Sterling Hayden leads a gang of petty criminals to rob a racetrack): ‘I think of “The Killing” as the film where Kubrick hit his stride. It has that fascination with constructing a perfect mechanism, in this case a racecourse heist, that he returned to later in “2001” and “Dr Strangelove”. He gives us that principle of order, the perfect crime committed by professionals, then throws in the opposite: chaos, anarchy – which is to say, humanity – embodied by the girlfriend of one of the gang, the racecourse teller. It doesn’t have the grand philosophy he would later lay claim to, though it does have the pessimism. It also doesn’t have the stylistic boldness and formal clarity of his later work: it’s looser. Yet it may be his most purely enjoyable film. It’s a true genre film, and a very powerful one, rather than an attempt to transcend genre or create a new form. His later films would employ a startling range of different sounds, and use music very deliberately and unpredictably. Here, it’s used in a more conventional way – the jazz, for example, telegraphing the unreliability of the teller’s girlfriend (as if her performance wasn’t doing the job!). But above all there’s the excitement of a great filmmaker saying, “Look what can be done. Look how easy it is.” There’s a speed and ruthlessness to the filmmaking which echoes the heist, the killing itself.’

Nick Broomfield (‘Kurt and Courtney’, ‘Battle for Haditha’) on ‘Paths of Glory’ (1957)(Bleak moral drama set during World War I): ‘This harrowingly describes an incident when three innocent men are executed. We are introduced to a bare-chested Kirk Douglas and are reminded of his later appearance in Kubrick’s “Spartacus”. Douglas stars in the film as a colonel seeking justice for his men. The film shows how the army chain of command promotes ruthless ambition and corruption of the worst kind at the expense of everything else, including military efficiency. It is shot in long takes either with the actors moving around the frame or in long tracking shots. This is particularly effective when we see Douglas walking along the trenches past his men. It is a contrast to the fast-cutting action sequences of contemporary cinema. It reminds one that the army – rather like the free market economy and privatised industry of the day – is a system which serves the rich and powerful, and everyone else is just cannon fodder to be sacrificed.’

Andrew Kötting (‘Gallivant’, ‘This Filthy Earth’) on ‘Spartacus’ (1960)(Critical and commercial smash about a slave revolt in Ancient Rome): ‘The last time I saw it was as a kid. The main thing I remember about the film is what a fantastic physique Kirk Douglas had. There’s that wonderful frisson between him and Tony Curtis. The gay subtext of the film is something that, even at an early age, I was aware of and, in a strange way, moved by. I always thought if Kirk had just had a really good session with Tony the whole thing would have been resolved a lot easier, don’t you think? Slavery and all that. It’s kind of sad that my only memories of the film are crass ones. There’s the “I am Spartacus” thing too, it’s become something of a gag now: I used to say it all the time when I was in trouble. If I’d done something wrong I’d always put my hand up and confess to it as Spartacus. And people would often join me.’

Peter Whitehead (‘Charlie is My Darling’, ‘The Fall’) on ‘Lolita’ (1962)(James Mason is nymphet-obsessed Humbert in Kubrick’s adaptation of Nabokov’s novel): ‘I was pretty angry when I first saw this in 1962 – and I’ve seen it since and my opinion hasn’t changed. Kubrick’s version of Nabokov’s 1955 novel is not at all satisfactory. It’s very obviously watered down, tame and was merely exploiting or building on the reputation of the novel. Kubrick set himself an impossible task because the novel is so literary and interior and dark. We were in forbidden territory with the book – and Kubrick’s film is not forbidden on any level. The novel was very psychologically exact about certain aspects of the relationship between old age and teenagehood. The film was trying to be provocative – but it didn’t go far enough. The girl (Sue Lyon) was obviously far too old. It was a rape of the novel. Perhaps Kubrick was just too young and nobody would have let him make it another way anyway. John Huston would have been perfect as a director. The later version of “Lolita” [Adrian Lyne’s 1997 film with Jeremy Irons] was much better. At least the girl was the right age.’

Mike Nichols (‘The Graduate’, ‘Charle Wilson’s War’) on ‘Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb’ (1964) (Kubrick’s third film about war – this time, the Cold War – is a masterpiece of black humour): ‘He was a friend and I loved and revered him. I think that my favourite moment is Peter Bull as the Soviet ambassador and the fight with Peter Sellers as Dr Strangelove. It was that improvised, half-assed, completely brilliant aspect of Stanley that I loved the most. Then, later, he became the opposite: he had to have total control over everything, doing 500 takes just to get it right. It was another kind of genius, but it would never have permitted those moments of improvised mastery that were in “Strangelove”. In the end, I think he began to have trouble, because if you can’t leave home, you lose track of reality, and I think that happened to him. Still, he made great movies and he was a completely gifted director. If you look at “2001: A Space Odyssey”, you suddenly realise: My God, there’s nobody in this movie! There are those two guys who you can’t quite tell apart as they have no real characteristics, and the rest is just… Well, what is it?!’



Shekhar Kapur (‘Elizabeth’) on ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1968)(Sci-fi epic loved by stoners and intellectuals alike): ‘Forty years on and we are still trying to comprehend its visual and poetic philosophy – what more can you ask from a film? Just for sheer achievement in the art and technology of cinema, “2001” remains a defining movie for me. It is certainly the film that made me fall in love with cinema and want to become a director. Visually, it was one of the most compelling of its time, setting standards in visual effects that have yet to be bettered. Most people now associate “The Blue Danube” waltz with that amazing cut from the broken bone defying gravity as it sails up in slow motion to the space ship floating in space: a cut that not only leaves the audience to imagine the entire history of human development, but also is one of the best uses of classical music in film that I have ever seen. It still takes my breath away.’

Nicolas Roeg (‘Performance’, ‘Don’t Look Now’) on ‘A Clockwork Orange’ (1971) (Colourful study of psychological conditioning with rape, violence and Beethoven): ‘I never met Kubrick. We came very close at one point, and then drifted away again. It was around the time of “A Clockwork Orange”. Si Litvinoff owned the rights to the book and we had planned to do it together. I’d been working on a treatment and I’d even met with Anthony Burgess. We talked about it and decided to take a completely lateral look at the piece. I received a call from Si who said the producer and studio executive John Calley had phoned him from the US and told him he was coming to England to see Stanley. So I said, “Stanley who?” and he said “Stanley Kubrick”. He knew we owned the rights to the book and d he was interested in getting them for Stanley. ‘Kubrick, obviously, wanted total control, and the studio finally did a deal with him. I must say I did like his attitude towards film and the fact that he was an artist and complete unto himself. He wasn’t under corporate censorship, and he was never trying to make a film that you’d be able to pigeonhole in any particular genre. I think that was the case with all his films. One day, some time later, after they’d done the deal, Si said that he’d offered the book to Stanley when he first picked up the rights. Kubrick later said to him, “Oh yeah, I remember you sent it to me but I didn’t read it. I didn’t like the cover!” ’

Stuart Cooper (‘Overlord’) on ‘Barry Lyndon’ (1975) (Lavish Thackeray adaptation often deemed Kubrick’s most underrated work): ‘My link with Kubrick is that we both shared the same director of photography, the great Johnnie Alcott. “Barry Lyndon” alone is probably enough to hang your hat on. I remember at the time there was some mild criticism saying it was a beautiful film, but perhaps lacking in substance. It was probably his softest picture, though without question one of the most exquisite movies ever made. Alcott brought an enormous amount to the film, which was reflected in his Oscar. Johnnie was the master of natural light. My recollection was that there was a very special zoom lens they used which was given to them by Nasa. It was what they used to get all those landscape shots that look like Renaissance paintings.’

Edgar Wright (‘Shaun of the Dead’, ‘Hot Fuzz’) ‘The Shining’ (1980)(Stephen King adaptation with Jack Nicholson in one of his most extrovert roles): ‘My most profound epiphany in cinema is the moment in “2001: A Space Odyssey” when the planets align with the monolith in some galactic equation. The sense of cosmic order floors me every time. But just as Kubrick inspires awe with his harmonic compositions, he can equally instil terror. The most chilling aspect of “The Shining” is the blunt symmetry of endless corridors and patterned carpets. A shot of an empty hall and a lone, red door disturbs you even before the blood starts to flow. ‘It is these graphic images that keep me coming back. I was underwhelmed when I first saw “The Shining”. Perhaps I wanted the detail and the closure of the novel. But its eccentricity and ambiguity gnawed at me and forced me to re-watch. Its shattering images haunt me to this day.’

Guillermo del Toro (‘Hellboy’, ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’) on ‘Full Metal Jacket’ (1987) (Critique of the Vietnam war, filmed in London): ‘I admire Kubrick greatly. He is often accused of being a prodigious technician and rigid intellectual, which people say makes his films very cold. I don’t agree. I think that "Barry Lyndon" or "A Clockwork Orange" are the most perfect marriages of personality and subject. But in fact, "Full Metal Jacket" is even more so. It looked at rigidity and brutality with an almost clinical eye. It is, for me, a singular film about the military, about war and its consequences. The famous scenes like the induction with R Lee Ermey where he renames the soldiers and reshapes them into sub-human maggots had a particular impact on me. Also the suicide scene with Vincent D’Onofrio in the bathroom. And the sniper set-piece at the end. Those are absolutely virtuoso pieces of filmmaking.’

Barbet Schroeder (‘Reversal of Fortune’, ‘Terror’s Advocate’) on ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ (1999) (Kubrick’s last film was an erotic psychodrama starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman): ‘It was a strange phenomenon with his movies: they were never completely understood when they were released. Then, once you let a few years pass, they are suddenly deemed masterpieces and no one really discusses them. It even happened with his last movie, “Eyes Wide Shut”. When it came out, people were floating. In my opinion they didn’t really “get it”. There is so much substance and so much craft, it’s visually quite staggering. The right amount of time hasn’t quite passed for it to be reconsidered. It always takes a few years. It’s very strange. The reason for this, I think, is that each of his films is so different, there’s no precedent for any of them. Every movie stands on its own. And that’s what I like.’

Interesting how envy does not seem to affect most of these directors in their assessment of Kubrick as much as admiration for his technique.

CGI Army for Hire

MASSIVE (Multiple Agent Simulation System in Virtual Environment) is a high-end computer animation and artificial intelligence software package used for generating crowd-related visual effects. Crowd scenes are a specialty for MASSIVE, as these TV commercials show.



MASSIVE was used by Peter Jackson to create the huge army battles for his Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Had this technology been around during the late 1960s Stanley Kubrick would have been all over it for his Napoleon project.

Old School Documentarian Interview

Snip from the 2006 edition of The Documentary Film Makers Handbook. The authors interviewed 111 industry professionals, among them Michael Apted. He echoes a common theme from the book: originality is the most important element to any good documentary. Or story, for that matter.

Q - What does the term "documentary" mean to you?

Michael - That's a very important question these days with the rise of reality TV. One of the hazards these days is that, reality is perceived by some people as documentary. If reality goes down the toilet as it surely will, as all things are cyclical, will documentaries go down the toilet with them? So it's nearly impossible to define what a documentary is. But I suppose I'd call it the observation of real life in a non-interventional way. It's important to see the difference with reality, which is at its heart, contrived. Some of it is very successful and illuminating, but it's contrived to put people into situations and see what they do. A documentary has them in a natural setting.

Q - What advice would you give a documentary filmmaker about choosing their subject matter?

Michael - The great thing about documentaries is that it's totally democratized. At very little cost you can go out and shoot, cut and finish a documentary. Before, it was a whole huge investment deal. That's the good news and the bad news. There are a lot of terrible films made because they don't think it through. "Let's make a film about my grandmother, " and off they go and do it. I think the important thing is not the choice of subject - it's your approach to it. Before you approach your documentary, you should figure out a very elementary structure to see what and where you want to go with the idea. The excitement of a documentary is that it's a real thing happening in front of you - you aren't working with a script in a way one does in fiction. But my advice would be to plot out a story so that it does have some purpose to it. Just don't go out there and shoot a ton of stuff on a subject and then hope you or someone else can come in and make sense of it. While it's much easier to make a documentary, it's much harder to get them seen. So if you want that to happen, you have to be doubly thoughtful about what it is.

Q - What advice would you give to new documentary filmmakers on the topic of interviewing subjects?

Michael - I've found that the best way to interview people is not to be very well prepared. You know what the subject is and you know what is going on, but to run through a list of questions is usually deadly. The only way to interview someone is to have a conversation with them and listen to what they say. This is best if you want something emotional and intimate. If you want the facts and you need it done crisply and cleanly, then of course, go in as crisp as you can. For all interviews, don't say very much. There's nothing worse than an interviewer who has diarrhea of the mouth. Keep the questions short and don't be afraid of silence. Sometimes silence is your best weapon. People will want to fill a silence and when they do, maybe they will come up with something for you. And don't go through the interview with them beforehand, as you only get it fresh and interesting once. If you blow that by driving in a car or having a cup of coffee with them while planning it out, you're dead. You'll wish that you'd been filming that time in the car or at coffee because you will never be able to capture that moment again.

Q - Is it difficult to be objective with subjects that you've been following for a long time?

Michael -You can't be objective. The word objective is bizarre. It means going in and being cold and formal with an interview in a documentary. That's not the way to do it at all. You have to build trust with the person. They have to know they're safe with you. You have to be emotionally involved. You need to be subjective. That's not to say you do whatever they want to do or agree with whatever they say. My point again is that you have to know what you are after. You have to know what your end result is even if it is a circuitous route to getting to it. If objective means distant and cold - forget it. If objective means being even-handed and fair minded, that's another thing and sometimes even that is irrelevant. If you are making a very passionate film about what you think is an injustice then you don't want to be even handed. But you have to be honest at least with the people you deal with. Then the way you approach them depends on what you are doing. If you want anything emotional or revealing then you have to be very much at one with your subject so you will give them the confidence to be open with you.

Q - Are there any differences when you interview children?

Michael - I find the best thing with children is not to patronize them. Treat them like adults. Once you start putting on funny voices or talking down to them, kids resent that.

Q - What advice would you give to new filmmakers on ethics?

Michael - It's a private matter. I don't think you can legislate for it. You have to be honorable. You have to tell people what you're going to do and do it. Don't cross any line to them. Don't lie to them. Don't deceive them. You might think I'm going to have to do something because it's very important that I get some statement out here and t may have to misrepresent it. Maybe you do, but it's a question of your personal ethics. I love arguing with people that documentary is a pure form whereas narrative films are contrived. But every edit you make is a judgment. Making a documentary film is full of judgment calls and therefore full of ethical calls as well. And I don't think doing something like paying people compromises things necessarily. I paid people on the Up films because it's a business and someone is trying to make money out of it and therefore why shouldn't they. If people are only doing it for money or they're being paid a lot to say something then there may be a strong ethical breach. Then you're buying information. But if you're paying people for their time or the exposure they have to deal with, there's a difference between those two things.

Q - To what extent should a filmmaker be thinking about their audience?

Michael -Always. We are in the business of entertainment. And too many documentaries show no thought of some end result. You have to make it for people. You are trying to communicate something. You don't patronize the audience. You don't confuse the audience. Pay attention to their needs. Know who your audience is so you can talk the right language to them. You're never making it for yourself.

Q - What are the common mistakes that you see new documentary filmmakers make?

Michael - The structure issue. The thought that all you have to do is shoot a lot of material and somehow the story will emerge. It's true with experienced documentarians as well. And it's become more endemic with the relative cheapness of stock and digital. Have some sense of the structure and the end product in your mind.

Maybe examining a provocative theory like Stanley Kubrick suffering from autism as a youngster is an original approach for our documentary about his obsession with Napoleon.

Kubrick's Final Days

I don't know if the story posted below adds more fuel to the fire surrounding the claim that Stanley Kubrick was autistic or again just describes a cineaste obsessed with secrecy. Kubrick could easily have asked for the projectionist to wear earplugs so as not to hear the soundtrack from "Eyes Wide Shut" at its first screening for studio executives.

March 10, 1999
All Eyes for a Peek at Kubrick's Final Film
By BERNARD WEINRAUB

Stanley Kubrick's work, like his life, was shrouded in mystery and secrecy.

And his final film, ''Eyes Wide Shut,'' also remains, in many ways, a source of mystery and secrecy. Mr. Kubrick, one of the great postwar filmmakers with classics like ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' and ''A Clockwork Orange,'' told a friend that it was his best film.

Mr. Kubrick's death in his sleep on Sunday, at 70, came only five days after the first screening of the movie for Bob Daly and Terry Semel, the co-chairmen of Warner Brothers, and the film's stars, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. At the request of Mr. Kubrick, the screening in New York took place in such secrecy that the projectionist was asked to turn away and not watch the film.

An autopsy had confirmed that Mr. Kubrick died of natural causes. Among those scheduled to attend the private funeral on Friday are Mr. Semel and Mr. Daly, as well as Mr. Cruise and Ms. Kidman.

Mr. Semel said the movie would be released as scheduled on July 16. ''The film is totally finished'' except for ''a couple of color corrections'' and ''some technical things,'' he said. ''What he showed was his final cut.''

Mr. Semel added that Mr. Kubrick had selected 90 seconds of a scene to show on Wednesday in Las Vegas to the Showest convention of theater owners at which studios offer glimpses of their coming movies. ''Eyes Wide Shut,'' a psychosexual drama, is loosely based on Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella ''Dream Story.'' Ms. Kidman and Mr. Cruise play psychiatrists. ''It's the story of a married couple and their sexual exploits,'' Mr. Semel said. ''The part that also blew us was it's a terrific suspense thriller. It's a wonderful film. It's a film that's really challenging and is filled with suspense.''

Mr. Semel said he last spoke to Mr. Kubrick on Saturday morning from his hotel room in Syracuse. ''I said, 'Who is this?' and he said, 'Stanley,' and I said, 'Stanley, you're my wake-up call,' and we then spent a fantastic hour on the phone talking about the details of Showest and the release. He was in the highest spirits, the greatest mood. I haven't heard Stanley like that in many years. We were laughing. We were joking.

''He was thrilled with the collective reaction all four of us had to the film. He called an hour later to tell me a joke he had heard. The good news is he definitely went to sleep that night with a smile on his face.''

Another Warner Brothers executive, Julian Senior, the senior vice president for European marketing, said the movie involved two married psychiatrists whose fantasies intersect with their real lives.

Mr. Senior said that Mr. Kubrick called him on Saturday afternoon for an hourlong conversation, and that he told Mr. Kubrick that he was watching a rugby game on television, but the filmmaker began using baseball analogies. Mr. Kubrick, who was born in the Bronx, was a fervent fan of the Yankees.

''He always used baseball terms with me,'' Mr. Senior said. ''He said: 'Forget what you're watching. It's time to go to bat on the movie.' He said that Terry and Bob and Tom and Nicole had seen it and loved it, and he was thrilled. He said, 'Let's do it right.' ''

At one point in the conversation, Mr. Senior recalled, Mr. Kubrick said excitedly, ''It's my best film ever, Julian.''

Mr. Semel said he had read the closely guarded script in a London hotel because Mr. Kubrick did not want copies circulated. The film, made under almost military secrecy, took an unusually long 15 months to shoot.

No director, with the possible exceptions of Steven Spielberg and Clint Eastwood, had as much control as Mr. Kubrick. He did not have to endure the process in which filmmakers show studio executives their director's cut, which is often a starting point for further editing and even filming. There were also no previews to gauge audience reaction.

''When he showed the movie, it was his final version,'' said Mr. Semel, who met Mr. Kubrick while the director was making ''Barry Lyndon'' in 1975. He said Mr. Kubrick had agreed to make ''Eyes Wide Shut'' for an R rating. (No one under 17 may attend without an adult.) The film is believed to have numerous sexual situations, and there had been reports that it would be given a more restrictive NC-17 rating, barring all viewers under 17.

But Mr. Semel said he expected that the film, which cost about $65 million, would receive an R rating. ''It was not only our deal, it was what Stanley wanted,'' Mr. Semel said. ''He wanted the film to be available to the masses.''

The work will be the 13th full-length film of Mr. Kubrick's 40-year career, which began in 1953 with a melodrama, ''Fear and Desire,'' and continued with such classics as ''Paths of Glory'' (1957), ''Spartacus'' (1960), ''Lolita'' (1962), ''Dr. Strangelove'' (1964) and ''Full Metal Jacket'' (1987).

Mr. Kubrick moved to England shortly after completing ''Spartacus,'' a big-budget epic starring Kirk Douglas. By several accounts, he was dismayed by his lack of control in the studio and wanted to make movies free of interference. In the process, he became as publicity-shy as J. D. Salinger and Greta Garbo.

But Mr. Semel and Mr. Senior said that Mr. Kubrick kept in touch by fax, E-mail and phone and read publications on the Internet. He was also highly informed on movie marketing and distribution and could discuss the seating capacities of large theaters in the United States and abroad, Mr. Semel said.

Months ago Mr. Kubrick and Warner Brothers agreed to release the film in the United States in July, partly because it was ''a strong date'' and partly because it would coincide with its release in Europe, Mr. Semel said.

''To say he was reclusive is not true,'' Mr. Senior said. ''He didn't want a photo spread about himself in Hello magazine, but he was aware of everything going on and especially with what was going on with his beloved New York Yankees. He loved life, he loved chess, he loved documentaries. You'd go over to his home and there'd be John le Carre in his kitchen. He was not reclusive at all.''

Kubrick's Napoleon Test Reel?

These YouTube clips from Barry Lydon hint at what Stanley Kubrick might have had in mind for his Napoleon project.

Kubrick's Most Autistic Movie

Kubrick for Dummies podcast

Everything you need to know about Stanley Kubrick is her in this ninety minute podchat from three hippie movie geeks. These old school bohos cover Kubrick's entire career. They even go back to when Kubrick was junior camera nut and got his first paying gig as a boy photographer in New York City working for a feisty editor. I will be dissecting the podchat to prune away inaccuracies. For instance, Kubrick was married three times, not twice. Look for video from Malcolm McDowell telling the real story about playing ping-pong with Stanley Kubrick during post-production of ACO.



Picture of the day. Sin comentario.

Documentary Cookbook Manifesto

Below is the final part of the UC Berkeley Documentary Cookbook. This is the heart of the manifesto, dealing with the nuts and bolts of making a movie for less than one hundred thousand dollars. Part of the challenge in making this documentary about Stanley Kubrick's life long obsession with Napoleon will be finding a way to make it economically without sacrificing quality or story.

BASIC APPROACH

"Make films, not proposals:"

If you have lots of money, don't do this.

As expected, most of the lessons learned so far are bone head obvious, and boil down to very disciplined, simple "preventive production." To really be serious about finding projects on which you can lower cost without lowering quality, here's what you need to do, in order of cost efficiency:

• Choose the right story. Find stories that naturally lend themselves to low cost, not stories which will be compromised with short funding. Thin Blue Line, Gimme Shelter, , Mark Twain, The Cockettes, and Long Night's Journey Into Day will always cost at least a half million dollars.
• Back into it. Reverse the idea/funding process. Find stories and techniques that can be done with the money readily available, not with money which might someday be available.
• Exercise Discipline. Be extremely careful and consistent at every stage of planning and production. Make the project all muscle, no fat. Obviously, this favors pre-conceptualized projects and handicaps discovery.
• Use small format digital video. Use DV/DVCam as starting point to reduce cost from ground up. Small format digital video is to us as 16mm was to cinema verite or 4-track recorders were to rock and roll.
• Exercise consistent technical protocol. Get video and audio close to right in the field, and do not plan to fix anything in the mix or on-line. Small format video demands more technical care than large format.
• Pay professionals their going rates. Control personnel costs by adjusting time, not rates. Reconfigure what you do, not how much you pay for it.
• Use experienced craftspeople at all levels, especially in audio and assistant editing.
• Avoid air travel. Is there no good film to be made within 100 miles of home? .
• Make the film quickly. Production and editorial schedules that minimize person-days are big levers for cost reduction. Set rough cut and lock picture deadlines, and meet them no matter what. This favors experienced filmmakers working with strong fallback narrative structures.
• Maintain a clear decision flow. The producer/director is in charge. The production unit must be a community, but not a democracy. Fine-tune the filtering of ideas to flow from community to director to editor in orderly fashion. Delays in executive signoff (if there is an executive) can be catastrophic.
• "FIDO" "Fuck it and drive on." Choose a story in which a few missing pieces or clunky moments will go unnoticed, so that you can always maintain forward motion. Never bog down, and never miss a deadline, no matter what.
• Avoid on-line assembly, out of house, by working on an editing system which directly outputs high-resolution video. Do not color correct the show yourself.
• Use high-end facilities for sound finishing and color correction after extremely careful field origination and editorial prep.
• Do not use outside archive material, only home movies, personal photos, documents for which you own all rights in perpetuity, and fair use material for which you can make a clearly and obviously defensible case for fair use.
• Do not use outside music, only music internally produced, for which you own rights in perpetuity; music rights may be non-exclusive.
• Avoid hidden administrative cost, of music, archive footage, and stills. The admin time, paperwork, research, provenance search, and E&O costs can match license fees.
• Avoid live performance under trade union jurisdiction, where fees and hidden administrative costs may be excessive.
• Avoid fundraising, beyond the bare minimum necessary to get the project done. The fundraising process itself mounts its own enormous costs---sample reels, office expense, producer time, spun budgets, spun proposals.

These suggested methods clearly apply only to a small number of documentaries and a small number of filmmakers. And finally:

• Make a high quality film, and then sell it to the highest bidder. "HBO is not going to broadcast a show simply because it cost $100,000. Nobility is not part of the mix," says Pete Nicks.

STORY ATTRIBUTES

"The message is the message"

Story is everything. Conventional wisdom holds that choosing small format digital production is the best way to reduce documentary cost. On the contrary, story choice appears to be the single most determining factor, followed closely by organization of story chosen. (It may come as a surprise to learn that Startup.Com---shot almost entirely on a PD100---cost $750,000.) In setting up this project, we have deliberately avoided calling for content-specific proposals. We have for the moment kept our invitations to filmmakers content-neutral, because it is the method and evolving production template which matter, and these depend first on what stories the producers choose to tackle.

• Can this story be told with the funds readily within reach?
• Can this story be clearly and naturally told for low cost with little compromise?
• Can this story easily withstand moments of inelegant storytelling?
• Can this story easily withstand losing an episode or character?
• Can this story be done without travel?
• Can this story be made into a documentary by a few people in a few days?
• Can this story be done without archive materials?
• Can the timeline or narrative arc of this story be quickly and efficiently organized.
• Does this story require cumbersome administrative access. Getting into Disneyland, Sing Sing, or the San Diego County District Attorney's office will burn up months or even years of work.

Obviously, many stories---most in fact---cannot be done inexpensively under these restrictions. Eyes On The Prize, The Civil War, Africans In American, Crumb, The Farmer's Wife, Endurance, Lalee's Kin, and similar projects will always cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour, and must be supported at that level. We are not talking about those.

PRODUCTION

"Preventive Production"

Talk is cheap. This year we invited three producers to make films of various lengths, with the stipulation that, on average, the projects not cost more than $100,000 per hour, and that they be for a television audience. The documentaries are all very different, and the filmmakers bring a good range of style, method, perspective, experience and age.

Peter Nicks is the young producer of The Wolf, a one-hour personal documentary about how cocaine nearly destroyed his life at the peak of America's war against drugs. The Wolf explores America's hesitant romance with illegal drugs by examining Peter's addiction, imprisonment, his unlikely recovery, and the struggles of his family. Before directing the project, Nicks worked at Nightline. And he is currently a producer at PBS's Life 360.

Lourdes Portillo, a widely known and respected mid-career producer (The Devil Never Sleeps, Seniorita Extraviata) is now shooting with Kyle Kibbe on "McQueen." This 20 minute documentary looks back over three decades to the legendary car chase in the 1968 film "Bullit" as a device for exploring sweeping changes in class, demographics, ethnicity, and popular culture in California.

Albert Maysles, whose career spans 45 years (Salesman, Gimme Shelter), and who was an early champion of small format video, will produce and direct the third project. He will begin shooting late this fall on a film about the personal dramas of passengers on long-distance trains.

Jon Else's film Open Outcry, while not made directly under the umbrella of the Center for New Documentary, was produced for ITVS during the center's first year. It was an instructive and not entirely successful attempt to do programming for $100,000 per hour. The project, which experiments with near-real-time shooting, was photographed at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 8 days, and edited in 11 days.

(All this discussion of cost reduction unfolds as a departure from the industry standard protocol of one-hour TV documentaries, films which require about $500,000 parsed and budgeted to:

• 15 to 25 shooting days
• 4 to 6 travel days
• 5 to 30% administrative overhead
• 3 to 5 person field unit, plus executive producer
• 12 to 18-week full time Avid edit by 2-person edit team
• 2 to 3 week sound finishing
• 2 to 3 day on-line & color correction)

Personnel & staffing

"No cheap labor"

Work with experienced people at all levels. To our surprise, the more seasoned the personnel, the cheaper the production, even though individual daily or weekly rates may be higher. The hidden administrative cost of ramping up interns and apprentices on The Wolf was significant, and we have yet to invent a way of using entry level people efficiently. "Cattle calls" for interns are probably a mistake. The fact of the matter is that a journeyman videographer, director, editor, or assistant with solid experience can accomplish an enormous amount in a day. Also, experienced people can quickly spot inefficiencies, wrong turns, and blind alleys long before the problems eat into a budget.

This model depends in large measure on everyone doing a couple of jobs well---director/recordists (like Fred Wiseman), director/editors (like Deborah Hoffmann) or director/shooters (like -Al Maysles). We try to do stories in which it makes sense for the sound recordist to work as AP, or the AP to record sound, or the assistant editor to production manage. The aesthetic advantages are obvious, as are the logistic advantages, and clearly it assumes that anyone brought on to the project is already skilled -- not semi-skilled -- in two job categories. (It does not mean that a good sound recordist should barely squeak by managing the production, or that a good AP should squeak by doing marginal sound. All the savings are eaten up later, when it comes time to repair the damage.) This double-skill multi-tasking can backfire horrifically in situations where the producer/director really needs to devote full attention to directing, unencumbered by technical craftwork.

We work with crews of at least two people, preferably three. In general, the one-man band approach may help access, but it can severely restrict quality. A producer/director/videographer/soundman may be appropriate for getting on the ground fast in Sierra Leone or Uzbekistan, but craft suffers tremendously, especially in severely compromised or unusable audio.

Collegiality and professionalism are critical, and it appears that the production runs more smoothly and efficiently if everyone involved is a moderately experienced producer/director in his or her own right. But at the end of the day it is not a democracy, and everyone involved has to understand that the producer / director's word is law. We discuss, the producer decides, we move on.

Writing

The jury is still out. Clearly a documentary which takes place mostly in the past can be written as a concept paper, treatment, or even sequence outline. The Wolf was done with a treatment, and everyone on the production signed on the deal breaker understanding that if all else failed, the film would follow the treatment. Lourdes Portillo's McQueen was carefully preconceived, and shot nearly in the style of a narrative feature.

Cinema verite voyages of discovery, which are by their very nature unpredictable and un-writeable, may be problematic (as Leacock says, "Great voyage; sorry, no whales.") Unless the producer is ready, without question, to pull the plug when shooting and editing deadlines arrive, trouble is at hand. We'll see, as Al Maysles sets out on his journey. At the very least, it seems reasonable that any low cost production must have some sort of bombproof default plan before anyone shoots a frame. It may be that obsessive planning, so counter to cinema verite, is what allows cinema verite moments to emerge.

Pre-Production

We are working on this. At the very least, if you cannot devise a plan which guarantees completion of at least some reasonable version of the film, then don't start production.

DV and DVCam Origination Camerawork

"Camera stylo"

By the time we began in the summer of 2000, the DV technical explosion had, on its own, lifted documentary to a relatively high plateau of digital production. Behind this lay a deep history of near misses.

A great flurry of hope surrounded the arrival of Sony's Porta-Pak technology in the 1970s, but documentary activists soon learned that the 1/2" tape system was simply too primitive and unreliable for professional use. Hi8 video rode in on a bubble of excitement in the 'eighties, but it too came up wanting. Now, after 30 years of false alarms, superb small cameras with 500+ lines of resolution, and genuinely cheap broadcast-quality digital video editing systems are at last widely available. DV is explosively broadening the playing field, even beyond the degree to which 16mm equipment liberated documentary in the 'sixties. DVCam gear costs a tiny fraction of what a cinema verite crew's Eclair NPR, Nagra & Steenbeck would have cost, even in 1967 dollars. For television DV makes better pictures faster, and ready-to-edit synced up rushes are on the screen for about $40 per hour (including digitizing cost), rather than $200 per hour for 24pHD or $1400 per hour for synced up 16mm dailies.

Starting with the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, exquisite big screen projection of productions originated on DVCam burst onto the scene. These were either blown up to excellent 35mm release prints at costs between $10,000 and $100,000 per hour, or up-converted to HD digital tape at roughly $2000 (and falling) per hour. Though we have no experience yet with big screen projection, other DVCam films (Down From The Mountain, Startup.Com) have been blown to 35mm and look extremely good. Parts of both films could be mistaken for 16mm on the big screen.

(Except for specific scenes requiring painterly high production value--- some landscape and cityscape work---virtually all documentary work for television can now be done on digital video. Faced with the array of image making possible in DV, DVCam, Digibeta and 24p HD, there now appears little compelling reason to produce documentaries on film.)

Our entire camera/audio/editing set up, including all hardware & software, purchased new from the ground up, cost about $15,000, which we expect to amortize over at least four films. We are hearing it said that a full system can be put together for under $5000, but that figure is simply too low, since it rules out the better small cameras, support equipment, good mics, a mixer, cases, and the hefty computer necessary for long form. We've had good luck working with a Sony PD150, though low cost shooting can certainly be done on any of the DV and DVCam cameras available in the $2000 - $5000 price range.

The PD150 makes excellent pictures (500 lines of resolution, compared to 470 for a PD100, 510 for a DSR130, and 540 for a DSR500/570). List is $4000, but you can find one new for $3200. You get a 1/3' CCD, a good mid- range zoom lens with wide angle converter, 2 balanced XLR inputs with 48v phantom power, adjustable zebras and master black, programmable time code, maximum 40 minute recording time, an excellent "steady shot" electronic image stabilizer, Firewire in and out, and a flip-out LCD screen. Like most of the little cameras around, this one is loaded with silly consumer features, has a maddening servo-controlled focus ring, and a brainless placement of the viewfinder at the rear of the camera. We use an after-market lens shade, and, for set-up situations, we use a Sony PVM-8045Q field monitor.

The PD150 and others like it can generate astonishing images (especially the PAL version), and in extremely low light (2 foot candles or less); on television, they can approach if not surpass Super 16mm. Here is Al Maysles' list of why DVCam trumps 16mm.

Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 11:50:57 -0500
Subject: no subject
From: Albert Maysles amaysles@mayslesfilms.com
To: Jon Else

For me the greatest technical innovation is the Sony D150, it

1. focuses down to inches.
2. has a magnificent manual zoom.
3. is supersensitive to light.
4. an excellent zoom range especially with the addition of the Century
wide-angle adapter.
5. only 5-10 dollars per tape.
6. extremely useful automatic focus.
7. automatic exposure control.
8. single system picture and sound.
9. as you shoot, you control exposure simultaneously while
observing recorded images.
10. steady device in the lens makes for a steadier picture.
11. unlike the 10minutes 16mm film camera magazine,
each tape runs 40 or 60 minutes, virtually no run outs.
12. camera can be held in many positions with viewer still visible.
13. holding camera below chin, a camera person can see much more
than is in the eyepiece.
14. holding camera below chin, camera person's gaze is available to subjects to assure rapport.
15. camera much lighter (only 3 or 4 pounds vs.20).
16. can vary shutter speed.
17. camera costs only around $3500; a 16mm film camera with lenses and magazines around $100,000.
18. the zoom lens is so good you need no other lenses.
19. easy to film in tight quarters, for example, in cars.
20. totally silent.
21. less intrusive.
22. batteries are tiny (3"x 1 1/2"x 1") weigh little, run for as much as 8 hours.
23. quality satisfactory for TV and can be blown up to 35mm.
24. all you need to shoot goes into a normal camera bag.
25. when necessary can shoot all alone.
26. no waiting a day for rushes. Results are immediately available.
27. is a near perfect one-up on the 16mm.film camera.

(Note also that on DVCams (even on 24p) the depth of field will be greater than what we expect at equivalent focal lengths in 16mm film. This can work for you or against you.)

We used a Century Precision 16X9 optical converter on The Wolf, which is extremely sharp, though it does not work at the telephoto end of the zoom range. Optek has introduced a 16 X 9 converter, but we have not had a chance to test it. The camera's built in, switchable 16 X 9 function simply crops the picture; do not use it. The hidden costs of switching aspect ratios during production will come back to haunt you; do all the origination in either 4X3 or 16X9, not both.

Any of the $1200 - $2000 mini DV tripods will serve well; we use a Sachtler DV2 Batteries, cases, and miscellaneous do-dads add another $1000.

These little cameras can bite; they are not as user friendly as they seem. They bristle with tiny sabotage buttons and menu items, like on-screen date & time. It takes many hours to understand them, and many days to master them. For anyone who grew up on betacam, the $3,200 PD150 is more difficult to operate properly than a $120,000 HDW F900 24p. Low cost production with small format gear requires more, not less, technical expertise than traditional production, because there is little or no financial padding to fix mistakes after the fact. Extreme care in exposure consistency and color balance throughout the project, especially in interviews, can reap significant cost savings in the final color correction session. Likewise, ragged inconsistency suddenly comes home to roost in thousands of dollars of editor and/or suite time at the end. Since the DVCam format is less forgiving after the fact than digibeta or HD, you must know exactly where your zebras are set and pay close attention to them. For those new to the little cameras, it is time well spent to study and ruminate on how the image looks in the b/w viewfinder, then on the flip-out LCD screen, and then on a properly set up field monitor; they are all slightly different.

Though we don't have definitive experience, it appears that postcard cityscapes and landscapes can be problematic in DVCam, as are extremes of contrast. On the other hand, there are no doubt all sorts of new things that can be done with the little cameras, things we haven't thought of. While shooting Lourdes Portillo's film, Kyle Kibbe was surprised at the trivial ease of covering a scene with two or three cameras simultaneously (Spike Lee covered some scenes in "Bamboozled" with as many as 12 PD100s). We haven't yet explored time lapse, arrays of cameras, or new ways of rigging the small cameras.

Origination Audio

Here lies the trap door of low cost production. Small format digital video is notorious for lousy audio, almost always because audio is not taken seriously. Always work with a sound recordist. Do not plan to fix it in the mix; you may not have a mix. As with camera work, controlling audio costs requires in fact more care than in traditional production. Exercise the standard due diligence---microphone choice and placement, proper modulation, levels, track management, ambience management, consistency in field recording and good digitizing management.

Our sound package (which pretty much came off the shelf at the graduate school) is a Shure FP33 mixer, Sennheiser K6/ME66 Combo mic, K-Tek boom, Countryman lav, a snake and a few XLR cables. Al Maysles and many other camera people work with a radio velcroed to the camera and a good small shotgun mic on the camera. Spencer Nakasako uses radios on roving crew members as "stealth lavs". We prefer to use a boom, through a mixer with a snake to the camera. In addition to the standard due diligence, you need to,

• Avoid the on-camera mic supplied by the manufacturer. If you must use a mic on the camera, have the sound person rig a good one---Schoeps or Sennheiser.
• Boom the scene whenever possible.
• Use a good radio on the main subject. We rent radios when needed. (Caution: a radio mic on a particular person can unreasonably drive the process of deciding who or what is important as a scene unfolds.)
• Establish consistent protocol for field recording. If multiple sound recordists work on the show, there must be an audio standard --- mics, internal mixer settings, sampling rate, levels, noise, track management --- set by the lead sound recordist from the git-go.
• Go easy on room tone.
• Go easy on double system recording; stories which require separate DAT recording (except as a backup for camera recording) may be problematic, simply because of the postproduction cost.
• Establish consistant protocol for digitizing audio---levels, track assignment, etc.
• Do pick-up audio interviews by telephone, the way radio producers have done them for years. Rather than fly people around the country for pick-up voice over, we have had very good experience doing it over the phone, with the interviewee in a studio in his/her home city, recorded on DAT (according to the show's audio protocol). These can also be done over an ISDN life if it's available, though it generally costs more.

Lighting

"Darkness is cheap." Dickens

Good DVCam and DV cameras can usually record astonishingly elegant images in any setting where human beings routinely live or work. A few foot-candles of nearly any color will let you squeak by. Flourescents look great. Those of us who came of age fighting to control both the quantity and quality of light now only need worry about quality. We are shooting virtually all observational scenes in available light, often wide open, often at night, often with medium gain. We haven't seen how these might look in big screen theatrical projection, but they look fine on TV, which is where we have chosen to work. For interviews, we have broken no new ground; so far we stick to the standard Chimera/showcard setup. Lowell donated a basic omni/tota/rifa kit, and it has been more than sufficient for everything on "Wolf."

If a little fill light is needed, more and more videographers are using small flashlights. AA Mag Lights or AA Duracell rectangular lights taped to the camera or to walls work well, and for a real punch, use Scorpion or Streamlight 6v lithium flashlights. We sandpaper the lenses for diffusion, and of course you can attach any gel you would put on a 10K. But in general, digital video seems well suited to finding good light rather that making good light.

Production management

Technical advances have begun to plateau, in apparent violation of Moore's Law. It appears we can no longer rely on exponential reduction in hardware and software expense to reduce overall cost, and we're more interested in using the technical advances as a springboard for other sorts of cost reduction. The need to rely more on non-technical "evergreen" ways of keeping cost down seems more in line with where we are, now that the cost of the entire broadcast quality hardware/software set has fallen below the threshold of an adult's credit card limit.

The job is to develop a template that is financially practical and attractive to journeyman filmmakers. We budget all personnel, equipment, facilities and administration at documentary rates prevailing in California (slightly higher in New York, lower in the Midwest). To keep some real world discipline about the enterprise, we have avoided folding in the myriad in-kind scroungings often available at this and other universities.

We are still sorting things out, but it appears that sharing core management on several projects, absolute avoidance of OT, absolute deadlines, and the "slinky" edit schedule described below make the biggest cost difference. And run it like a business; this is not for the chicken-hearted.

Edit Prep

You must have everything in the system before you begin editing. This is a deal breaker. Before the editor(s) begin, it is critical to have enough footage in house and digitized to finish the film, if necessary without pickups. This allows the editor and director to approach the structure with a full deck, to "throw and axe at it" on the first cut in full knowledge of what would be available in a worst case scenario. Naturally, we set aside a small portion of the production budget for pickups, but do not let the structure depend on pickups.

Time can be saved by screening all the rushes and digitizing at the same time, in the same pass.

A single, dedicated assistant editor, thoroughly conversant with the editing system, is indispensable.

If you anticipate using home movies, graphics, stills, headlines, or audio recordings, have them all in house and digitized before editing begins. Delaying their arrival costs money in re-dos and false starts; no way around it.

Before starting, have an "editorial standards" meeting with everyone who will lay a hand on the material---standardize video and audio digitizing, track assignment, and track management. The hidden costs of later redigitizing video or audio or shuffling audio from one track to another can be enormous.

We have not found a way around transcripts, which appear to be indispensable if the film includes interviews. As always, make simultaneous audiocassette recordings on location. We had hoped to experiment with speech recognition software, but so far have not been able to. Use a highly experienced transcription service, and if necessary be selective in what gets transcribed.

Editing

Many PC and Mac desktop and laptop systems are now available, and they all appear to work well. However, we discovered when beginning Wolf that very few producers had actually completed hour-long documentaries on them. This territory is actually quite mysterious. We use Final Cut Pro on a desktop G4 with a 450 MHz dual processor, 256 RAM, 30 Gig internal hard drive, and 45 Gig external drive, two 19"View Sonic monitors, and a Sony DSR-20 DVCam deck, external speakers, and miscellaneous cables. We had the vendor set it up for us, so that it would be his problem, not ours. The whole thing cost $10,000 We have not tried the Avid Xpress DV. (See DV Magazine for consistently excellent and up to date information on all DV hardware and software.)

We broke no new ground in the order of editorial steps. Wolf, like 10,000 documentaries before it, went through assembly (1st cut), rough cut, fine cut, locked picture, and sound finishing. Since the Final Cut Pro system can handle an enormous volume of material digitized at full resolution, we did not need an out-of-house on-line. FCP handles the DVCam format end-to-end with the same compression ratio, 4:2:2, as a DVCam camera. As with field audio recording, we did all the standard due diligence common to documentary editorial practice, but kept costs down in other ways.

• "Slinky" editing. This may be the single best way to save money on any given project. We budgeted 30 days of editing, appropriate for the story, which had been pre-organized to within an inch of its life. But rather than set an editor for work full time for 30 days over 6 weeks, we brought the editor(s) on 2 or 3 days a week over 11 weeks. Obviously, this works only with editors splitting time between two jobs. The great efficiency comes from each week allowing the producer/director and assistant editor to consolidate ideas and material, to catch up and get ahead of the editor. Non linear editing has now become so fast that writers, APs, and directors often find themselves unable to keep up with the editor. We usually find no time to ruminate, to digest ideas, screen cuts, write, or brainstorm, because the big editorial taxi meter is humming.
• Agree on an organizational principle after screening the rushes. On Wolf the editors asked producer Peter Nicks to provide a monologue of his story, which then became the practical vehicle for the ideas and events described in the treatment. Clearly and unfortunately, this works against pretzelplots and against projects in which you must unearth a structure while editing is underway. If you are serious about making an inexpensive film, do not go down the rabbit hole of "finding the film" late in the editorial process.
• Maintain orderly forward motion at all costs. Orderly scheduled progress toward lock picture is essential. Do not inflate the film late in the game---on Wolf we made the mistake of adding six minutes to the documentary two days before locking picture, and had a terrible time getting those six minutes out. Fine tune the filtering of everyone's ideas to make them flow to director, and then to editor in an orderly way. Clearly, this can stifle the exchange of ideas, but it is expensive for the editor to receive conflicting suggestions and instructions from more than one voice.
• Hire an assistant editor with solid experience on the system you are using. Ideally, this should be a dedicated assistant, not burdened by other jobs.
• Never change software versions during editing. Don't even think about it. We experienced a near disastrous loss of lists and media while upgrading from FCP system 1.5 to 2.0.
• Do not conform mixed formats on FCP Do not attempt to render a long 16 X 9 film on Final Cut Pro, since the chances of freezing or crashing are high. Do it in a high-end suite when you do your final color correction; there it is trivial.
• Get a color-coded keyboard

While it probably is not a way to keep costs down, we used two editors on Wolf, Jeffery Friedman (Common Threads, Paragraph 175) and Kim Roberts (Long Night's Journey Into Day, Danang Daughter). Peter Nicks also edited some sequences (never without close coordination with Kim and Jeffery). If you choose to do this, be sure that two editors overlap their shifts for at least a couple hours each week, so that they can screen the entire film each week and agree on a plan for dividing labor. Rather than re-work each other's sections, Kim and Jeffery agreed with Peter to divide editing responsibilities between the two halves of the film.

In-progress screenings

Screenings will uncover surprises and add clarity. But do not talk the film to death when you should be making the film; get feedback and input and move forward.

• Two or three well-placed screenings are invaluable for maintaining forward motion. Schedule one rough cut and one fine cut screening with a small group of outsiders. Use questionnaires, discuss the show, and move on. Schedule more frequent editor/director screenings.
• Always watch the whole show.

Archive material

There appear few ways to inexpensively produce documentaries which rely on archive material other than home movies, photos and audio recordings which the producer owns. The obvious first problem is the obscene license fees charged by commercial archive houses, particularly music archives. But just as important may be the astonishing hidden administrative costs of research, provenance search, dubbing, releases, and the added headaches when it comes time to purchase E & O insurance. Use of any archive material is, at best, more cumbersome than using origination footage.

Rights-free footage can, of course, be had from the National Archives and other government sources. Rick Prelinger and others are experimenting with libraries of public access archive material on the internet, but even these come with the same administrative problems as commercial footage. More work needs to be done on optimizing use of archive footage from both commercial houses and government archives.

Music

Low cost production weighs heavily against commissioning a composer, but there may be cases in which the score is inseparably bound to the film's concept. If you must score, back into it just as you back into the film as a whole. The simple but very effective original score for The Wolf began with a discussion in which we asked Mary Watkins (Ethnic Notions, Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter), "what can you reasonably do for this amount of money?"

If music is critical, decide first, before production begins, what you can afford, then work with a composer to sort out what can be done. Like archive music, original music comes with hidden administrative costs. Does you composer have pre-existing work that can be acquired or adapted? Consider non-exclusive use of an original score, since neither you nor the composer has much to gain by taking the music completely out of circulation. If you do hire a composer, be sure to contract a package deal, under which the composer hires and pays the players and studio.

On-line & video finishing

We have found that maximizing forward motion for a very limited time at an expensive commercial post house may be more cost-effective than doing longer sessions at an inexpensive house. Facilities geared toward television commercials have very fast and efficient hardware/software, are accustomed to working intensely against the clock, and are often very eager to apply their expertise (hard-earned on hundreds of McDonalds commercials) to social documentaries for a good price.

• Set up protocols with finishing facilities before beginning production
• Do your own on-line assembly edit (but not your color correction, sizing, or aspect ratio correction) in house. On Final Cut Pro, this is a non-issue, since the system easily stores and outputs DVCam video at full resolution. In practical terms, you skip traditional on-line, and your locked picture is you on-line.
• Do your titles, text and credits in-house FCP, coming from design- savvy Apple, has a good array of fonts. PhotoShop and After Affects help.
• Do color correction at a high end facility, making very clear before starting that you have an absolutely fixed amount of suite time, and that you are willing---eager---to triage the show in order to get the maximum value added in the minimum time. Arrive with a triage list of problem scenes. On Wolf we worked with Loren Sorenson at Varitel in San Francisco, doing four hours of color correction and four hours of re-sizing and extra titling. The show was enormously improved. At a good facility, you should be able in a few hours to do 80% of what you can do in a full day, since the curve of value added drops off fairly quickly. Set the interviews first, if there are any, then work through the show.
• Expect trouble in file transfer We have yet to see any long form documentary successfully move all its video and audio files to an outside system on the first try. OMS file transfer, file compatibility, software compatibility, and version differences are the bane of getting stuff out of FCP into Avid or Pro Tools, or even from Avid into Pro Tools. Some of this may have been solved by the incorporation of Pro Tools into FCP 2.0. We'll see.
• Resize and correct aspect ratio at the post house, where they have fast, efficient engines for this, not on the FCP, where it is cumbersome, unpredictable and extremely slow on a long documentary. Also, in the high-end suite you can customize the exact aspect ratio (on Wolf we did a half way vertical expansion on 4X3 home movies to put them in the show's 16 X 9 letterboxed format, thereby losing 6% top and bottom.) Note also that in a good on-line suite you can quickly generate mattes to clean up headlines, stills, and other flat art.

Sound finishing

It all begins with very consistent sound standards and protocols in the field and in editing, as noted above. On "The Wolf" we ran into unexpected cost in sound finishing because we had allowed tracks to multiply unreasonably during editing. Make it a game to imagine not having a mix. Some of it is simple stuff like using exactly the same microphone & location for audio pick-ups as you used for first origination. Some of it, like controlling background noise, is not so simple.

• Meet with your outside audio facility early, at the start of editing, to sort out what they can/should do, and to establish clear track assignment and separation standards from the start. Re-sorting tracks to suit the mix facility at the lock picture stage costs money.
• Do a pre-mix in FCP (after locking picture---before that much of it will be time wasted.)
• During editing, the editor should listen carefully and decide which track to use for a given shot if there are two choices (boom & lav, for instance). Do not defer this decision for later.
• Use a high-end audio house.
• Expect and plan a defense against file transfer problems

Broadcast, festivals, & distribution

Many, documentary makers have grown up thinking of PBS as the first, if not the only serious television venue. This come partly from years of expensive production which was made possible only with seed and lead money from CPB, or from foundations and endowments which contractually required offering the finished show to public television. As soon as a non-profit funder gets its paws on a documentary, even for a few thousand dollars, the producer is almost always locked into a track toward PBS. Forget that; assume that the entire spectrum is fair game --- HBO, Cinemax, MTV, Bravo, A&E, History, Tech TV, PBS, LifeTime. All of these work with independents, as do myriad foreign broadcasters and even some venues, such as Nightline within the major commercial networks. Our goal is to make some shows so inexpensive that they do not require seed funding from anyone, shows which when they are finished can be shopped around to all broadcasters.

Because of its low cost, The Wolf did not require outside funding from any broadcast entity. Hence, the film remained independent throughout production, and we were able to present it around to a number of broadcasters, including MTV, HBO, ABC, and various venues within PBS. We have not yet heard from PBS, but reaction was quick and positive from the others. ABC Nightline acquired the show, and placed it in the schedule pipeline for early October, but the events of September 11 intervened, and broadcast is postponed Spring.

As for festival screenings, film projection is history. The last 16mm print has packed its bags, its scratches, and its wretched optical sound track, and gone to the old prints home. Sundance has established the solid performance of good video projection from digibeta and HD. The cost differential is a no-brainer -- $10,000/hr for the cheapest, marginal quality 35mm print v. $1000/hr for an HD up-conversion.

We have not experimented with DVD self-distribution, but a DVD disk burner can now be had for about $900.

Case study, "The Wolf"

Much of what we've learned on The Wolf is described above. A few more points deserve mention.

Both the producer and associate producer found their time and attention stretched to the limit. Especially during editing and post production, the AP was simply handling too many jobs at once. At times the producer/director became so preoccupied with other duties that he couldn't pay adequate attention to style and elegant story telling, and couldn't optimize his time with the editors. As production neared completion, a series of rolling delays turned into a cascade of extra costs, almost all in additional staff time. Choice of a story which was centered in Washington D.C. took its toll in travel costs, time and attention. We are still sorting it all out, with the suspicion that at least some of the trouble came with job of making the first film in a new way at a new production center, with a relatively green core production crew.

Nonetheless, this story of and by a young unknown African American producer is finished and will be seen by several million viewers. We feel that the film represents a success in meeting the goals we had set for ourselves; it is a documentary which:

• was produced in nine months for $100,000
• remained truly independent from start to finish
• is journalistically sound
• was managed so that all professional personnel were paid their customary rates.
• was ambitious in its reach but carefully contained in particulars
• would have taken years to fund and produce with the traditional methods
• was appropriate for low cost production because it tells an extremely robust story, it could be produced with a small multi-tasking crew, involved no commercial archive footage (but several fair use clips), it was not burdened by cumbersome executive sign-off, and it lent itself well to a flexible editing schedule.
• has been acquired for nationwide broadcast, where it will reach an audience of about 2,000,000 on it's first showing, and at least as many additional viewers during its useful life, which we expect to be at least 10 years.

"The Wolf" Personnel

Peter Nicks, Producer/director
Craig Delaval Associate Producer / Videographer
Jeffery Friedman, Editor
Kim Roberts, Editor
Victoria Mauleon, Production Associate
Kelly Whelan, Marci Aroy, assistant editors
Mary Watkins, original music
Dave Nelson, Outpost Sound, sound design & mix
Loren Sorensen, Varitel Video, color correction
Jon Else, Executive producer

"The Wolf" Budget Summary

Production staff salaries and 10.5% fringes (producer, assoc prod, prod asst)	$53,300
Talent Fees	0
Contract personnel (advisors, transcription)	1,948
Acquisition and rights (original music, flat fee for non-exclusive rights)	4,000
Pre- Production	0
Production (videographer, recordist, video/audio/lighting equip, permits, DVCam & DAT tape, expendables)	9,542
Post-production (editors' & asst editor's salaries, 10.5% fringes, all FCP hardware and software, color correction, sound finishing, dubbing & master tapes)	24,055
Travel (air fare SFO - Wash DC, auto rental, hotel)	5,082
Website and cookbook	0
Promotion (still photographer)	750
Professional Services (insurance and legal services)	1,222
Office facilities and materials	0
Total	$101,983

Pictures of the day. Steven Spielberg collaborated posthumously with Stanley Kubrick and that begat AI. Hopefully Spielberg's collaboration with Peter Jackson on a series of movies based on the Belgian comic book character Tintin will be less sleep enducing. From a news story posted today on the InterWebs announcing the casting of Tintin:

Spielberg has been working with The Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson on how to bring Tintin, instantly recognisable by his blonde quiff and faithful side-kick Snowy the dog, to life. But it is not yet known which of the 23 Tintin stories will be filmed. And while Spielberg will direct one and Jackson one, it is still not known who will direct the third. They will be filmed back to back in the US and New Zealand, using the latest 3D technology. Spielberg said: “We want Tintin’s adventures to have the reality of a live action film and yet Peter and I felt that shooting them in a traditional live action format would simply not honour the distinctive look of the characters and world that Hergé created. The idea is that the films will look neither like cartoons nor like computer-generated animation. We’re making them look photo-realistic, the fibres of their clothing, the pores of their skin and each individual hair. They look exactly like real people - but real Hergé people.”

Herge people? Sounds spooky, huh? Herge was the pen name of Tintin's creator Georges Prosper Remi. Here's a clip promoting a Tintin stage play, with actual, not virtual, actors running in London's West End.