The Documentary Life

There are many ways that we documentary filmmakers take care of ourselves, or perhaps maybe more aptly put, do not take care of ourselves. And with the long hours, sometimes limited budgets, sometimes other day jobs, family life, you name it.. it’s no wonder that we doc lifers sometimes tend to neglect our emotional and physical well being.

Which is why I’m here to give you a little primer to help steer you back to the path of emotional, physical, and creative success in your own doc life.

Documentary filmmaker (and big proponent of meditation!), Rebecca Dreyfus joined me in our shared Conversation. Dreyfus has been working in documentary for 20 years, since her first feature, Bye-Bye Babushka first came on the scene and was quickly noticed by documentary legend, Albert Maysles, who would then go on to be lead camera in Dreyfus’ critically-acclaimed follow-up, Stolen. A mentorship would soon blossom from this collaboration.

Dreyfus’ current documentary film, On Meditation, takes a look at the age-old practice of meditation as told through the eyes of established names who attribute the practice to much of their personal and professional success.

• the value of true persistence as a documentary filmmaker
• the importance of a mentor and how to go about finding one
• key advice for first-time documentary filmmakers
• what part the practice of meditation plays in the creative process

° Watch the trailer for Rebecca Dreyfus’ On Meditation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1_g5F_mp14

° Trailer for the acclaimed documentary film Stolen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG0-st-5H6E

As mentioned in our #DocLifer Community Question of the Week, check out the trailer for fellow #DocLifer, Jaime’s current documentary project, Masters of Mahjong

https://vimeo.com/220673394

Free Music Archive – Special Thank You to recording artist, Dlay who supplied the song Whatever for this week’s episode of TDL. You too can download his music or other artist’s music by going to Free Music Archive today!

If you have found value in this podcast please leave a review so it can become more visible to others. Simply click the link and then click on the Ratings and Reviews tab to make your entry. Thank you for your support!

Zoltan Torok is one of the world’s premiere wildlife filmmakers. He spends days, sometimes weeks-on-end in some of the most remote regions of the earth, behind some of the most fantastical-looking camera setups, in order to bring you mere seconds of footage of some animal species that neither you nor just about anyone else has ever seen before.

For our shared conversation, I had the pleasure of speaking with him about this often appreciated but not fully understood niche of cinema known as wildlife documentary.

• why spending time in nature is just as important as learning the techniques of filmmaking for an aspiring wildlife filmmaker
• what the responsibility is for a wildlife filmmaker to show the reality of certain wildlife settings
• how preparation, research, and patience are critical components to the wildlife filmmaker’s work
• the precarious, sometimes dangerous situations that a wildlife filmmaker might find themselves in
• 3 things needed to start becoming a wildlife filmmaker

Here in the USA, we are in the midst of our Thanksgiving holiday. It’s a time where we get together with family and/or friends, share an extravagant meal, and we reflect on the love and appreciation that we have for the people that we have in our lives.

I thought what better way to express the gratitude that I have for you, #doclifers, as well as the appreciation that I have for being able to live my doc life, than to open up this week’s podcast with a segment that examines 5 things that all of us #doclifers can be truly thankful for.

After listening to the episode, I do hope that you’ll consider leaving some comments about what you might be thankful for in your own doc life!

Watch the amazing full length wildlife documentary, WILD HUNGARY: A Water Wonderland, a film that has specific scenes that are referenced in this episode!

https://vimeo.com/153106452/d726db627e

If you have found value in this podcast please leave a review so it can become more visible to others. Simply click the link and then click on the Ratings and Reviews tab to make your entry. Thank you for your support!

If editing were something we could learn from a manual or Youtube videos, we could all become great storytellers in fairly short order. We could just sit down, learn a few keys, maybe read a theory book or two, and we’d be off, right? But editing, of course, does not work like that.

If you want to truly learn how to become a professional-level editor you’re going to not only need to immerse yourself in the right movies, read the right books, study examples of editing techniques, but you’re also going to need to learn some much deeper layers of the editing process.

Enter editing extraordinaire, Paddy Bird, who has taken his 20+ yrs of editing in television and documentary film, and come up with the most comprehensive, thought-provoking, ingenious way to learn how to edit. And he has distilled it into an online course known as Inside the Edit, a program that today is making massive waves in the world of post production.

• Paddy Bird’s journey as a professional editor
• how editing the documentary is far more complex than narrative
• how to speak the language of editing
• how to have good communication, even with a difficult director
• how Paddy’s programme, Inside the Edit, is THE comprehensive course for learning how to become a professional editor

If you want the best definition of what an editor does, you must check out this video that the good people of Inside the Edit put together. This is literally so spot-on it hurts. I will forever direct people to this video who want to know why an editor is one of the most important elements to a film.

https://vimeo.com/90125079

Watch this video to learn more about the course and decide if it’s right for you..

https://vimeo.com/103516764

Paddy has very generously offered #DocLifers a 25% discount on his ground-breaking creative editing course, Inside The Edit. To apply the discount simply enter MYDOCLIFE at checkout.

If you have found value in this podcast please leave a review so it can become more visible to others. Simply click the link and then click on the Ratings and Reviews tab to make your entry. Thank you for your support!

After all of the time, energy, and money spent getting one’s documentary film to completion, how does an independent documentary filmmaker market and distribute their doc once it’s finished? In this week’s opening segment we’ll discuss 5 best ways to market and distribute your documentary.

Podcast Conversation

And in our shared conversation, we talk with Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective alum, Nathan Fitch, whose documentary, Island Soldier, is making big waves on the documentary film circuit, including stops at Full Frame, Hot Docs, and this week, in DocNYC. Among topics discussed:

• How a stint in the Peace Corps led to his documentary filmmaking career
• The importance of becoming entrenched with a community that you’d like to film
• How one goes about applying to film with the military
• How the documentary life is not an easy one, but it’s a worthy one

Watch the trailer for Island Solider

https://vimeo.com/203928301

Learn more about Impact Producer position & download free booklet & video! The Impact Field Guide & Toolkit

Places to discover more about the Impact Producer and these entities can help get your film the outreach that it deserves:

POV

Fledgling Fund

Tugg

If you have found value in this podcast please leave a review so it can become more visible to others. Simply click the link and then click on the Ratings and Reviews tab to make your entry. Thank you for your support!

To edit a documentary can be a tricky, sometimes frustrating business, even for the more seasoned veterans. But for the less experienced, the edit can just be a downright intimidating, or worse, even project-ending phase.

We, of course, do not want this to happen to any of you. So for the opening salvo of this week’s episode, we’ve put together a list of suggestions that will not only help ease your editing pain, but it should get you to be able to edit in a more efficient manner!

Podcast Conversation

In our conversation this week, we spoke with television & marketing vet, commercial and documentary filmmaker, C. Fitz, who while finishing up on her first doc (ShowGirls, Provincetown, MA), came across instant inspiration for her latest documentary, Jewel’s Catch One, in the form of her awe-inspiring and charismatic subject, Jewel Thais-Williams.

• can documentary films truly create change?
• how can our documentary subjects sometimes inspire us as people?
• how her reality tv experience informed her documentary work
• how social media is now critical to a documentary filmmaker

As mentioned in our opening segment on 5 Ways to Edit More Efficiently, number four was Create a Drive Infrastructure. As promised, I’ve taken a screenshot of the drive infrastructure that I always use on projects. Feel free to use yourself. Play around with it, see what works for you, what doesn’t, add or subtract folders as you see fit. And by all means, share with us some of your drive infrastructure ideas, by leaving a comment below!

Watch the trailer for Jewel’s Catch One

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXlSVZdYQ2w

Please consider helping get C. Fitz and Jewel Thais-Williams get Jewel’s Catch One out and into the world by making a contribution of any size to their GoFundMe campaign.

If you have found value in this podcast please leave a review so it can become more visible to others. Simply click the link and then click on the Ratings and Reviews tab to make your entry. Thank you for your support!

Believing in yourself as a documentary filmmaker is critical to seeing one’s documentary project through. With so many pitfalls and obstacles along the way, not to mention a multitude of different aspects and phases to the craft of filmmaking, how does one even get to the pre-production phase of making a documentary film, let alone see it all the way through? Well, taking a giant Leap of Faith would be a great way to start.

Taking and staying with your Leap of Faith, is one of the most powerful things that you can do for yourself as a documentary filmmaker. After all, if you don’t fully believe in your capability to pull off making a film, why should anyone else?

And in our first segment of episode #45, I take a look at what it means to take the Leap of Faith, how the faith grows as you practice it, and what you can do, as a filmmaker, in order to both, take that initial leap, and then continue the faith all the way through completion of your project.

In our world nothing can be more certain than death and… film. No, really. Just ask the guys who have recently produced and distributed (for free!) the new six-part documentary series that explores the various cultures of death in America. Their series is called The After Hours Club, and for this week’s documentary industry guest segment, I had the pleasure of sitting down with both executive producer Morgan St. Knight, as well as director of photography, Christian Monckeberg (MTechProMedia), who had much to say about producing and selling a web series that revolves around a subject, that for most is a tad scary, if not downright taboo.

• how and why Morgan, an industry vet with 25 years of television experience, decided to break away from the pack and produce the type of series that most would only scoff at
• why Morgan felt that it was important to have all crew members actually be a part of the film
• how DoP, Christian, went from years of corporate video, and took the leap of faith and joined on to shoot for The After Hours Club
• why the filmmakers believe that distributing season one for free on the internet is the right call for the project

As mentioned in episode #45, if you’re in the North Carolina area and are interested in joining #DocLifer Julie’s documentary filmmaking meetup group, click HERE.

Also mentioned in the episode was the Bechdel Test. You can check out some info as well as find out what films score high on the Bechdel by going HERE.

Watch the debut episode of The After Hours Club series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-u4qYImohk

If you have found value in this podcast please leave a review so it can become more visible to others. Simply click the link and then click on the Ratings and Reviews tab to make your entry. Thank you for your support!

Gordon Quinn has been making documentary films for over 50+ years with his landmark company, Kartemquin Films.

You may not know his name, but you’ve most likely seen one, if not a number of the films that he has been associated with. His impact has been so extensive and so broad in the field of documentary, that International Documentary Association (IDA) gave him the Career Achievement Award in 2015.

I had the distinct pleasure of holding a conversation with Mr. Quinn this week and we covered a number of topics including:

• the need and formation for Kartemquin
• how the Oscar-nominated Hoop Dreams influenced a generation of doc filmmakers and filmgoers
• how the executive producer role for docs is vastly different than with narrative features
• whether or not documentary can truly make positive social change

In the opening segment, I decided to take a cue from fellow #DocLifer, Richard Simko, he sent official request for TDL to do a show that talks about the one person crew. It is not exactly a rare event when we documentary filmmakers sometimes find ourselves having to work on our projects all on our own. We become the shooter, sound person, director, interviewer, editor.

I examine some of the best ways in which we, the one person crew, can make the most effective films with the smallest amount of man power. Some of the topics covered:

• how to best pack and transport your gear
• secret audio tips for the solo filmmaker
• how to appear as if you’ve shot with two cameras
• how to stay powered up

Indiewire wrote an article about the pros and cons of the One Person Crew.

Watch the trailer for Kartemquin‘s Oscar-nominated Hoop Dreams:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=Ph2Y-epihlk

In the show we talk about packing and transporting one’s gear. Well, if you’re looking for a cheap and decent camera cart alternative check out filmmaker Lee Clements’ handmade camera cart!

If you have found value in this podcast please leave a review so it can become more visible to others. Simply click the link and then click on the Ratings and Reviews tab to make your entry. Thank you for your support!

For today’s episode of TDL I’m going to do something a little different. Today, I’m going to be asking you, my fellow #doclifer, some questions. I’d like to discover a little bit more about who you are, friend.

° What sorts of things are you doing to best support your #doclife?

° Are you working in the film/tv industry, while you pursue your passion of documentary filmmaking?

° Perhaps you’re quite consciously doing something entirely unrelated to video production, in an effort to make sure and never view filmmaking as work?

Let’s discuss this, shall we?

And in our shared conversation with a doc industry guest person, we talk with the multi-talented Bradford Rogers, aka The Multimedia Ninja, among other things, about:

• what it means to be a multimedia person
• how/why storytelling plays a part in all of a multimedia person’s mediums
• how the freelance filmmaker can obtain more work via Upwork.com
• how podcasting is another way that a filmmaker can tell story

The Multimedia Ninja’s podcast. I might recommend listening to his newer style format – hinted at in this episode – which started out during Hurricane Irma. Damn You, Irma!

Check out Upwork.com to discover some ways in which you, #DocLifer, might be able to put some of your filmmaking experience to good use!

#DocLifer Jonathan, wrote in, setting me square on my assumption that basically all tv news B-roll was not very good. Jonathan was not only kind enough to correct me, but he also sent in some links for all of us to take a look at. These are pieces of work that emanated from the television news station that he works at. Thanks for passing these on to us, Jonathan!!

° A man made his own Ninja Warrior course to practice for the show:

https://vimeo.com/171451107

° A well-loved local fire chief who supported a baseball program. This was the first game since he passed:

https://vimeo.com/221979419

If you have found value in this podcast please leave a review so it can become more visible to others. Simply click the link and then click on the Ratings and Reviews tab to make your entry. Thank you for your support!

In this increasingly growing world of content creators, but ever shrinking world of actual distributors who allow you to retain at least some rights to your work, how can the independent documentary filmmaker best work with the big boys of content distribution like Amazon, Netflix, and YouTube?

Well, film/tv industry vet, Patrick McGowan, believes that he has an answer. And it is his company, BlackBox. A company that is poised to change the very paradigm in which creatives make the work and all, in turn, co-own the work, and then forever make money on their work.

In our shared conversation, Pat shares, among other things, his reasons why we, as creatives, should all be wary of selling our films and shows to the Netflix’s and Amazons of the world, lest we become commodities of our own industry.

Pat sees user-generated & owned content as the future and he’s built a platform that helps creators do just that. It’s an engaging conversation that will make you think about how you approach your work, who you collaborate with, and how you can all best make a living selling your work.

In our opening segment, I take a look at the idea of documentary film as a means for creating awareness and perhaps even some positive change in the world. How are we making films in a way to be creating some impetus for change? Many of us are using our films as a tool for social activism. But what about those who simply want to create a story, and any sort of awareness or change for an issue, is secondary to that story, at best? I would argue that both can be equally as effective in opening the hearts and minds of the world around us. And that collectively, we as documentary filmmakers are having some positive impact on the world around us… one film at a time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAGp0j57LNE

Go to BlackBox, Create a Free Account, and start selling your footage today!

If you have found value in this podcast please leave a review so it can become more visible to others. Simply click the link and then click on the Ratings and Reviews tab to make your entry. Thank you for your support!

Getting your first documentary grant can be akin to getting into your first documentary film festival. That is, it is often the first one that is the most difficult one to get. Getting that first grant can often be the keystone to making other grants happen.

So what are the tricks to getting that first grant for your documentary film? Well, that’s exactly what we’ll tackle in episode #41. We’ve had a lot of feedback that you are looking for more information on writing treatments and applying for documentary film grants. This can serve as just the beginning. (As there will be much more coming!)

In our shared conversation with a doc industry guest, we’ll have a conversation with Jennifer Brea, the filmmaker behind Unrest, a documentary film that has taken the festival circuit and the medical community by storm.

She is the star (if you will) of this deeply personal exploration of chronic illness and how through documentary filmmaking, she has been able to find some answers not only for herself, but for a global population that are all suffering from the condition known as ME/CFS.

Unrest has its theatrical premiere on the day that we release this episode!

Watch the trailer for Unrest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvK5s9BNLzA&t=1s

If you have found value in this podcast please leave a review so it can become more visible to others. Simply click the link and then click on the Ratings and Reviews tab to make your entry. Thank you for your support!