Ken Burns cannot be stopped
Reuters has a quick interview with filmmaker Ken Burns, who’s at Telluride and talking about his new documentary for PBS, “Tenth Inning,” a sequel to his nine-part series “Baseball.” What is mindblowing is at the end of the interview when he’s asked what he’s working on now:
We’re in post-production on a three-part, six-hour history of Prohibition. We are in the middle of editing a big series on the Dust Bowl. We’re doing a film on the Central Park jogger case. We’re doing a huge, huge mega-series on the Roosevelts, Franklin and Eleanor. And we’re gearing up for Vietnam.
Three cheers for a documentary filmmaker who doesn’t stick himself in his own films, bases his work on sit-down interviews, and does long looks at big subjects. Amazing.
In a 2007 interview with American Profile, he shed some light on how he’s able to do this:
“There’s really little else that occupies my time,” says Burns, whose seven-part series on World War II—titled simply The War—begins Sept. 23 on PBS. “I put in 80 hours a week when I’m working on a series. I basically work my butt off, then I spend time with my wife and kids.”
Taking a structural view of ‘A Film Unfinished’
Slant Magazine’s Tom Stempel has a piece on “Understanding Screenwriting” that takes a close look at the structure of Yael Hersonski’s “A Film Unfinished.” He sets it up this way:
The problem facing Yael Hersonski was this. She had a rough cut, without a soundtrack, of a Nazi documentary called The Ghetto. It had been filmed in the spring of 1942 in the Warsaw Ghetto, but not completed, apparently because the Nazis started shipping Jews out of the Ghetto into the camps. For years, various shots from the film had been used as historical clips in other documentaries. Then a reel of outtakes was found, which very clearly showed that many of the shots were staged by the German camera crews. So how do you organize all of that into a film, and what else do you want or need to make it into a complete film?
Hersonski uses archival footage, interviews and other “standard” documentary techniques, but in order to give the film shape, Stempel writes,
…Hersonski introduces the most problematical element in her film. She learned that one of the cameramen on the film, Willy Wist, was interrogated about his experience. She has the transcript, but handles it as a reconstruction, with an actor “playing” Wist. Given the “reality” of the rest of the film, the reconstruction seems artificial, although it is so well done that many people will “believe” it. It is never specifically mentioned in the narration or the titles that it is a reconstruction. On the other hand, that may have been the only way to include the material. And how different is it really from the other actors who read the diaries and reports that make up the rest of the sound track? Still, in a film that is showing us the difference between truth and fiction on film, I find myself a little queasy about it. Only a little queasy, though, since Wist’s statements add a lot to the film. See the moral quandaries dealing with the truth can get you into?
Stempel notes that while it’s not always obvious, all good documentaries have a clearly-thought-out structure. Chronological structure is the easiest, simply plugging in material in the order in which events happens. And what seems a rising trend of “action documentaries” – such as Louis Psihoyos’s “The Cove,” which is a kind of true-life “Ocean’s Eleven” with a wily crew pulling off a big caper as the center – organizing non-chronological work (such as interview-based films on a topic) or less-chronological work (in which events don’t unfold quite so deliberately) can require deeper thinking in the writing and editing. And obviously, a reconstruction or narration can help give shape to what appears on the surface to be an accumulation. How far to take that, or where you cross too far into dramatization, is always a blurry line.
‘Cyclocross,’ by Ken Bloomer
CYCLOCROSS by Ken Bloomer from e r t z u i ° film on Vimeo.
‘Life in a Day’ gets 80,000 videos submitted
Ridley Scott and Kevin MacDonald wanted video, and they got video.
The New York Times reports that for their crowdsourcing project that will tell the story of one day, July 24, the filmmakers have received 80,000 video submissions totaling 4,600 hours. If the filmmakers spent 8 hours a day reviewing it, that would take a year and a half to watch (525 days, to be exact).
The Times notes that Scott and Macdonald
have assembled 20 editors and researchers to log and vet the footage. “It’s a mountain, but we’re eager to climb it,” Mr. Macdonald said. The team will winnow the videos, which came from 197 countries, down to 100 hours and begin sharing some results at youtube.com/lifeinaday, in September. The final film will have its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and on YouTube in January.
‘A Film Unfinished’ loses appeal of R rating
The Holocaust film “A Film Unfinished” has lost its appeal of an R rating from the MPAA, which held 12-3 that the presence of nudity – even that of concentration-camp internees on archival film – justifies the rating.
The film, directed by Yael Hersonski, was produced by Oscilloscope Laboratories, headed by ex-Beastie Boy Adam Yauch, who said in a prepared statement,
In a world where young people are bombarded with meaningless entertainment, it’s unfortunate that a film with real educational and historic value would be denied to them by an organization that is supposed to be working to help them.
We can’t help note a Beastie Boy railing about meaningless entertainment, but we’ll leave it at that. The film will be released later this month.
Spike Lee returns to New Orleans, 5 years later
Spike Lee’s documentary “When The Levees Broke” chronicled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on the city and people of New Orleans in 2005.It will run as a four-hour, two-part broadcast on HBO.
“If God is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise” follows the continuing struggles to get a city back on its feet (on that the massive BP oil spill certainly won’t help).
Lee and his film crew began their journey in New Orleans in Feb. 2010 – where the city is filled with a wave of optimism following the New Orleans Saints winning the Super Bowl.
While that along with a series of legal victories encourages the residents of New Orleans, Lee uncovers that many still feel a sense of mistrust between them and local government and businesses.
A look at DIY: ‘The Way We Get By’
Truly Free Film has a first-person account of the making of “The Way We Get By,” a film by Gita Pullapilly and Aron Gaudet. The account, written by Gita, will be in five short parts.
A synopsis of the film: “The Way We Get By” is an intimate look at three of these greeters as they confront the universal losses that come with aging and rediscover their reason for living. Bill Knight, Jerry Mundy and Joan Gaudet find the strength to overcome their personal battles and transform their lives through service. This inspirational and surprising story shatters the stereotypes of today’s senior citizens as the greeters redefine the meaning of community.
Gita notes that while the filmmakers thought they had a good project, getting support early on nearly made them thing they were wrong.
We wanted to make a quality film and get it in front of an audience, but we also wanted to establish our careers as filmmakers. This meant some of our choices would be made because it was the best move for our film, and some would be made to help our careers.
But all of it was a moot point if no one else thought our film had potential. We knew we had to find someone to help champion our film. So for three years, we had applied to grants and fellowships and we were rejected from everything. Our confidence in us—and the film—were starting to diminish.
They did eventually get selected at “filmmakers in residence” at WGBH, and the project moved forward. Part 2 continues the story…
Holocaust documentary gets R rating for concentration-camp photos
The former Beastie Boys member and now documentary producer Adam Yauch is reported to be outraged by the MPAA’s decision to rate his company’s film, “A Film Unfinished,” with an R – because it shows still photographs of naked people in concentration camps. Yauch is disturbed because he views the film as worthy of school screenings.
In a press release, Yauch said,
This is too important of a historical document to ban from classrooms. While there’s no doubt that Holocaust atrocities are displayed, if teachers feel their students are ready to understand what happened, it’s essential that young people are giving the opportunity to see this film. Why deny them the chance to learn about this critical part of our human history? I understand that the MPAA wants to protect children’s eyes from things that are too overwhelming, but they’ve really gone too far this time. It’s bulls–t.
MTV Movie Blog’s Adam Rosenberg notes,
I attended Hebrew School when I was younger and one of my classes at age 12 — 12 — was entirely focused on the Holocaust. What did we do for every single class session? We watched documentaries. What we saw was horrifying, and entirely too real. For months, twice a week we would watch Holocaust doc after Holocaust doc. We were repeatedly exposed to the horrors of what happened during World War II. This wasn’t scary or scarring. It was educational. There was always a disclaimer before class for the squeamish, that they could leave if they chose, but everyone stayed. There was an implicit understanding; we needed to see this imagery. We needed understand the depths to which people can sink, the better to ensure that such an evil thing never happens again.
Yauch’s Oscilloscope Laboratories debuted the film, directed by Yael Hersonski, at Sundance. Oscilloscope will reported appeal the decision in a hearing on Thursday.
Hustwit’s third documentary film to complete the ‘Design Trilogy’
Gary Hustwit has done a film on typography (“Helvetica”) and a film on industrial design” (“Objectified”), so it should not come as a total surprise that his third project has a one-word title and involves design.
“Urbanized” will be, obviously, on the design of cities. He’s gone from micro to macro, so to speak, moving from the beauty of a letter on a page to that of the urban landscape.
Fastcodesign.com reports that Hustwit’s project won’t be out until 2011.
While Urbanized will feature the signature superstar architects and city planners and politicians and commercial developers, Hustwit says he will also feature non-designers who have had a role in shaping their communities.
The website for the film is here.
Although he’s tight-lipped about content, he made the announcement now in order to open up a dialogue with projects that he thinks still await discovery. “With urban design it’s really incremental,” he says. “In some cases it is about creating these massive city projects, but much of the time it’s about small, local improvement.” Those are the kinds of projects he still hopes to learn about during the second half of filming.
On the road with ‘The Elders’
We profiled Nathaniel Hansen’s crowdfunded project “The Elders” here a while back, and Nathaniel is now on the road making the project happen. Here are a couple of clips from the project:
Coach from Nathaniel Hansen on Vimeo.
Doy from Nathaniel Hansen on Vimeo.