Taking the Leap

Although I made my first movie in college (16mm, b&w), many years passed before I turned seriously to the art of filmmaking. During those years, I made a living by writing fiction- and non-fiction books and newspaper series. When I partnered with director Dave Bettencourt to make documentary movies, through our Eagle Peak Media production company, I brought something to the party. I brought an understanding of the fundamental element of film: story. Conceptually, the transition was easy. The practical realities, not so.
Words, the building blocks of the written story, are wondrous things. They are easily assembled, manipulated, and changed – even manufactured (think: Faulkner). They move easily from brain to paper or monitor. They can be copied, cut, and shared with a click of the mouse. But words, in the form of script and on-screen dialogue, are only one of the building blocks of film. Sound and image, of course, are the other two.

The first film Dave and I made, ON THE LAKE: Life and Love in a Distant Place, about the tuberculosis epidemic of 1900s America and globally today, was released in February and has been broadcast in PBS markets nationwide. It began with words – a conversation we had two years ago, after the release of Dave’s documentary YOU MUST BE THIS TALL: The Story of Rocky Point Park. Dave and I had wanted for some while to collaborate, and I had an idea that this old tuberculosis hospital I’d written about for The Providence Journal, where I’m on staff, would make a good documentary. Brainstorming led to notes back and forth, which led to a treatment that I wrote, which led to a shooting schedule and eventually to a script (I’m condensing here), and off we went – me with notebook and pen, Dave and our crew with equipment.

Having identified people we wanted on screen, we began our on-camera interviews. An important difference was immediately apparent: it’s one thing to speak into an audio recorder, knowing punctuation and structure can smooth speech put into writing; quite another to see and hear someone, knowing that these sights and sounds are what you’ll have to build your movie with in the editing booth. I paid attention as never before to inflection, articulation, ahs and ums, pauses, whether people were looking at the ceiling and how nervous (or relaxed) they were – whether they were naturals, or something less. Only so much the Avid can do. Despite the power of her narrative, which would have been stunning in print, we couldn’t use one of our best people because she was so awful on camera – even when we shot her again. A painful lesson (and a sad one for her, when she learned her fate on the cutting room floor… we did put her outtakes on the DVD, however, out of our sense of fairness).

Reading can enlighten, fire imagination and spark emotion, but viewing requires physical images to best achieve the same effects. It’s relatively simple to write a scene in a book: “I shivered in a cold bed in a strange hospital room” is, well, someone shivering in a cold bed in a strange hospital room. Certainly, you can have a narrator (or character) in a documentary describe that, and there are times when you should – but how much more powerful is the still photograph or footage of that same patient in that bed. The documentarian has to almost literally scour the earth for useable images – from private collections, libraries, university archives and other places. The documentarian must scan photos and transfer footage after they’re found, a process with its own complexities, especially if you work in high-def, as we do. Permission must be granted and in some cases, fees must be paid for the rights. All this priceless material must be treated with reverence and returned safe and sound.

The editing booth brings challenges that are familiar to filmmakers but were not to me. I was surprised by the complexity of the job, so unlike pure word-editing – and by the technical expertise our superb editor, Harry Cawthorn, needs just to operate the Avid, never mind the artistic touch he brings. I was also surprised learning about the nuances of the third of filmmaking’s building blocks: sound. Images have their own power to sway audiences, but sound is equally powerful, sometimes more so. Sound has no direct sensory role in the written story (“he screamed like a banshee” is about as close as you can get), but without a great soundtrack, a movie suffers. For our original score, we relied on two great musicians and songwriters: Ben Mesiti and Lonnie Montaquila. They know sound. All I know is how good theirs is.

Which leads to the most critical difference in my transition to cinematic storytelling. Pure writing is largely a solitary pursuit, a person alone with a computer or paper — but filmmaking at any level above YouTube is a collaborative undertaking, with many talents joining to succeed. Visions differ. Egos compete. Financing involves yet more “collaborators” – the foundations, agencies, companies and individuals that help pay the freight. A writer can peck away on the kitchen table for years and maybe a best-selling Great American Novel will result, but a filmmaker needs money, now. At the end of the day, everyone and everything has to come together or the project dies.

But throughout, the driving force remains story, which is why Eagle Peak Media adopted this slogan: Story Is Our Passion. A good story may produce a good movie – but a weak story will always produce a weak movie. No exceptions.

Like writing, filmmaking becomes addictive; you crave more, but are never satisfied. Dave and I are now in production of our next documentary, due to premiere at the 2010 Rhode Island International Film Festival. BEHIND THE HEDGEROW: Eileen Slocum and the Meaning of Newport, is an inside look at a unique American aristocracy, a world of inherited wealth that traces its roots to The Gilded Age and before. And we’re brainstorming the movie we’ll do after HEDGEROW. I do, however, remain devoted to pure writing; my current project is a biography of the late U.S. Senator Claiborne Pell. Book or movie, story is the thread that runs through all.

G. Wayne Miller is producer, writer and partner, with director David Bettencourt, in Eagle Peak Media. More about ON THE LAKE, BEHIND THE HEDGEROW and other Eagle Peak Media endeavors at www.EaglePeakMedia.com