By Kristen Chin

[dc]A[/dc] self-described “perennial schoolboy” at heart, Omar Mullick is both romantic daydreamer and pragmatic journalist. It’s in the first few moments speaking with him that I can tell why he is a documentary filmmaker. He loves to indulge in the whimsies and wonders of the world and capture its beauty, but some things need to be rendered in black-and-white. For example, he says, a journalist’s moral code is one and the same with their personal morals: The way he treats a subject in a film is with the same level of respect and humanity that he treats anyone else. In other words, people first, people first, people first.

[caption id="attachment_173612" align="alignright" width="450"] Omar Mullck[/caption]

I had the pleasure of speaking to Mullick about his 2022 documentary “Flight/Risk”, which probed the aftermath of back-to-back crashes of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, one in Indonesia in 2018 and the second in Ethiopia in 2019. In the two crashes combined, 346 people were killed.

There was no way a doc filmmaker could be on the scene when a crash happens. So Mullick’s decision was to follow several families of crash victims, a whistleblower from Boeing who tried to warn of problems with a new computer system in the MAX and a newspaper journalist, Dominic Gates, who won a Pulitzer Prize for team coverage of coverage of the crashes, the investigation and the insider culture of Boeing.

I interviewed Gates for a previous Storyboard piece about how a print reporter adjusted to being both source and star of Mullick’s documentary film. As aviation beat reporter for The Seattle Times, Gates has distinguished himself as an expert in that field. After the release of “Flight/Risk,” I was curious how he viewed the pros and cons of filmmaking versus print as journalistic mediums. His take: While film can reach a wider audience through more compelling storytelling, it can’t provide the deep detail or context that print can, particularly for complex stories that unspool over time.

That made me wonder what Mullick, as the filmmaker wondered about that perspective. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

[dc small]H[/dc]ow did you become interested in doing a story on the families and people impacted by the 737 MAX crashes?
I like to bring stories back to the lived experience. That’s what documentaries can do. They can catapult you into the point-of-view and empathetic experience of someone actually dealing with the issue at hand — and in a radical way.

What I also find compelling are stories of ordinary people who do extraordinary things. For example, “These Birds Walk” was a film featuring Abdul Sattar Edhi, who ran 70% of Pakistan’s social services and slept amongst the poor in the back of his office in Karachi. A man who worked for him said to me very early on, “It’s not that [Edhi] is extraordinary. He’s an ordinary man, but he has some extraordinary qualities.” I loved that because the film could have been a hagiography or a story that is equally mistrustful to me, which is making Napoleon or some other hero seem like just a regular guy. But I find both those extremes to be dissatisfying. What is compelling to me is that this is a mortal human being who has some extraordinary qualities.

Humans have always been attached to visual storytelling. I think it’s because of that magical moment where you suspend your own disbelief, your own thinking, even if just for an hour or two, and yield yourself to the experience of being in someone else’s shoes. That’s what drew me to tell a story about the families, rather than, for instance, Boeing or just the facts of the story.

I count Dominic Gates as one of those very fine individuals that I’ve been lucky to work with as well.

I imagine you interviewed more families than were featured in the film. How did you decide who would be in the film?
We spoke to a number of families and other people whom we would have liked to include, but some declined to be in the film. Perhaps they did not want to be as public about their stories as a documentary would invite. We were expecting that and I’m very proud that we respected their wishes. People should never feel like they have to participate in a film, no matter how sincere or genuine the film’s goals may be. That might seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how much bad faith you can witness in a documentary project that’s focused on its own ends. So we always supported people’s choice to participate or decline. It demonstrates an integrity around treating people as people first.

When families agreed to be part of the film, did you have to agree to any conditions?
No, but director/producer Karim Amer did something that would make most people’s jaw drop: In the appearance releases he didn’t limit what subjects could later retract. We also did not ask people to sign releases until after filming. I can’t remember how far after filming it was, but I do know that we had already sunk thousands of dollars into the film by that point. That’s what was right for this film. There were so many security concerns over what you could say and what you could be sued for saying that we had to allow people to speak freely and then mitigate later what could be shared. People can’t be expected to be fully aware of the legal parameters around them at all times when they’re speaking for hours into an interview.

What story craft lessons did you learn while making this film that will influence your future works?
I take great joy and satisfaction out of creating a great cinematic piece and taking the facts of a story and making it feel new and alive again for the audience.

What humbled me about this film was that I don’t know if I fulfilled the expectations I originally had to create the great cinematic piece I wanted to make. That usually bothers someone like me.

I did sound and I often shot and directed alone with our producer, Paul McGuire. I really wanted to achieve a new level in my craft. But it wasn’t until I sat and watched the film with the audience that I realized what was really important was that people got the message and the content of the film even without me hitting that bar.

What I realized was that I did create a great film, but perhaps in a different way than I had expected. I might say I did it with a simpler, more straightforward approach — maybe a more honest approach. It met the bar of being a generous and unprecedented piece of cinema. And I know that the journalistic imperative of the story was enough.

It would have been enough to just get the story out there cleanly and simply. But you see, that's the difference between the printed word as in a newspaper, like what Dominic Gates does and what I do.

What else do you see are the strengths and limitations of each medium?
I’m going to piggyback off of what Dominic said because he’s absolutely right: One of the great virtues amongst many of Dominic's works is that he can revisit and stay with this story and build a body of connected knowledge about what happened over years. I, at best, am capturing a moment, especially over a one- or two-year span of shooting. Dominic can go into footnotes and addendums and details, and then he can be rigorous to make sure he fleshes out the argument in a way that satisfies the requirements of academic rigor. Whatever he writes has to be verifiable and fact-checked.

Documentary filmmakers have to do that, too. But I have to weave in the lived experience of the people. I often have to start with the conclusion and give just enough information to pique your interest and allow you to hold that as we build along that 90-minute experience.

That’s really the experience we had with Ed Pierson, the Boeing whistleblower. Ed’s rightful prerogative was to go through, over a period of five days, pages and pages of stuff. Mine was to constantly remind him that I would lift the nuggets or turning points of him arriving at this conclusion to make this the most compelling story, and sometimes what I lift is three things at best. What is as important in my medium is that the audience sees the email and the red mark of your exclamation point next to the lie that was told, and see and hear you holding and reading the email out loud. That is more important in my medium than you just having the information, which you could get from the newspaper alone. My job is to get you red-faced and appalled with it along with us as a lived experience. That means that I am editing more as I shoot than I would be if it was print, and I am weaving a narrative that has to serve the old guard of being rigorously correct but also compelling so that the audience stays with it through the end.

That is the strength of my medium, that someone will get the core message and experience in a lived, visceral way.

* * *

Kristen Chin studied filmmaking at Boston University and now works as a documentary filmmaker and writer.

The post How a documentary filmmaker captures “lived experience” appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

As the aerospace beat reporter for the Seattle Times, Dominic Gates is one of the world’s most knowledgeable journalists about the business of commercial aviation, and especially about the Boeing Company, long based in Seattle and long the premier manufacturer of commercial aircraft. A former math teacher from Ireland, Gates landed the Times aviation beat in 2003; he’s since published hundreds of articles on the subject.

That knowledge came to bear after 346 people were killed in back-to-back crashes of Boeing 737 MAX airplanes, one in Indonesia in 2018 and another in Ethiopia in 2019. The 737 MAX was grounded as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) launched an investigation into possible mechanical and oversight failures that may have led to the crashes. At the same time, Gates launched his own investigation.

The resulting work by Gates and three colleagues at the Times won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting. (Editor's note: There were two Pulitzers in national reporting awarded that year, the other to a team from Pro Publica that investigated a series of deadly naval accidents.)

The work also caught the attention of other media. Gates has been featured in or interviewed by several other news outlets. Most recently, he was both a key source and main character in the documentary “Flight/Risk” (2022) about the lead-up to and aftermath of the fatal crashes.

As a documentary filmmaker, I was curious about the experience of a straightforward print beat reporter who is tapped as both source and subject of a film told along a more narrative arc. What did Gates make of the challenges and possible advantages of the two nonfiction forms? Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

When you were initially invited to participate in “Flight/Risk,” how did the team behind the film pitch it?
In January 2020, I got pitches to be part of three different documentaries. The “Flight/Risk” pitch sold me because, as they essentially said, “We don't want a TV-style documentary. We want storytelling that's more like a movie. We want characters. You're not going to be sitting down with a bookcase behind you.” I was also sold on the people who pitched me. I was wary at the beginning because one thinks of Hollywood-types as not being very trustworthy, but these weren't Hollywood-style stereotypes at all. They were much more earnest, interested in the content of what they were doing. I really bonded with the main director, Omar Mullick, a British guy of Afghan descent. He and I shared a working class upbringing, outsider status growing up (me a Catholic in Northern Ireland and him a dark-skinned Muslim in England) and a life lifted higher through education.

I've been part of six other TV documentaries about the MAX crashes where I was exactly that — a talking head. It just seemed a lot more interesting to do something that would be more gripping to a bigger audience.

What was involved in the filming of “Flight/Risk?”
It was pretty easy. Early in the process, I took some days off from the newspaper to film with them in 2020 and 2021. They’d come and ask me questions and they’d sometimes film me sitting around a table showing them documents. Later they wanted scenes of me working, but I was apprehensive because I didn’t want to have to act. They said, “You’re not going to be acting, pretending or doing something fake. We’ll film you doing what you do. We'll talk to you and ask questions and you can answer them, but when we film you doing things, it'll be real.”

I was also a consultant on the film. They had many different people in the movie, but I knew most about the overall story and what caused the crashes. So I helped them contact other people, including some of my sources who agreed to talk to them.

At one point, they asked whether one of my sources wanted to be in the movie. That was a problem because the sources we’re talking about are very confidential. At first, I said they couldn’t film me meeting that source because the cameras would draw attention. So, one of the directors scouted around Seattle and said he’d found the perfect place: a downtown parking garage that was empty in the upper levels during the pandemic. It was discreet enough that they could film me meeting my source in person without drawing attention. The resonance with the Watergate story is obvious now, but the the views offered a sense of place that was great for the scene.

Before that, when the COVID lockdown was new, they asked if my two college-age daughters could help with filming. They sent us a high-end iPhone, tripod and all sorts of equipment. They asked my daughters to film me doing different things and interview me, although the only piece of that footage that made it into the movie was in the credit scene where you see me reacting to winning the Pulitzer.

As a behind-the-notebook beat reporter, how did you handle being both source and subject in the film?
I went with the flow, but I did draw some lines. For example, they wanted to film me in the bathroom shaving, then putting on my shirt and suit. After seeing the film, it made sense why they wanted it, but in that moment I just thought it was ridiculous to be filmed shaving, so I said no.

What did you learn by being part of this film that you might take back to your own beat work?
In terms of the story, what I reported in print was much more detailed than the story they managed to tell. They didn't go into the technicalities very much at all, which is perfectly understandable. I was perfectly happy with the portrayal of me and my work. However, the film also tells these other stories and one of them in particular is problematic for me, which is the story of Ed Pierson, the whistleblower.

Ed is a really good guy. He's got great integrity. And what Ed testified about —what he says in the movie about what was happening in the factory in the summer of 2018 before the first crash — is totally true. In fact, I wrote about it at the time, and there's a shot in the movie of my front page from that summer. But, what happened in the factory then didn't cause the 2018 crashes, and some could infer that the movie suggests otherwise.

Ed has continued to campaign that the MAX is still unsafe. He compiled a dossier of in-flight incidents reported by pilots of the MAX’s service. He sent that dossier to me and other journalists and none of us wrote about it. I investigated and concluded that the incidents were not safety incidents. They were routine. So unlike Ed, I don't believe the MAX is unsafe. Boeing has since fixed the MCAS (an inflight computerized maneuvering system). But saying that doesn't detract one iota from Boeing's responsibility for the crashes.

The chief thing I really regret is right at the end of the movie. A line appears just before the credits that says something like, “The MAX continues to have inflight incidents since it returned to service.” That's a direct reference to Pierson's dossier but, like I said, I don't agree that those incidents are significant safety issues.

I saw the film close to the final cut and they asked me for feedback. I told them that there was not enough emphasis on telling the viewers about MCAS and the engineering flaws and that that’s what caused the crashes. And there was too much emphasis on Ed Pierson's concerns about the factory which, although real, were not related to the crashes.

I like the movie. I think it will help spread the word of what happened here to a much bigger audience. But I do regret that many people, especially those who haven't followed all the details of previous news coverage, will look at the movie and will come away with the impression that what I talked about (the engineering flaws) and what Ed Pierson talked about (the factory flaws) are all of the same piece, and they’re not. To give people the impression that these two different aspects contributed equally to the crashes is, in my mind, false. So I wish that had been a bit different, but of course I didn’t control anything in the movie except the parts I was in.

After your feedback on the final cut, did you see any significant changes in the film?
They said they went through a lot of footage. They spent a lot of time looking for ways to amend the film, but they were very close to the end at that point. They just couldn't find something that fit in without destroying the narrative. In the end, the final product wasn't significantly changed.

Having been part of this film, what do you think is better captured in print versus film or vice versa?
You can provide much more detail in print. I don’t mean to be disparaging of film as a medium, and I think the filmmakers in this documentary provided deep emotional truth. In print, the Seattles Times news stories on the MAX crashes, one following another, scoop after scoop, over the course of a year, provided a level of detail that a movie couldn't cover.

In a documentary, you can't tell every story; you have to pick. The stories picked for the film were told at a top level of detail appropriate to the medium. What a movie can offer is emotional vividness. I think the filmmakers captured the story wonderfully through the people they chose to tell it. I'm proud to have worked with them. I admire what they did and the skill and passion with which they did it.

On the other hand, a movie can also be unfair to some of the people because it’s a simplified snapshot.

For example, in the movie, Steve Dickson, the FAA administrator, comes across terribly. In his testimony in Congress, which is what they filmed, he was off and the senators grilling him were grandstanding. I felt sorry for him afterwards because Dickson was appointed FAA administrator after the second crash. He was called in to try and fix it and he did move the FAA in a direction towards safety. He was also responsible for the CEO of Boeing, Dennis Muilenburg, being fired. Muilenburg kept saying, “The FAA is going to approve us within the next month,” except he said that repeatedly and it never happened. Eventually, in December of 2019, Dickson called him into his office and told him that he was taking one of the statements as pressure on the FAA and it had to stop. Dickson then issued a press release telling everybody that he had given Muilenburg a dressing down. The board fired Muilenburg a week later because it had become totally clear by Dickson's action that Muilenburg had lost the confidence of the FAA regulator. Dickson didn’t come out looking well in the film, but in the background Dickson actually did a very difficult job reasonably well. Since the crashes, the FAA has begun to hold Boeing's feet to the fire.

What I'm getting at is that every one of the characters in a real-life movie is more complex than it's possible to portray in 90 minutes.

***

Kristen Chin studied filmmaking at Boston University and now works as a documentary filmmaker and writer.

The post Print beat reporting vs documentary film drama: Pros and cons appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

[dc]W[/dc]hen I asked Saadia Khan whether or not she identifies as a journalist, she said no. Her definition of a journalist: “someone with a degree in journalism or has worked in the field.” Without those credentials, Khan considers herself an entrepreneur and a human rights and immigration activist — but not a journalist.

[caption id="attachment_170437" align="alignright" width="350"] Saadi Khan[/caption]

I disagree. As the founder and host of the weekly podcast “Immigrantly,” Khan dives into deep explorations with her guests about the stereotypes and narratives that Americans hold about immigrants and people of color. To me, a fascinated listener of those conversations, that absolutely puts her in the role of journalist — and an authentic one at that.

I first met Khan late last year through one of her writers. Full disclosure: She was looking for funding for the podcast and hired me as a part-time outreach coordinator. I don’t work on anything content-related for the show.

Khan started “Immigrantly” in 2017 as part of a career change. Former President Trump had just passed the Muslim travel ban and, as a first-generation Pakistani immigrant, Khan was acute aware of the nation’s increased anti-Muslim sentiments. Thus, a podcast was born.

It started as a platform for Khan to share her own experience with immigration and American culture. But it soon blossomed into a Fresh Air-like show about diversity, equity, inclusion, and access. Every week, Khan talks with change-makers from various profession that deal with  about race, immigration and identity.

An array of guests — from Justine Ang Fonte, Filipina sex educator who advocates for a sex- positive revolution in schools, to Khaled Hosseini, philanthropist and New York Times bestselling author of “The Kite Runner” — share views shaped by their lived experiences.

Downloaded 16,000 to 20,000 times a month, Khan believes that her success is in large part a result of practicing, in creation of each weeks’ show, what she preaches on the show about diversity and inclusion. She works with a small but diverse team of writers; all are women of color in their 20s whom she relies on to call her out on her own biases and blind spots. She says that without them, her show would lack the same depth and authenticity.

The creativity of diversity in a safe space

Khan works to create a safe space for the team — one in which assumptions can be challenged. If one of the writers says something that Khan perceives as biased or narrow-minded, she assumes an “older sister position” and offers a new perspective in a “diplomatic fashion without being harsh or derogatory in any way.”

For example, the show recently featured Dr. Anthony Ocampo, a scholar who focuses on the intersection between race, immigration and LGBTQ+ issues. Writer Ashley Lanuza wrote the first draft of the script. One of her questions was:

There’s a study you did in 2013 about second-generation Filipino and Latino gay men. And you shared a quote that caught my attention: “I think the battle that I have as a gay man is like the same battle immigrants go through in the United States. It’s equivalent in the way you have to come out, deal with identity, deal with society, deal with yourself, finding yourself, and leaving your parents in some way.” How can these similarities bridge the gap for second-generation folks who come out to their parents? And vice-versa, how can parents use this as a tool to understand their children?

When Khan reviewed this script, she felt Lanuza’s framing implied an assumption: that people of color or who identify as queer have parents who don’t accept them, so need help navigating the situation.

After Khan and Lanuza talked about it, they rewrote the question:

There’s a study you did in 2013 about second-generation Filipino and Latino gay men. And you shared a quote that caught my attention: “I think the battle that I have as a gay man is like the same battle immigrants go through in the United States. It’s equivalent in the way you have to come out, deal with identity, deal with society, deal with yourself, finding yourself, and leaving your parents in some way.” Could you elaborate on this? My understanding of this comment is that immigrant parents can find resonance in their child’s coming-out process and vice versa. I agree but I want to know,  given your experience, which parts exactly? And how can these iterations of learning and struggles be viewed as a strength?

As a writer, Lanuza says that collaboration, and feedback without criticism, gives her freedom as a writer: “It means knowing that what I write won’t necessarily be judged or assigned to my character.”

The critique goes both ways. “Not only is it a safe space for them to call me out on things sometimes, it has become a safe space for me to call them out on things, [too]...” Khan says. That fosters a horizontal leadership dynamic where everyone is able to contribute, no matter their age or position.

How diversity impacts both process product

As a first-generation immigrant who learned English as a second language, Khan says she sometimes lacks “the proper vernacular.” She relies on the writers to advise on pronouns and proper identifiers of racial identity. At the same time, she takes care not to tokenize the writers. “It’s not about checking certain boxes, right?” she says. “It’s more about how I value their perspectives and how their perspectives inform the work that we do — something which goes far beyond having certain people on your team.”

Having this input allows her to address her guests in appropriate language, building an atmosphere of respect.

Khan and writer Yudi Liu have long, “robust” conversations about their guests in which they challenge each other about the script. They recently featured Ali Noorani, president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum. Khan wanted to focus on public policy and immigration, but Liu, a graduate student in public health, wanted to know more about Noorani’s own degree in public health. Asking about it opened up a whole new space in the interview.

“It’s very organic,” Khan said. “Nobody is telling us to do this. It just happens because we are learning from each other.”

Challenging Eurocentric views

One of Khan’s goals is to work past what she sees as a common blind spot in American media: Eurocentricity. “America is very Eurocentric, so anything that falls out of that paradigm of is considered outdated, archaic or wrong.” Kahn screens for that bias in the show scripts, rewriting questions if needed.

Liu wrote the script for Episode 165, “Arranged vs. Love Marriage,” in which Khan interviewed Tina Khan, the mother of a former co-host, Shahjehan Khan. (No relation to Saadi Khan.)  One of questions Liu suggested was: “At that age, did you feel resistant towards the cultural expectation for arranged unions or were you on board with its practice and purpose?”

Saadia Khan challenged that frame, prompting Liu to consider her own assumptions. “I would say I always took on a Eurocentric view of arranged marriages,” Liu says. “The definition of arranged marriages in my mind is forced. But (Khan) was like, ‘Here’s an arranged marriage that works and you have to understand that arranged marriages are not like what the media shows it to be. It’s not a forced marriage.”

Now Liu says she imagines arranged marriages as “the pen-and-paper version of Hinge…you’re putting all of these qualifications down and then you’re sending it to your parents rather than an AI machine.”

Liu rewrote the script question this way:

Speaking of western practices around dating and marriage, there is this misconception that arranged marriages are forced marriages. Basically the woman has no agency. How would you address this perception and why do you think arranged marriages work and could work for certain people?

Personal and societal wins

Khan says has become “a more tolerant person than I was, say, 15 years ago” in part because of this considered approach to her podcast. The authenticity in the making of her show translates directly into a safe space where guests like a female trainer for a National Hockey League team can publicly discuss obstacles to gender and diversity representation in her organization — the kind of open dialogue that we need more of in the world, and that journalists, like Khan, can make happen.

The post A podcast focused on diversity practices what it preaches appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

EDITOR'S NOTE: All time codes in this post correspond to the YouTube version of "The Queen of Basketball." It's also available, with an introduction by filmmaker Ben Proudfoot, on The New York Times site.

[dc]A[/dc] confession: I love films that make me cry. Not tears of sadness, but tears that spring from being touched, moved and inspired by the spirit with which people face the challenges in their lives. Tears are one of my reliable signs of a great film.

I was introduced to Canadian filmmaker Ben Proudfoot through a mutual friend and have since then become a huge fan of his work. Last year, I joined a year-long networking/mentorship group he created for young filmmakers. It was out of participating in that group that Proudfoot provided ample encouragement and feedback, supporting me in finishing my first film.

[caption id="attachment_169913" align="alignleft" width="325"] Filmmaker Ben Proudfoot at the 2022 Academy Awards.[/caption]

Proudfoot is an Emmy and Academy Award-winning director and founder/CEO of Breakwater Studios, a production company that specializes in humanist short form documentaries for The New York Times and branded documentaries for a range of clients, including governments and companies like Huckberry, Lululemon and Sotheby’s. According to the Breakwater website, “Proudfoot is highly sought-after for telling emotionally moving and easily shareable stories in a short-form documentary style that combines the best of premium Hollywood filmmaking.”

My version: His films make me cry – a lot. (Thanks, Ben.) His Oscar-winning short doc, “The Queen of Basketball,” was no exception. I was barely two minutes into the story when I reached for the tissues.

Profiles of unsung genius

In December 2019, Breakwater Studios and The New York Times launched a new historical and op-doc series called “Almost Famous.” Films in the ongoing series focus on people who, due to time and circumstance, fell just short of making history but went on to live fulfilling lives anyway. Breakwater calls them “unrecognized geniuses” and “singular accomplices to history.”

One such person was Lusia “Lucy” Harris, who led the women’s basketball team at Delta State University to three national championships in the 1970s, scored the first points in the first Olympic women’s basketball game in 1976 in Japan, and was the only woman to be officially drafted by a pro team, the then-New Orleans Jazz, in 1977. She declined to join the pros (watch the film to learn why), instead becoming a special education teacher and high school basketball coach. Later on, she was the first Black woman to be inducted in the Basketball Hall of Fame. Harris died earlier this year, at age 66, so never knew her story was awarded an Oscar.

My public speaking coach once likened the emotional journey of a great story to a heartbeat: We should experience ups and downs of all intensities to create emotion and aliveness.  From the music to the framing to Harris’s storytelling, Proudfoot and his team delivered those ups and downs in Harris’ life in 22 minutes on the screen.

MUSIC as tone and tension

Proudfoot once told me that music to a director is like sauce to a chef: It provides flavor that shapes the piece. The opening track in “The Queen of Basketball” (starting at 0:09) is some enticing sauce! The film starts with a light, staccato classical score that feels whimsical, exciting and dream-like. As more string instruments and drums are added, it sounds like the soundtrack to a victory lap. The music sets the tone: This is a celebration of Harris’ life. By this point, I’m already all in: “What an incredible person. Who is she?”

The musical arrangement that plays under the 1975 National Basketball Championship, Delta State University and Harris’s first national win, is used to heighten and then release tension, another hallmark of great storytelling (6:07 to 9:04). Harris’ team, the Lady Statesmen, is the underdog and seeks to end Immaculata College’s three-time, back-to-back reign over the National Championship. “Gloria in excelsis Deo” by Vivaldi (Immaculata College is a Catholic school) plays over the first few clips of the game until Harris’ team starts to pull ahead. A marching drumbeat comes up, merging with “Gloria” as the teams battle head-to-head. Tension and anticipation rise. “Gloria, Gloria…” is sung over and over under the drumbeat. It’s hilarious and releases some of the moment’s tension.

FRAMING as intimacy

Breakwater’s films are often in a width-to-height 4:3 aspect ratio which looks square-ish, distinct from the more common elongated rectangular frame. Sometimes, Breakwater makes the frame even smaller, creating a feeling of peeking into someone’s world. Right at 1:10 in “The Queen of Basketball,” for example, the smaller frame is used over archival, black-and-white footage of Black neighborhoods. It feels nostalgic, like a distant memory, and fits under audio of Harris describing her childhood.

I’ve always been taught to leave enough room for a subject to move when framing my interview shots, but the 4:3 aspect ratio in Breakwater films break that rule. The square crop only allows for Harris’ face — according to effective Zoom etiquette, that would qualify as “too close.” There are even brief moments when Harris laughs and moves her head partly out of the frame. More rule-breaking! But it creates a very intimate experience; you can see and feel the excitement, heartbreak and emotion that Harris experiences as she tells her story.

WIN, WIN, WIN throughout the journey

One of the most genius things about “The Queen of Basketball” is how Proudfoot and his team take full advantage of Harris’ humor and playfulness. Her speech is structured like a comedian’s: there’s the set-up and then her punchline. All the “Almost Famous” pieces are structured as hero’s journeys, but because Harris is so clever, we get to experience the satisfaction of a win every few minutes rather than having to wait until the film gets to her major life victories, like winning the national championships or going to the Olympics.

That technique works especially well at the end (20:45), where Harris explains why she turned down an offer from the NBA. Does she have any regrets? “Maybe the world would have known my name had I continued playing,” she says. You think, for a brief beat, that that’s her final word. And then, “But it didn’t,” she says, “so I don’t speculate.”

What memorable last words.

Celebrating the human

Breakwater Studios calls itself a “leader in humanist short form documentaries.” Google “humanism,” and there are many definitions, but a common thread is a celebration of the human condition. Proudfoot and his team demonstrate, in film after film, that they love telling stories that reconnect us to the wonder of being human.

They make me cry, and remind me that it’s great to be alive.

The post A documentary film breaks rules and wins an Oscar appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

[dc]E[/dc]ach time I lived in China, for a stretch in 2008 and again in 2015, I felt alone and disconnected. I grew up in Boston, but am Chinese by blood. I shared the same skin, eyes and hair color as the masses in China. I celebrated the Lunar New Year and shared some central values, like maintaining strong ties to family. But there were cultural phenomena I couldn’t understand and, honestly, judged: Cleaning street signs with rags; an obsession with astrological signs — also popular in the U.S., but I still just don't get it; always drinking hot water, even in summer.

Each of my judgments put distance between me and the people I was visiting.

Given my own biases, I can hardly imagine how the average American — non-Chinese and who likely has never spent time in Asia — views Chinese culture. A 2021 survey by the Pew Research Center, called “In their own words: What Americans think about China,” found that Americans hardly mentioned the country’s people or its lengthy history. Respondents focused instead on the “Chinese government — including its policies or how it behaves internationally — as well as its economy.” It seems, in the U.S. at least, we are deeply disconnected from the world's most populous body of people.

I deeply appreciate work that focuses on and creates connections to the country’s people. That’s why I loved “Dream Boy And The Poison Fans," a 2020 podcast episode by NPR correspondent Emily Feng. The story was part of "Rough Translation," a series hosted by Gregory Warner that is designed to take people out of their “echo chambers and (leading) us to question the way we talk about the world.”

Universal lessons from a surprising story

By American standards, the "Poison Fans" story is ridiculous. You have Xiao Zhan, a massive pop star at the height of his career who gets canceled after a scandal caused by his fans. That’s right: Xiao didn’t do or say anything. But when some fans perceived a threat to his image from what others said about him, they reported them to the government. Various fan factions formed among high school girls. The story included anonymous sources who now fear for their lives over what happened.

As I listened,  the podcast delivered one surprise after another. But what makes it so good is the relatability of the characters and their ability to contextualize the sequence of events in China’s current political, social and cultural norms. As foreign as some parts of the saga are, it is reported in a way that is so universally human that I felt sad at the end. I came to understand it as a fight that everyone, except for the Chinese government, lost. To me, it was a perfect “rough translation” of people we hardly think about.

Take the way they start the reporting with Feng describing Xiao Zhan in an Estée Lauder commercial: (audio excerpt of 5:09 - 6:15). It captured Xiao’s image as “someone who helps others and who is a helper of beauty,” and foreshadowed why fans took such extreme actions. The ending was cute and unexpected, adding a touch of fun. That set-up pulled me into the story, set me up for the scandal, and added color and visual detail to an online narrative.

Feng and Warner also did great reporting on the fans, whose actions might seem extreme. Right away, Warner informs us that fan culture in China is different (excerpt: 7:41 - 7:58). As Feng says, “Xiao Zhan is portrayed as such a sweet person (that) he also needs protection because that gentleness can be taken advantage of. And his fans need to be the ones who stand up for him.” Even if we can’t relate to anything else the fans do, whether it’s spending money on products or reporting other people to the government to ensure their idol’s success, we can all relate to the need to protect someone we care about from danger, which provides the context for everything that happens next.

Throughout, the podcast connected the scandal over one super-star to Chinese history. It explained why this story needed to be told now (excerpt 26:40 - 27:38). Rather than some pop culture one-off, this is history repeating itself. Reporting culture in China started in the 1950s, when the Communist Party took power, and was a way for people to get revenge. Feng and Warner get to the heart that link (excerpt 31:40 - 31:59). You really get how resigned, frustrated, and hopeless people feel as a result. And that, again, as unimaginable as the scandal was, it’s grounded in the basic societal phenomenon of censorship and its impact on people’s lives.

Finding the common human condition

What I was reminded of most by this piece, which I think is true of my favorite journalism, is that we’re not so different, country to country and culture to culture. We may differ in customs, governments and societal norms, but at our core, we are all people who share many of the same basic motivations and want many of the same things. It’s in listening to Feng and Warner’s piece that I’m reminded of people’s humanity, no matter how far away they feel or actually are.

***

Kristen Chin is a recent graduate journalism student at Boston University, documentary filmmaker, and writer.

The post What happens when fandom backfires in a culture of censorship appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

[dc]F[/dc]or most of my life, feedback made me anxious.

I was in third grade when my mom came home from a parent-teacher conference with this pronouncement. “Your teacher said your math skills need improvement, so I'm going to find you a tutor.” For countless Saturday evenings after that, I sat for an hour over number problems with this expectation: Do exactly what the math tutor said.

Not only was I being schooled in math, but in what it meant to get feedback: Needing it meant there was a problem, and it took experts to fix that problem.

Fast forward to the present day. I have just graduated from Boston University’s journalism master’s program and am making my first film, a 13-minute documentary called “Snow Money.” It follows a snow plower’s journey to buying his first home, and how wetter, more unpredictable and severe winter weather compromises his dream. It’s what is, in film parlance, called a short — yet my feedback process has turned it into “the film that never ends.” It’s been two years since I started and, according to one of my professors, that means I haven’t really completed my master’s.

I’ve gotten a lot of feedback in my life. I spent several years as Toastmaster. I’ve written for The Boston Globe and Nieman Storyboard. I’ve worked on the TV side of WGBH in Boston. I love writing, and have always gotten a handle on the story if I worked long and hard enough. But for some reason, this film script eluded me. For the first time, maybe since third grade, I really felt like I had no idea what I was doing. Every cut I made felt wrong, and it would cue an inner voice that focused on my inexperience. The solution: find another expert.

When guidance becomes garble

For a year and a half of working on “Snow Money,” this was the process: I or my film editor created a rough cut of the film, and I then sent it to any film or TV-related person I could — colleagues, professors, past high school teachers, and people I networked with when looking for a job. They responded with a variety of suggestions. I called my film editor to push our deadline back so we could use them. I created yet another cut and sent it out, meaning the whole process started again. It was a never-ending slog, and I couldn’t wait to be done with it.

I wondered along the way if I should just turn off the feedback and start listening to my own creative gut. But then another email would suck me right back into my insecurity. “They’re way more experienced than me,” the voice would say. “They know better.”

Two years into the project, I reached a point where I just wanted the project to be finished, so I started to ignore most of the feedback I was getting. I thought we were one last cut away from sending the film to the final finishing stages.

Then two organizations surprised me with grants to fund the film — and each assigned me a mentor.

Before my first conversation with one of them, from the Pulitzer Center, I remember being so excited to report that I was practically done with the project! But the conversation took a totally different turn:

Mentor: “It’s good — but not good enough for a film festival.”

Me: “Okay, what needs to change?”

Mentor: “Well, for starters, you need way more footage of your subject actually plowing snow. I mean your film is called ‘Snow Money,’ right? And then …”

Me (in my head): “Oh no, AGAIN!?”

Panic crept in. Now I had more feedback – feedback I knew I had to accept because they were definitely experts and their advice came with money. I also knew that my mentor wasn’t going to accept a sub-par piece.

What to do? I’d told my film editor we were practically done; I was embarrassed to even think about pushing the deadline again. Besides, I’d promised both funding organizations that I’d finish everything in less than two months. And yet, here I was with a film that wasn’t good enough to send to film festivals, let alone The New York Times — both aspirations I’d cited in my grant applications.

I closed my laptop and took a break. A few days later, I was watching a lesson from “Independent Filmmaking” by Indian-American filmmaker Mira Nair on MasterClass. She said something that blew my mind: “‘Monsoon Wedding’ was really made to please no one but myself.”

But after she sold her film to the Independent Film Channel (IFC) at the Cannes Film Festival marketplace, she watched it again — and wanted to edit it again: “It was just this feeling I had in the audience that I was, myself, getting impatient with (some scenes).” IFC thought the film was fine, but Nair convinced them to give her another $200,000 to let her go back into the edit. Nair sat alone with her story, “without anyone telling me, ‘This should go. That should go.’” and the outcome was the “Monsoon Wedding” we see today (it’s amazing, by the way).

Owning your decisions

It was at that moment that I realized I had completely lost myself as a creator. I took feedback like it was The Truth, and ignored the value in my own experiences as a nonfiction storyteller. The film was no longer my film, but a Frankenstein of a film, a mashup of all the different advice I’d gotten. No wonder nothing felt right.

Now I heard another internal voice: “I am the director. I decide how the film goes.”

I called my editor and told him we weren’t done. Empowered, I also transformed my context for feedback. Rather than a requirement or guarantee of success, feedback offered opportunities to try ideas on and see if they fit or not. It was like panning for gold. I sat one more time with the project, this time playing with it myself: Should I move the title slide here? Do I like this shot? The process became fun again! I went back into my mentor’s notes — this time on my terms — and came out with a new cut that I was excited about. I sent the project back to my primary mentors again instead of circulating it among multiple people.

After several more rounds of back-and-forth – the fastest revisions process I’ve ever experienced — my film editor and I locked the cut. At the time of this writing, it’s undergoing the last step of sound and color editing. It is the best work I could have produced at this time in my career, and I directed it.

The takeaway: As a filmmaker, journalist, writer — whatever kind of creative you are — remember: You are the creator of your piece. You get to decide how it goes. As for feedback? It is the best when you have many ideas to choose from. It’s in those moments when you really can see endless possibilities. And isn’t that why we all make this stuff to begin with?

***

Kristen Chin is a recent graduate journalism student at Boston University, documentary filmmaker, and writer.

The post When feedback is a drag, and when it’s path forward appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

[dc]B[/dc]y her own admission, New York Times reporter Sui-Lee Wee doesn't often break news out of China; her beat coverage usually follows the reporting of multiple Chinese articles about the same subject. So she pursues human interest narratives whenever possible to differentiate her work. That's no small feat in a country that puts strict limits on press freedoms, and where the first COVID-19 outbreak has makes travel and access even more challenging.

The coronavirus outbreak was raging in Wuhan early this year when New York Times Asia editor Adrienne Carter asked Wee and colleague Vivian Wang to pursue a story that contrasted life and death in the pandemic. The two main story subjects were both mothers and medical professionals working on the frontlines of COVID in Wuhan. Both fell ill with COVID themselves and found themselves patients in the very hospitals where they had treated others. Beyond that, their experiences and fates diverged.

Wee and Wang told their story in a braided narrative built around a straightforward nut graf:

The fates of Ms. Deng and Dr. Xia reflect the unpredictable nature of a virus that affects everyone differently, at times defying statistical averages and scientific research.

Wee had already left her usual post in the Beijing bureau because of COVID and was working remotely from her native Singapore. She and Wang relied heavily on New York Times researcher Amber Wang in China for help. The resulting story, “Two Women Fell Sick From the Coronavirus. One Survived,” was published in mid-March, just as the reality of COVID was taking hold in the U.S. and Europe, making it one of the first intimate narratives revealing the human toll of the disease.

A few months later, Wee heard about Liu Zengyan, a woman who escaped a beating from her husband by jumping from a second-story balcony. The beating itself was captured on video and went viral online. Wee then worked through layers of sources, with the help of New York Times researcher Liu Yi, to explore the intersection of two women's rights issues gaining attention in China: The prevalence of domestic violence, and the difficulty of getting justice, including divorce, in a legal system stacked against women. Here's her lede:

The husband and wife were alone in her boutique, but the security cameras captured it all: him pushing her down, punching her, slapping her and dragging her by the hair across the floor.

In footage from last year that recently circulated online, he can be seen hauling her into another room. Minutes later, the woman — her hair flailing — plummets from the second floor onto the street below in the central Chinese city of Shangqiu. The woman, Liu Zengyan, said later it was the only way she could escape.

As she lay in the hospital after the assault, with fractures in her waist, chest and eye socket and her lower limbs temporarily paralyzed, Ms. Liu said, she was determined to leave her husband for good.

But a court said no.

Wee spoke with Storyboard about how she manages to report such personal, detailed stories in China, where culture, language, and government surveillance can create many barriers to accurate reporting and immersion narratives.

Finding Your Story

[caption id="attachment_160329" align="alignright" width="225"] Sui-Lee Wee[/caption]

Wee grew up in Singapore, where Mandarin is one of several official languages. She reads and watches Chinese news, which was how she first learned about the doctor and nurse from Wuhan with COVID. Their stories were both published in the local press. Reading about them, Wee remembered being struck by the coincidences: "Both of them were medical workers in Wuhan. Both of them were the same age. Both of them were mothers." She wanted to know more.

Wang, the New York Times researcher, called the Chinese reporter who had covered the original stories to get contact information for the women's families. Wee said her experience has been that Chinese reporters don't view the New York Times as competition, and respect the platform it gives to Chinese people.

“Chinese reporters in China have been unfailingly generous with their contacts," Wee said. "That's actually how a lot of our stories are done."

Talking to Sources

At the same time, getting sources to respond to interview requests or go on the record has grown harder in the 10-plus years she's reported from China. People are afraid of talking to the wrong people.

“We are constantly vilified by the state media and sometimes by the government," Wee said. "It's really getting harder and harder to talk to people,” Wee said.

Wee said she has had regular citizens who, after researching the New York Times on Chinese search engines, wanted to back out of a story. When that happens, she tries to explain to them that what they see in their online searches reflect a very specific point of view, influenced by a government that seeks to shape the message. Some sources go forward. Others drop out.

But as press restrictions have tightened in China in recent years, subject experts now refuse many of her interview requests.

"People who used to talk, like professors and people with government think tanks, they would not talk anymore," Wee said. "It's come to the point where the topics that you think are not sensitive at all — like pigs, when we were writing a report on swine fever — it's really, really, really hard to find somebody to talk."

Public records also are very hard to get, so Wee relies heavily on the domestic media. For example, the mother of one of the COVID patients was featured  in a video for the Chinese press. Domestic reporters had also published the WeChat conversations pictured in Wee’s final article.

The relationship can be different with ordinary citizens who are caught up in stories. For example, Wee said she wasn't sure if Liu, the domestic violence victim, knew anything about the New York Times. "But she knew I was a reporter who could get this story out. And she had a point of view. She wanted to say something.”

That said, most Chinese people aren't familiar with narrative journalism, which adds to the challenge of navigating ethical source relationships and gaining needed information to build a storyline. When Wee asks her sources specific, detailed questions about an experience, they will often say, “Why are you asking me all these details?” Or, “I don't know, I wasn't there,” Wee said. In response, she tells sources: “It’s a very in-depth story, akin to a magazine article. So sometimes I will  ask you to recount what you were feeling, describe specific scenes. This is so we can allow the reader to be right there, to feel what you were feeling.”

It was difficult to get detailed information from Dr. Xia's husband, Wee said. About 20 domestic journalists had already spoken to him as grieved his wife. By the time he spoke with Wee, he would often weep or grow impatient. She never understood why he was willing to talk to her: “I think he was just a nice guy who wanted to help me,” she said.

Wee has found, however, that once they are engaged, Chinese people are more willing to share personal information than Americans.

“In China, you can straight-up ask them, ‘How much money do you make? How many boyfriends have you had?’ — that kind of thing," she said. "People are just extremely open about things that would be considered sensitive to a lot of people. By that same token, they would ask me, ‘How much money do you make? How much money does your husband make?’

“I think most of them know the line that they cannot cross (between their personal lives and state issues). So when they're talking about themselves, they're happy to do it."

And those personal stories are the ones Wee most likes to write.

Government Surveillance

Wee is always upfront about being a journalist, she said. If an official stops her on the street to ask what she’s doing, she tells them the truth. “I fundamentally think I have nothing to hide," she said. "The more I try to cover my tracks, the more it appears to the authorities that I’m doing something that is not above board.”

She said prefers to meet her subjects in person and in their homes, "mostly because it gives me a flavor of what they are like,” but also because it’s the safest way to meet. Online government surveillance is extensive, she said. When working on highly sensitive stories, Wee leaves her phone and computer behind.

Sources sometimes tell Wee that they’re more comfortable talking to her because she’s ethnic Chinese, she said. But she said she doesn’t think her physical appearance matters that much. It mostly allows her to report, unnoticed, in a protest or courtroom, she said.

Now that she works remotely, avoiding government surveillance is trickier.

“I would have to get (sources) to download apps like WhatsApp or Signal," she said. "But for most ordinary Chinese people that would be just too complicated."

While she said she isn't concerned about her safety as a journalist, she worries about her sources. “The government net that is over all the Chinese people is so extensive. It's really hard for me to fully protect them." And when the government officials do intervene, they usually tell sources not to speak with foreign media.

Wee’s most difficult reporting trip was last year in the autonomous region of Xinjiang, where Chinese officials were collecting DNA from ethnic Uighurs under the guise of free physical exams. The data was part of a surveillance initiative to identify and track non-conformist Uighurs, who have been the target of a government crackdown.

“(Government officials) basically sandwiched us in our car.," she said. "They had a car in front of us and a car in the back, so we were in a caravan."

Wee wanted to speak to a health official, but the officials refused. She persisted in her request and expressed a lot of frustration.

Finally, they said they would make him available, "but you have to take the next plane out." She did.

Kristen Chin is a graduate journalism student at Boston University, documentary filmmaker, and writer.

The post Challenges of sourcing, safety and reporting for narrative in China appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

[dc]W[/dc]hen the quarantine began in March, the lifestyles production unit at GBH Studio Six in Boston — which is responsible for a range of programming content, from cooking and travel television to documentaries on social and health issues — paused all upcoming shoots. “There was such a stoppage for everything,” said Associate Producer Pam Gaudiano. So rather than researching chefs and destinations for “Moveable Feast,” a yearly food and travel show, or hiring a film crew for chef Ming Tsai’s cooking show, “Simply Ming,” the producers brainstormed new concepts and ways to film them.

The outcome was a quarantine cooking special for broadcast television filmed remotely by GBH for the first time. The special consisted of two half-hour TV episodes called “Eating in with Lidia,” featuring Italian-American television host, author, and restaurateur Lidia Bastianich cooking and sheltering in place with her 99-year-old mother. I asked Gaudiano how they did it.

[caption id="attachment_158769" align="alignleft" width="300"] Pam Guadiano[/caption]

I’ve been a production intern at Studio Six since June, so I’ve had a chance to see Gaudiano at work. Over the summer, I met with her to discuss assignments — organizing show materials, looking for background footage — but I wanted to know more about how she juggles so many tasks with such seeming ease. She collects, digests, and sorts through large volumes of information in short periods of time. She knows the location and access to any clip you might need. And when she collects footage, she learns it inside and out. For a show that relies heavily on originally shot footage like “Moveable Feast,” she’s the go-to when you didn't get enough in the field.

In short, she knows how to find and gather all the parts needed to tell a full story.

The fact that she can juggle so much information is, no doubt, a hard-earned skill. Before Studio Six, Gaudiano worked for American Experience, another GBH department that makes long-form documentaries about American history for broadcast television. She researched historical events and watched hundreds of hours of archival footage, filtering for accessible and usable clips that would help tell a compelling story. Gaudiano received Emmy nominations for “Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Research” and “Archival Research” in 2006 and 2017. She also worked on “JFK” (2013), a four-hour, Emmy award-winning series about John F. Kennedy, and “The Amish: Shunned” (2014), an Emmy-nominated feature-length film about seven ex-Amish, based on actual events.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

[dc small]W[/dc]hen did the idea for “Eating in with Lidia” first appear?
In March, Studio Six was looking at ways to still do outreach in spite of COVID. Everybody in media was posting on social media sites. With the help of GBH’s social media department, we did one Facebook Live with Lidia, and Ming Tsai (of “Simply Ming”) did an Instagram with his sons. Both did really well. So it was out of the social media shows that the staff started saying, “We could do a show and get into the PBS primetime listing of COVID specials.” And instead of it being news, we had something that was fun. Lidia understands that she’s just talking to the camera. She’s very personable, and it was a very controlled environment. From the time we decided to go forward, PBS already had a time slot for us, so it was a really quick turnaround.

What production challenges did you face due to the new way of working during COVID? How did you overcome them?
Just Lidia’s family members could film. Her grandson, Lorenzo, was the one helping out the production team. We wanted broadcast quality footage. Could he handle this? This was where our business manager, Salme Lopez, came in and looked at a way to actually talk to Lorenzo, knowing there couldn’t be any other people coming into the house. We sent video and audio equipment. Salme and three other team members were all on a Zoom call, so they could see what was going on and direct Lorenzo from the laptop.

We took some of the older shows that Lidia’s team had already produced. We had Lidia do new stand-ups with her mom to open and then answer some questions that she couldn't address during the Facebook Live. And we ended with a sweet moment with her mom.

We already knew what the outline and topics were: potatoes, bread, and simple stuff — staples. The biggest part was figuring out what she had in the house and what we could get food-wise that she could talk about. We focused on what people would have in their house.

When editing a show with a set structure like “Moveable Feast,” what is it like to put the story together in the edit room?
"Moveable Feast" really falls into order because it's such a cookie-cutter structure. We start in a location. We’re going to end with the feast. In the middle we’ve got to hit certain spots, so how do we do that and how can we fit this together? This is one of those areas where an editor is also the writer. He’s going to work with Executive Producer Laurie Donnelly to put the script together as they do that first pass. She's looking at sections and then they're building it out.

It gets tricky:  What did they get in the field? Do we have enough to tell that? One time, one of our camera guy’s flights got canceled, and he was delayed a day. The team got someone else to help them, but they lost some of what they needed. When the footage comes in and they're missing stuff, that's when I come in, because now we have to find a way to put in some other footage.

For a show that relies almost entirely on original footage, what happens when you need more film?
I always go back to the people who were on location or talk to the chefs or their representatives and say, “Hey, we have this footage but we want to add more to it. What do you have?” A lot of times they take their own photos for Instagram. I’ll also go to their Facebook page and say, “I found this and would love to include it. Can we get permission?” When I started, I didn't really bring a camera but now I also take pictures with my phone. We always want to stay within what the actual product was.

In a lot of places, it’s really tough to hire a drone operator to get an aerial so that's the stuff we add. There are so many issues around using a drone. It's a lot cheaper to get an aerial shot from a stock house.

When you’re researching for a long-form documentary like “JFK,” how do you organize your reporting?
We all split up different areas evenly: You’re going to work on this event and get what you can, and you're going to work on the family stuff, and you're going to work on this person, and so on. In the very beginning, I create a timeline for myself. I usually start with newspapers because you're trying to see if they have photos or headlines of what has happened. They may talk about places and things in other media that give you a lead.

The biggest thing is books. If we're basing something on a particular book, I pull apart what they've cited, double check that stuff, and then go from there. You’re doing that until you start picking the visual elements. From there, it’s, “What do we have media-wise that we can film?” We look at video, audio, music, other interviews, and other documentaries. I’m often doing it all at the same time because even if we have nine months for a two-hour documentary, it's never enough time.

Kristen Chin is a graduate journalism student at Boston University, documentary filmmaker, and writer. Having traveled to 25 countries and lived in two, she aspires to work on documentaries and docu-series about travel, food, and lifestyle.

The post How limitations — COVID, budgets, access and more — can spark fresh ideas appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

[dc]W[/dc]hile reading the news in 2017, filmmaker Erin Lee Carr first saw the “very wide, intense eyes” of Michelle Carter. She looked like a “deer in headlights,” Carr said. At the time, Carter was on trial in Massachussetts on charges of involuntary manslaughter. She was accused of promoting the suicide of her boyfriend — whom she had only met with five times in person — through some of the thousands of texts the two exchanged. 

The case of Carter and Roy became the subject of “I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter,” a two-part documentary directed by Carr for HBO. The film features Jesse Baron, who wrote a complex profile of the case for Esquire Magazine; psychiatrist Peter Breggin, whose “expert testimony” at the trial was shredded by the prosecution; Emily Bazelon of the New York Times Magazine, and Marin Cogan, then a writer with New York Magazine.

Few of the in-depth stories of the case reach a definitive conclusion. But Carr complicates the media’s popularized narrative even further. By the end of the film, we see Carter as a lonely woman who lacked emotional support and effective mental health treatment. (Carter was found guilty and scheduled to begin serving a 15-month sentence in February 2019. In January 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of her conviction.) 

[caption id="attachment_156846" align="alignleft" width="240"] Erin Lee Carr[/caption]

This was not Carr’s first foray into issues that raise questions about what happens in the mind, what happens on the internet and what happens in reality. Now 32, she directed her first documentary for HBO in 2013: “Thought Crimes: The Case of the Cannibal Cop,” probes the court case of a New York City police officer who indulged in sadistic fantasies, but not, apparently, action. Since then, Carr has released two other feature-length documentaries: “Mommy Dead and Dearest” (2017) is another dive into the question of victimhood; it explores the case of a young woman accused of killing her mother after being raised as a captive invalid. “At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal” (2019) revisits the case of disgraced former women Olympics team doctor Lawrence G. Nassar. 

Also in 2019, Carr published “All That You Leave Behind,” a memoir about confronting her drug addiction and relationship with her father, the late New York Times media critic David Carr. 

With unique journalism techniques, Carr rejects convenient narratives to peel away layers of human complexities, often reaching into dark corners we would rather deny. We spoke about how she did it, her interview style, and how she has achieved continual commercial success as a documentary filmmaker. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.  

[dc small]M[/dc]ichelle Carter declined to participate in “I Love You, Now Die.” How did you recreate her voice and inner thoughts without being able to interview her?
I asked (Michelle to be in the film) 17 times. But there are a lot of text messages in that movie. I think that we have such intense text messages and digital communications that [they] reflect our state of mind or consciousness. The texts really were interviews. They were saying at the time what she was thinking. 

It pushed me to understand the narrative from her perspective and put in her voice without ever having access to her. I think that's what made me the director that I am today. 

What was the “aha” moment for you when formulating your own perspective about Michelle Carter?
Documentaries don't really work like that. There is no “aha” moment. They are puzzle pieces that you assemble from scrap. I loved in the edit when I was working with (editor and co-producer) Andrew Coffman and the puzzle pieces actually fit together. I thought, “Oh my gosh, maybe it's a real thing!” 

Every single time I make something, it isn't certain that it will work out. There are always these grand moments of doubt: Was this right? Is this the right interview? What are we doing? What are we trying to do? Films are so much more collaboration than overt acts of journalism. So, for me, it is watching the puzzle pieces come together in the edit. 

All of your films have been about true crime, and often you’re interviewing people who have been through very traumatic experiences. What is your interview style like in those situations?
Especially for documentary, it's about pausing and about breaks. If I talk over you while you're answering, the bite becomes unusable. I've had to get pretty comfortable with silence and letting (the interview) pause.  

 There’s also this weird amount of coaching people through it. You sort of have to say, We're going to reset. You're doing fine. You seem a little nervous. What are we going to do for this? Do you want to go get a glass of water? Do you want to break for a second? Sometimes I say, “We're going to take a deep breath.” Then we look at each other say, “This interview’s going be great.”  

I don't think many other journalists do anything like that, but you can really tell if someone is very nervous. And unfortunately, if someone's nervous, people tend to think that they're lying. I never want people to think that people who are nervous or fidgeting are lying. I want them to really reflect their true selves. 

When interviewing people for “At the Heart of Gold,” I was emotional during interviews. I definitely cried during some interviews because my subject was crying. I would never have cried during any of the other interviews. I guess all the films break you down, but I felt pretty broken after that.  

What was the most emotionally taxing part about making “I Love You, Now Die”?
All of it. The shooting was so painful. I found the whole atmosphere at the courtroom to be really combustible. There was a lot of grief and there was a lot of media attention. The Conrad Roy family was being hounded in court as if they were celebrities and they were grieving the loss of their son. We were all trying to navigate the limelight. I was there with my recorder and trying to get to second angle and it really made me question what I was doing with my life. Am I putting more harm into the world than good? We forget that these people are real people. And I try to remember every day that they are. 

Despite how difficult it can be to make a living from documentary filmmaking, you have consistently produced commercial work. What has made the difference for you?
I am nothing without an audience to watch these things, and I should never forget it. What is viral film? What do people want to watch? Is there is a way to bake philosophical arguments into must-watch television? 

I'm so much more of a strategist than an artist. I'm a robot that is reverse engineering to get people to watch things, and I align myself with institutions that can get this stuff done and that there are big audiences for. 

 I think that working with producers that you respect and admire while you're working on your own thing is important. Try to get cash while you're trying to make your thing without being reliant on institutions — because you're very rarely going to get paid to make your first film.

Kristen Chin is a graduate journalism student at Boston University, documentary filmmaker, and writer. Having traveled to 25 countries and lived in two, she aspires to work on documentaries and docu-series about travel, food, and lifestyle.

The post Rejecting the simplified news narrative appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.