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?

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.

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.

Newly Released Kubrick Documentaries on DVD

Here's a snip from a review of the reissue earlier this month of a box set of special editions of five Stanley Kubrick movies on DVD:

It’s been a long, typically Kubrickian wait, but finally a worthy DVD boxset gathers five of his greatest films in scrubbed-up Special Editions (also available separately). And boy, has it been worth it. Each movie comes with its own commentary and (bar Full Metal Jacket) a second disc of gripping, intimate docs and featurettes.

The biggest of the bunch is 2001: A Space Odyssey, the film in which Kubrick went to infinity and beyond – a year before man set foot on the moon. Hours of Making Of material and legacy assessment begin with lengthy new doc The Making Of A Myth, presented by James Cameron, no less. There’s vintage footage of Kubrick on set and past and present interviews with Arthur C Clarke. There’s also fresh chinwags with Kubrick’s producer, tech crew and, well, seemingly everyone else, from William Friedkin and Spider-Man FX guru John Dykstra to Alien screenwriter Dan O’Bannon and doughy US critic Roger Ebert. Effects maestro Douglas Trumbull and Kubrick’s wife Christiane recall the cosmic scale of the director’s demands (“Stanley would walk around saying, ‘Please draw me an image that doesn’t remind me of anything in a colour that doesn’t exist’”). Trumbull spills yet more info on the commentary, although cardboard star Keir Dullea fills the dead air with empty babble.

No danger of that from Malcolm McDowell. The bulging-eyed Brit is a tremendous presence on A Clockwork Orange’s chat-track (he’s joined by doc-maker Nick Redman) and on the terrific 86-minute doc O Lucky Malcolm!, where he rattles off fantastic stories from his entire career and gets saluted by a who’s who of the Brit film industry. Two more smashing docs complete the disc: Still Tickin’ wades through the shit-storm surrounding the film’s release, withdrawal and return, while Great Bolshy Yarblockos! sees another galaxy of filmmakers (hello, Mr Spielberg!), collaborators and critics unload a massively informed, anecdote-rich Making Of.

Nine years after Kubrick’s mesmerising horrorshow of stylised swagger and surgical intellect became the most controversial film in Brit cinema history, the director returned with The Shining. Kubrick’s stay at the Overlook gets the same quality treatment across a superb commentary by steadicam inventor Garrett Brown and biographer John Baxter, plus two utterly comprehensive Making Of docs.

Each runs to less than 30 minutes, but not a second is wasted: the weight of first-hand accounts, insight and pure affection on show here is phenomenal. Vivian Kubrick’s precious mini-doc, shot hand-held during filming, survives from the previous DVD release and there’s a further bonus in an interview with Kubrick’s longtime composer Wendy Carlos.

It was another seven years before Full Metal Jacket’s double-barrelled assault on ‘Nam and a further 12 before Eyes Wide Shut proved that even the world’s biggest movie stars would bow to Kubrick’s might. Gangs Of New York screenwriter Jay Cocks and stars Vincent D’Onofrio, R Lee Ermey and Adam Baldwin lay on Jacket’s cut’n’paste commentary, sharply edited for minimum waffle.

The disc’s Making Of doc doesn’t disappoint either, with much marvel directed at Ermey’s “endless resource for obscenities”, the fact that East London doubled for Vietnam and how Kubrick coaxes a performance (says D’Onofrio: “‘Do it again, do it better.’ He’ll say it right to you”). Just a single-discer mind, but in a boxset packed with great stories, Ermey gets to tell what might be the best…

“We’re driving in Stanley’s wife’s brand new SUV,” explains Full Metal Jacket’s iconic drill sergeant. “We’re looking for a place to do a scene. Stanley’s driving and pointing and talking. And I’m sitting there watching us driving towards a 6ft deep ditch. Stanley, as he talked, drove off into this ditch and the car went over on its side. Stanley reached up, pushed the door open, climbed up... and he’s still talking. ‘We’ll put up the tent over here...’ Then he climbs down from the car and starts walking back to the camp. Can you believe this shit?”

Kubrick’s fin de siècle sign-off Eyes Wide Shut – another masterwerk, not about sex, but about capitalism – gets the smart discussion it deserves in the commentary by Sydney Pollack and historian Peter Loewenberg, while the second disc devotes itself to the method and madness of the legendary shoot (listed as The Guinness Book of World Records’ ‘Longest Constant Movie Shoot’). There’s also a look at Kubrick’s numerous unrealised dream projects in two more stellar docs.

I guess this is material you won't be seeing in our upcoming documentary look at Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon.

Kubrick and Asperger

Are you familiar with the theory that Stanley Kubrick suffered from a highly functional form of autism called Asperger Syndrome? Here's a snip from an autism website:

People with Asperger's Syndrome usually have normal or above normal IQs. Asperger's can be described as an inability to understand how to interact socially.

Frederic Raphael would likely dispute that Stanley Kubrick had an IQ bigger than his IQ, but Kubrick does hold the Guinness Book World Record for the most number of retakes for a movie at 127. Try to judge for yourself if Stanley Kubrick was a highly functional autistic while watching this documentary. Vivian Kubrick offers the commentary track. She was seventeen when she made this behind the scenes look at the making of The Shining, during which her dad broke the record while directing Shelley Duvall.

Here's more from the InterWebs on AS

Asperger syndrome is one of five Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD) and it is increasingly being referred to as an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Asperger syndrome is characterized by deficiencies in social and communication skills. It is considered to be part of the autistic spectrum and is differentiated from other Autism Spectrum Disorders in that early development is normal and there is no language delay. It is possible for people with Aspergers syndrome to have learning disabilities concurrently with Asperger syndrome. Asperger's syndrome is often not identified in early childhood, and many individuals do not receive diagnosis until after puberty or when they are adults. In most cases, they are aware of their differences and recognize when they need support to maintain an independent life. There are instances where adults do not realize that they have Asperger syndrome personalities until they are having difficulties with relationships and/or attending relationship counseling. Recognition of the very literal and logical thought processes that are symptomatic of Asperger syndrome can be a tremendous help to both partners in a close/family relationship.

Aspergers syndrome is sometimes viewed as a syndrome with both advantages and disadvantages, and notable adults with Asperger's syndrome or autism have achieved success in their fields. Prominent Aspergers syndrome-diagnosed individuals include Nobel Prize-winning economist Vernon Smith, electropop rocker Gary Numan, Vines frontman Craig Nicholls, and Satoshi Tajiri, the creator of Pokémon. Some Aspergers syndrome researchers speculate that well-known figures, including Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Glenn Gould, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Stanley Kubrick, had Asperger syndrome because they showed some Aspergers syndrome-related tendencies or behaviors, such as intense interest in one subject, or social problems. Einstein's brain was investigated after his death. Einstein did not start talking until he was three and he frequently repeated sentences obsessively up to the age of seven. As an adult his lectures were notoriously confusing.

Abnormalities in the Sylvian fissure of Einstein's brain could possibly be associated with autism. I also read a biography of Walt Disney and the descriptions of his mercurial character at work, where he fired animators for minor slights, and his poor ability to judge people contrasted with his vast imagination and brilliant insight and creativity suggest Asperger as well. There is a lively debate going on in the InterWebs around these post-mortem diagnosis of famous people who may have suffered from autism. Names like Emily Dickinson, H. P. Lovecraft, Syd Barret, Andy Warhol, Greta Garbo and Paul Cezzane are mentioned as possible "aspies."

Kubrick Bio - Part the Second

Here is a snip from the Stanley Kubrick entry on the All Movie Guide web site:

In 1940 Stanley Kubrick's father Jack, a physician, sent the twelve year old Stanley to Pasadena, California to stay with his uncle Martin Perveler. Stanley was considered intelligent despite poor grades at school and Jack hoped that a change of scenery would produce better academic performance. Returning to the Bronx in 1941 for his last year of grammar school, there seemed to be little change in his attitude or his results. Hoping to find something to interest his son, Jack introduced Stanley to chess, with the desired result. Kubrick took to the game passionately, and quickly became a skilled player. Chess would become an important device for Kubrick in later years, often as tool for for dealing with recalcitrant actors, but also as an artistic motif in his films.

Jack Kubrick's decision to give his son a camera for his thirteenth birthday would be an even wiser move: Kubrick became an avid photographer, and would often make trips around New York taking photographs which he would develop in a friend's darkroom. After selling an unsolicited photograph to Look Magazine, Kubrick began to associate with their staff photographers, and at the age of seventeen was offered a job as an apprentice photographer.

In the next few years, Kubrick had regular assignments for "Look", and would become a voracious movie-goer. Together with friend Alexander Singer, Kubrick planned a move into film, and in 1950 sank his savings into making the documentary Day of the Fight (1951). This was followed by several short commissioned documentaries (Flying Padre (1951), and The Seafarers (1952)), but by attracting investors and hustling chess games in Central Park, Kubrick was able to make Fear and Desire (1953) in California.

Filming this movie was not a happy experience; Kubrick's marriage to high school sweetheart Toba Metz did not survive the shooting. Despite mixed reviews for the film itself, Kubrick received good notices for his obvious directorial talents.

More Kubrick documentary shorts from his early days: Flying Padre for RKO

The Seafarers produced for the SIU seafarers union, in three parts:

Documentary Cookbook Preface

In researching the Kubrick Napoleon project I came across this manifesto for a new movement in documentary film making. I believe in it strongly enough to try and stick to its precepts in making the Kubrick Napoleon documentary. The manifesto is in two parts. I have posted the prefatory material below.

Documentary Cookbook

*** DRAFT 02/20/02
The Center for New Documentary
Graduate School Of Journalism
University Of California, Berkeley
Introduction

The Center For New Documentary was established in the fall of 2000 to explore, test, and promote new ways of producing good quality long form television documentaries at very low cost. We opened our doors (one door, actually) in response to a rising chorus of frustration over the skyrocketing cost of mainstream documentary production, and an ever deepening exasperation with fundraising. We sensed that enormous talent and energy were being wasted in stalled production and grant writing. As a way to help break the logjam, we invited several filmmakers to experiment with very inexpensive production, and to tell us what they found.

We are not trying to make all documentaries cheaply. We do see the new little cameras as "ball point pens of television" but we have no interest in abandoning 50 years of hard won documentary craft. We are looking for those few stories and production methods that naturally lend themselves to the very low cost production with high-quality. Without compromising journalistic integrity or style, can some films be done for a fifth, a tenth, or even a hundredth of the prevailing cost? Can some of public television possibly approach the cost of public radio? Can we make a living at it? Will there be any pleasure in it? In an increasingly stagnant, market-constrained TV landscape, can low-cost production boast its own craft and virtuosity? Can it co-exist in tandem with high cost traditional (archive/witness/observational/narrated/series-driven) documentary? What strong, journalistically sound, adventuresome films for prime time television can be made by a grown up with a DVCam and Final Cut Pro? Is the whole idea self-destructive?

In practical terms, we invited three filmmakers, Peter Nicks, Lourdes Portillo, and Albert Maysles, to see what films could be well made for $100,000 per hour---about one-fifth the going rate for prime time documentaries. The obvious question is "Where do you get $100,000?" More on that later, but finding 100K is certainly easier than finding half a million, and we see the 100K target as only a first step in really drastic reductions for some films.

Our main concern is not with beginning filmmakers, students, or neighborhood filmmakers, but with journeyman documentary makers who already know the ropes, and are trying reach a large television audience. (The Center's work is not part of the regular graduate studies curriculum at the School of Journalism. Likewise, we are not skilled at shepherding photojournalists into television magazine work or breaking news; that is being well handled by Dick Halstead and others at the "Platypus" workshops, www.digitaljournalist.com. Likewise, international digital journalism is being well considered by the Pew International Journalism Program www.pewfellowships.org).

By now, virtually everyone working in documentary in this country has brushed up against DV production, and many producers have embraced it exclusively. But despite the emergence of a robust folk culture surrounding digital non-fiction, we still see little evidence of filmmakers aggressively searching out stories, styles, and techniques which naturally fit the new tools. Most of the work seems aimed and squeezing blood from the turnip, by digitally making the same sorts of traditional films with the same methods for less money.

Many cost saving devices are already in play. Most of it is not rocket science, but rather a cagey sort of "preventive production," as described below. It turns out that the technical advantages of DV are not as much of a cost lever as personnel time or rights costs. Story choice seems to make the greatest difference, followed by extreme schedule efficiency, and extreme technical discipline. Then comes a nearly dogmatic avoidance of archive footage, archive music, and travel. Everyone gets paid professional rates, and cost savings are achieved by adjusting methods and schedules, not day rates. We look for generally non-technical "evergreen" devices that will long outlast changes in hardware and software.

The Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and Gerbode Foundation stepped forward to fund our first round of work. The Rockefeller Foundation supports the development and distribution of a "Documentary Cookbook." Our first project, "The Wolf" by Peter Nicks, was completed for $100,000, and has been acquired by ABC Nightline for broadcast over two nights this spring, where it will probably be seen by 2,000,000 people. It's a good start.

Following is some of what we've learned. Please send your experiences, suggestions, lessons, tips, lists of what to do, etc, to dvtv@berkeley.edu. Please do not send proposals; that will come later.

The Problem

It had become clear by the early 1990s that most available documentary money, especially in pubic television, was going to a shrinking and increasingly risk-free pool of veteran producers making increasingly risk-free documentaries. These were more often than not earnest, predictable, and sometimes brilliant programs about dead people. For reasons involving public policy, the commercialization of public television, corporate consolidation in commercial television, partisan congressional politics, and the rising costs of production, new voices and new forms could emerge only with great difficulty. Even well established documentary makers could seldom explore new ground.

The average cost of a prime time documentary television hour had risen to around $500,000, of which a large portion generally had to come from the advertising budgets of ratings-hungry corporate underwriters. As the funding and underwriting stakes rose, idiosyncratic "one-off" programs and unpredictable forms like cinema verite all but vanished from public television, except for work within ITVS and POV. Long form was dead at the networks. HBO soldiered on, and together with MTV has become generally more accepting of idiosyncratic fare.

The cost of traditional production rose, due largely to 16mm film costs (before the wholesale transition to video), skyrocketing archive footage and music costs, travel costs, and long production and post-production schedules often made even longer by delay in executive sign off.

As independent producers, we knew even by the early �90s that a good one-hour prime time idea pretty well condemned us to raising half a million dollars, and that it would take five years of fundraising---work for which we had no talent, no training, and less than no interest. Small, experienced independent production houses and producers of on-offs were particularly hard hit, and the pipeline became increasingly clogged with unfunded and partially funded $500K projects. Henry Hampton took ten years to fully fund Eyes on the Prize. Cadillac Desert required 307 separate funding applications, and for Sing Faster: The Stagehands Ring Cycle, Jon Else prepared and submitted 137 separate grant applications over nine years. Who does not have a seed-funded, embryonic, or half-grown single program or mini-series festering on the shelf?

In a trend that has accelerated ever since the ratings success of The Civil War, public television especially embraced huge, market-friendly series projects while generally consigning single programs to the dustbin. We came to live in a world of exemplary but chillingly expensive series and mini-series like Africans in America, Frontline, The American Experience, and New York. But not every idea was a series idea, and not every one-off fit into an established strand.

We complained that Ken Burns got all the money (not noticing that his passions for serial American history correlate almost exactly with funders' desires). We became a culture of complaint, with journeyman filmmakers frustrated at moving beyond traditional forms, and young professionals frustrated at trying to launch new projects. The important role of television documentary in vigorous civil dialogue, in collective memory, education, entertainment, and public policy formation was not well served. Over the years, a great pool of young documentary talent became increasingly unhinged from prime time television.

The aggregate level of support for long form documentaries at the networks, PBS, cable, foundations, and endowments, has not increased significantly, nor is it likely to. As producers scramble to get anything made---anything---these funding imperatives erode the traditional fire wall between non-fiction television and the marketplace, and journalistic standards begin to erode. Despite rare exceptions like The Farmer's Wife and the heroic efforts at ITVS, POV, HBO, and a few foundations, idiosyncratic one-offs are off the table.

The new Juggernauts

Some production institutions have chosen to attack the problem of escalating cost with brute force, by designing ever-larger documentary projects as "product lines" intended for a market-driven television system. These typically include the films themselves, web sites, interactive enhancement, outreach programs, and curriculum materials, as well as companion books, videos, CD-ROMs, DVDs, and CDs sold via on-air advertising. Many public television venues are, in fact, now demanding that proposals come through the door not as films, but as "projects" with web sites, outreach, and educational materials. Even the cheapest documentary can now easily balloon into an expensive multi-layered project. Cable channels appear more flexible, and somewhat less demanding.

Many producers now find themselves in a surreal vortex where the longer a project takes to fund, the more it costs, and the more it costs, the longer it takes to fund, and the longer it takes, the more it costs� ad infinitum. The more films cost, the less risk the funders can stand; at $1,000,000 per hour, who can dare risk a ratings misfire? Some half-funded Juggernauts have been inching their way through the system for years.

Hamster Wheel

Then, there were those of us who scampered to make as many corporate videos, TV commercials, airline tech reports, depositions and wedding videos as we could, trying desperately to save a few hundred thousand dollars for MY BIG FILM. We should live so long.

A few good, cheap, fast films

We are interested in the exact opposite approach: drastically limiting cost in order to get more documentaries made more quickly. We want to break the queue by lowering the entry fee, not raising it. It is the television equivalent of watercolor instead of oil paint, mimeograph instead of linotype, garage bands instead of stadium rock, guerrillas instead of armies. The aim is to find methods and stories that are so naturally inexpensive that they can slip below the radar of financing. It worked in the �60s.

We were first inspired by public radio, seeing the refreshing power of programs like the early "This American Life," "Lost & Found Sound" and "Soundprint." There were glimmers of real possibility in late 90s with The Cruise, Salt Men Of Tibet, digital work by Ricky Leacock, experiments at Frontline, Nightline, and the National Film Board Of Canada, and the narrative productions of Jon Jost and the Dogma '95 group. And on the un-cool sidelines, a shadow world of very fast very cheap and sometimes very good corporate production had also taken hold.

An old truism in Hollywood is, "Cheap, fast, good� Pick any two." Clearly with the right methods, some small percentage of documentaries can be cheap, fast, and good. In the bargain, as we found with "The Wolf," there is the prospect of retaining true independence by avoiding early funding from any specific broadcaster, and thus being able to offer the finished documentary to all possible broadcasters.

Part 1 will follow in a future post.

Picture of the day. I could make a rude joke about the real reason Napoleon stuck his hand in his clothes but if the current governor of New York had been a French politician instead of a Dick Tracy square-jawed type he could have survived the discovery of his sessions with prostitutes from the Emperor's Club with mere public scorn and cries of hipocracy and not calls for his resignation and impeachment. Or maybe he should have been a US senator from Louisiana. Lagnappe. Click the link below to hear about the Napoleon who fascinated me as a tot in the 1960s.

A Kubrick Documentarian Speaks

Here is a snip from an website offering critical analysis of Stanley Kubrick' body of film work. It is taken from an interview with Paul Joyce, the man behind the British Channel 4 documentary "Stanley Kubrick: The Invisible Man." Joyce had to tread lightly around the subject because Kubrick was still alive and of course many of his associates did not want to speak ill of him, but if you watch the video you will hear some unvarnished opinions nevertheless. Joyce also has a cogent analysis of the fair use of clips from other films without clearances from the copyright owner in a documentary. I wonder if Joyce would be interested in revisiting the cult of Kubrick a generation later? The Kubrick video links in the sidebar of this blog are to the You Tube version of that documentary.

What attracted you on doing a documentary on Kubrick?

Well he's probably one of the greatest living directors, is the first answer to that. I grew up with his work and he shifted shifted from genre to genre with such ease and his films are in a sense (even though can call them genre pieces), really unquantifiable in a certain level. Obviously, The Shining as a horror movie, but its very other things beyond that and I think its that and the extraordinary ability to take on genre pieces, as indeed in the case of 2001, and make something which isn't a science fiction movie. So I think that's a long answer but its a complicated decision in a sense to see who your going to do. There's a limited number of great directors, in the case of Kubrick. Channel 4 at that point were putting together a season of his films, so one was able to match the documentary to the season, so that was a additional reason to do him.

Is there any particular Kubrick film that you like?

I like them all actually, in their own way. The Killing is one of my favorites, given the strictures of budget and time. But its clear that he was a young man who was really pushing the boundary of his own ability in a really exciting way, which went on to the next film, Paths Of Glory, which similarly is a young man's film. When you think about the great war, the subject he was dealing with, there were mainly young men involved in that, and that's a young man's film about young men in war, and I think if he moves on, the work becomes more mature and more considered, as he gets older. But theirs something highly energized all those movies which appeals to me.

So how did you contact Mr. Kubrick for agreeing to do the documentary?

He didn't agree.

He didn't?

I mean he didn't agree and he didn't disagree. He did co-operate. I communicated with him by fax and via his personal assistant.

Leon Vitali?

Yes, and who was a contact. I never received a reply from my faxes or letters to Kubrick, but I know that he saw them, so I kept him informed about the people I was intending or hoping to interview, and he never raised any objection. There was more a fear on the part of the participants, for example, I subsequently did a film on Robert Altman, to which Shelly Duvall contributed. Well she did a big interview at the time on Kubrick, which I never included in my film on Kubrick, because it was too explosive, the material. And she asked me to be very careful about using it. But at some point there is an additional sequence put in, which is Shelly Duvall talking about Stanley.

I remember seeing clips from Vivian Kubrick's documentary which showed Shelly and Kubrick not getting along very well together.

I think they got on quite well personally. I think they respected each other at a certain point. I think in that sequence which we extracted in our documentary (which Kubrick allowed us to do, which was very nice of him) I think he was playing up for the camera at that point frankly. He wanted to make a point and in fact, the worse exchange at the doorway, during the false snowstorm, he switches very cleverly from one point he's making to another, to really wrong foot her. Which is, if you look at it two or three times very clever, but its below the belt. I don't think she deserved that treatment.

Were you anyway hoping to take a fly on the wall approach of Kubrick working on a film in the initial planning stages of the documentary?

He wasn't a making a film then, though he has done one now. Basically, he won't allow anything recorded which doesn't have his full authority. He hasn't been filmed for thirty years. Have you seen the programme I've done on him?

I've seen it around five or six times.

Well, I mean Ken Adam talks about driving him to a press conference on Strangelove and he had to stop by the side of the road so that Kubrick could vomit, out of fear, and that was the last time he's done it. He's terribly, terribly, nervous at public encounters. He won't do it. He's like an actor with stage fright, he's a great actor but he can't go on stage....

I'm sure that would have upset Kubrick that I included [Fear and Desire] because he wanted to suppress the movie. But under the copyright laws of this country, you are able to extract for the purposes of criticism and review, extracts without the copyrights holders permission, and that's the route I took, and the channel have quite a history of that. Off course they fought one action against Warner Brothers on just that.

That was the documentary on ACO?

Indeed, and it went to a judicial review. And it was a majority decision in favour of the channel and Warner Brothers decided not to press it too the high court. Which was very wise, because they would have lost that.

I know Barraclough Carey got into trouble as well when they inserted scenes from ACO in their programme on censorship. Did you get away the same reason there?

Yes. That wasn't shown in the season for Channel 4, because it wasn't acquired for Television and he doesn't want it shown here. You can get it on laserdisc in the states and its shown in France regularly, so its a bit of a nonsense really. So as it not being a season film, we were covered. The Channel 4 lawyers, thought we were covered. It's how you use the clips. You cannot use them for illustration. You can't say "Kubrick's a great director" and you use a clip of something demonstrating how great he is. You can't do that. If somebody says, the sequence in Spartacus where Kirk Douglas is painted in different colours, to show the most vulnerable spots on the human body to aim for in mortal combat, and makes a point about that, you know that was a particular clever way to express Kirk Douglas' fear or whatever, if you then show that clip having described it in some detail, than that is some permissible use. But it has to be a very, very specific commentary on a specific sequence.

But of course, as one gets older and longer in the tooth on doing these things, it becomes easier to make sure you adhere to the context.

Are there any interviews that had to be cut out from the final film?

Well Shelly Duvall wasn't included for reasons that I've said, although it was really rather that Kubrick was finished by the time I got to Duvall. I would have had to have recut Kubrick, by which time it had been transmitted already. But for the sake of history, it might be worth doing that, if one could get the money. The only person who expressed some concern really, was Malcolm McDowell, who thought that this must have Kubrick's blessing and therefore his editorial control, this programme of mine.

Now, when I convinced him that Kubrick had nothing to do with it, and what I want to include in my film was entirely what I wanted to include --I didn't need to get Kubrick's permission --Malcolm was happy to do it. He'd never done that before, talked about ACO in that detail. So he was rather fearful that Kubrick would censor it or may censor it.

Did you try and obtain interviews with members of Kubrick's families or friends, i.e. Vivian Kubrick or Alex Singer?

I got to James B. Harris, which I thought was pretty close for that. Vivian was in America and untraceable at that point. She seems to have left the Kubrick household now and is traveling somewhere and doesn't seem to have made another film. It would have been interesting to talk to her but I couldn't trace her. We put out some calls, but nothing came back.

Alex Singer is a director I admire, but we felt that we were pretty well covered on that early stuff. Even though it became, or it can be construed that Kubrick feels that its more personal, than professional some of the comments in there. There's certain points where you go into to examine a mans creative genius and if they want talk about what a shit he is, I can't do much about it.

So you haven't heard anything about Kubrick's reaction to the documentary.

The only reaction I've had is from Warner Brothers, who I've talked too about other projects, and they say its still a sensitive matter with Stanley. So I would assume that he was not well pleased.

Picture of the day. Kubrick trained his camera on many misfits in his career and did not shy away from controversial subject matter. He took this picture for Look magazine of German dadaist George Grosz. Grosz rebelled against the anarchy of expressionism, the leading artistic force of the 1950's. How does that impulse square with Kubrick's desire to control and manipulate his public image as he grew as a film artist? Kubrick was content to remain an abstraction as a public figure, but then he seemed to encourage the perception that he was an obsessive eccentric. Food for thought. Here is a short documentary on the early Kubrick films.