One man’s take on Kickstarter, and another’s

Joey Daoud at Coffee and Celluloid writes about his experience trying to raise funds on Kickstarter, with the basic thought being “People don’t want to pledge money on something that isn’t a sure thing.”

He was planning a documentary on high-school students making robots for a competition, and set a goal amount of $9,000. He didn’t get the money.

His post lays out some wise advice: Build a fan base first through social media, create a high-profile blog and (most importantly) set a reasonable goal amount.

It’s also harder to build a fan base and raise money in the early stages of a project, before you have something to show and spread. That’s why there’s so many finishing grants – they want to put their money on something that has a high chance of seeing completion.

But he doesn’t address what is probably the key to trying to crowdfund: Have an absolutely brilliant idea that someone else can’t steal.

That’s nearly impossible. Imagine putting out into the ether an idea that is so obviously good that funders can’t help but want to put money toward it. Now imagine someone out there seeing that and thinking, “That’s something I could probably do better than this person.”

When you lay out your idea on Kickstarter, you’re depending on someone saying “that project could really work!” in all the right ways. Ideas aren’t copyrightable, nor should they be. So here are some added observations on approaching Kickstarter.

1) I have an idea that is sufficiently broad that it will attract both funders and a wide audience. Funders mathematically represent a very tiny subgroup of all the people who’d want to see this film. Projects that involve a very narrow topic might attract a smaller, deeper cohort, but now you need luck working for you. For Joey’s project, I’d guess not that many people are that interested in robot building – or at least think they’d be that interested -  but if you can get the idea to that rich tech guy who remembers fondly building his own robot in high school… but then you’re probably back to looking for individual backers.

2) I have a project in which I am the only person who can do it properly. What gives you, the filmmaker, a monopoly on this idea? Why can’t someone else do it better? Hollywood is in the idea-stealing business, to a large degree, and we assume documentary filmmakers are more… pure. Ask Regina Kimbell about that. So to crowdfund without giving away the store, it can either be that you’re in a highly unusual position (“I’m living in the Amazon with an indigenous group of natives who have never before seen an outsider and have come to trust me”), or it can be that you’re a unique talent with a serious track record (“I’ve won major awards for my uniquely insightful approach to stories and my tireless work to realize it on film”). Roko Belic crowdfunded $36,000 for his new documentary “Happy,” which is a great idea. He also was an Academy Award nominee for his film “Genghis Blues,” in which he traveled to Mongolia to document a blind American participating in a Tuvan throatsinging competition, shot on Hi-8, and lived over an auto repair shop to afford to make the film. That’s a fundable guy.

3) This idea fills a gap that people want to see filled. As much as it seems like there is no stone unturned in the current documentary climate, there are always gaps in topic areas you’d think would have been done. Don’t try to crowdfund a documentary about the environment, the current darling topic of film festivals everywhere, try to find something where when you say, “No one’s ever done a film on this,” the response is “Really? You’re kidding.” That kind of film may not appeal to Sundance and The Academy, but it will appeal to the audience who’d like to see that as-yet-nonexistent film.

4) I will finish this film no matter what, but your money will help make it better. Kickstarter has no way of knowing how many people, when they don’t reach their funding goal, just give up, but that’s the last person I’d want to fund. Show me no one can stop you. Show me you already figured out how you’ll sacrifice and fight through adversity before you ask me to give money to a stranger. Make me, in essence, part of a cause, a story of triumph over adversity – not only in the film, but in the story of making of the film. A trailer will help a lot in showing this.

5) I’m not greedy. Remember “It’s a Wonderful Life,” when there’s a bank run, and everyone’s trying to cash out? George Bailey asks people, “what will it take to get you by for now?” Meek little Miss Davis says, “Can I have $17.50?” When you’re crowdfunding, you’re Miss Davis. You will get by on the least amount possible. You will ask for nothing more than you need. And how much do you really need? I once met a couple of guys who wanted to do a documentary on gerrymandering in Texas politics. They lived in Boston. So their funding needs involved airfare, hotels and so on. With Joey, I presume the high school where they’re doing the robot building is very close by (so he can be there all the time at no expense), that he’ll work the project after his regular job he uses to afford his own living expenses, and that he’ll choose equipment that is the minimum to do his project correctly – REDs need not apply. But a crowdfunder, IMHO, is wise not to let me presume that, but to be clear on that. With grants, you’re obligated to report back your expenditures and sign a legal document saying you’re telling the truth. Crowdfunding is all about trust.

Finally, and most importantly, some of the best documentaries ever would not have been crowdfundable. “Grey Gardens,” “Hoop Dreams” and “The Thin Blue Line” were likely too dependent on luck and serendipity to have drawn donations. So for Joey and other unsuccessful crowdfunders, what may happen in that outcome that you can’t guarantee may be the very thing that makes the film wonderful…

Why documentaries will crowdfund and self-distribute better than fictional films

Filmmaker Magazine has a piece by Anthony Kaufman that questions whether crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter, or distributing DIY, are the salvation of independent film.

Kaufman writes,

While social media’s cheerleaders are many — Scott Kirsner, Lance Weiler, Ted Hope, Peter Broderick, Jon Reiss — the solvency of an Internet-enabled DIY filmmaking-and-distribution model is far from guaranteed. At this early stage, the successes are few and far between (Tze Chun’s Sundance drama Children of Invention; Franny Armstrong’s eco-doc The Age of Stupid), and some are calling a sustainable indie-film infrastructure built around crowd-funding and social-network marketing a naïve proposal.

I’m not sure how “few and far between” successes are, when it comes to documentaries. I also think crowdfunding can be a very successful approach for nonfiction film, as can DIY distribution. Here are some reasons why:

Fictional film is an art, documentary a craft. Art is more of a mystery, even to those who create it; one’s last successful work doesn’t assure future success. Even once a screenplay is written, add into fiction film the artistic vision of a director, then actors. When it all comes together, it’s wonderful, but anyone who invests in art knows the result is not always return. Even a patron of the arts, whether it be a granting agency or a microfunder, never is sure of a finished product being worthwhile. Craft steps away from art’s pretensions and its aspirations, but it also then settles itself into workmanship as well as intrinsic value.  A craftsman such as Alex Gibney or  Errol Morris is likely to repeat successes more than an artist such as Kevin Smith or Kathryn Bigelow (for those of us who are a bit older, think Michael Cimino and Peter Bogdonavich, who both followed early success by nearly disappearing from the grid). The more “journalistic” the documentary, the more craftsmanship trumps art.

Fiction films are personality driven; documentaries are subject-driven. With the exception of names such as Werner Herzog (“a documentary about Antarctica? I’m there!”), audiences seek out documentaries based on topic. Find a topic of high interest to a core audience, particularly a topic that has been underrepresented, and you’ll get interest. Years ago I sat in an Atlanta theater watching the 1977 Danish documentary “A Sunday in Hell,” about the grueling Paris-Roubaix cycling race. The place was jammed with cyclists, many wearing their team jerseys and caps. It was all about their interest in seeing a topic for which they had passion. A great example of that are Gary Hustwit’s films, “Helvetica” and “Objectified,”  which are about typography and industrial design, respectively. Hustwit has built a core audience out of the design community, a group that likely has read scores of design magazines that cover much the same terrain. But a documentary lets us hear the people, and more importantly distills all that material into a perceptual value.  And that core audience that wants to see that film done will chip in to make it. Which leads to the next point.

Documentary filmmakers with a track record are safer future bets. Hustwit would likely do well with crowdfunding a design-related film, because he’s established himself there. I remember years ago going to Denver for my interview with The Denver Post, where I consequently worked as reporter, and sitting in the hotel bar with every television in the place pumping out Warren Miller ski documentaries. Welcome to Colorado, Dude! Miller was synonymous with ski and surf films, and therefore with Colorado and Southern California, and each successive film he made had a built-in audience. If crowdfunding had existed then, and you couldn’t wait for a new Warren Miller film, you might well have gone to Kickstarter and sent your $10.

Low cost means greater chance for success. Because a documentary budget can be siginficantly less than an actor-driven film (even if actors defer payments, they are still contracted payments), I’m more likely to believe my donation toward a documentary will actually lead to a documentary. It doesn’t have to be pitch-perfect, either: Watch Jonathan Nossitor’s “Mondovino,” a doc about small estate winemakers in France and elsewhere fighting big, bad Mondavi, and you’ll see low production value but great story. I think where some Kickstarter documentary projects have failed to get funding is where the funding goal seems out of whack – I want to know the filmmakers are sleeping on friends’ couches and not at the Hilton when they’re on the road. The famed Brazilian photojournalist Sebastiao Salgado documented the South American backroads in his book “Other Americas” by traveling in third-class buses, carrying a sleeping bag, and loading his own film from bulk reels into reusable cannisters, a “roll-your-own” aesthetic that allowed him to do great work. As Ben Franklin said, “Be Frugal, Be Free.” Documentary filmmakers who can squeeze the most out of the budgets they have beget more support. And, of course, the lower the production costs, the sooner you’ll actually make money.

As in funding, documentary distribution is topic-driven. The documentary “Beyond Biba,” detailed at this site in April, had a very successfully DIY distribution based on finding that small audience with passionate interest in fashion. Director Louis Price found theatrical distribution all over Britain and beyond for his film about “Biba” fashion doyenne Barbara Hulanicki. I’ve always thought of a film like this as being the ones distribution companies like First Run would never even bother watching, because distribution companies seem stuck in the old-school notion of all-or-nothing success. Sure, Magnolia found a winner with “Man on Wire,” but for people passionate about their topic, their all-time favorite documentary is the film the rest of us never even heard of.

In the end, no project is assured of success or interest, but it goes back to skillful craft having staying power in the market, for many reasons. Kaufman’s article is thoughtful, but makes the mistake of speaking of “film” as if there is really a strong affinity between fictional and documentary films. I think his perspective may be right and wrong, and that in the areas of crowdfunding and DIY distribution, documentary and fiction films may take greatly divergent paths to success.

Blogging as a way of supporting your film

Film-marketing expert Sheri Candler says to “think of your blog as a publishing arm of your empire.”

Blogging as a way of extending interest in a film, particularly a documentary, can be a very useful”inbound marketing strategy.” It positions the documentarian not only as a maker of a film but also as a center of information for a given topic. Blogging your film can be narrow (focusing only on the film) or wide (focusing on news within the subject area the documentary covers).

Sheri has reposted some guidelines for blogging, and it’s a useful read. Some points she makes:

- Blog off a unique url you  have purchased, not off a free blog on sites such as Wordpress or TypePad. “You want a unique URL that is simple to remember and that you can move if you need to without having to get a new URL.”

- Blog enough (at least once weekly) to maintain or build audience. “It takes consistent work for a long period of time to build up readers. Same with the audience for your films.”

- Don’t overdo keywords, but rather focus on content that draws readers instead of just search engines. “Useful content keeps readers coming back, keep the keywords appropriate to your post.”

- Don’t use your blog strictly as a press center for your film. “Press releases are one way communication, announcements to the press about your company/film. Blogs are dialogs meant for conversation with your audience.”

Sheri also covers some ideas of how and what to blog.

My former colleague from Nieman Journalism Lab, Zach Seward (now covering social media for The Wall Street Journal) notes that blogs and social media can turn you from “pure marketer” to an “information center.” This is especially true of documentarians who choose a topic because they are innately interested in it and want to continue to explore it after the film is done. It becomes circular: The documentary speaks to the filmmaker’s knowledge base, and the continuing knowledge base in turn brings people back to the film.

‘Hoops Dreams’ the Great American Documentary?

“Hoop Dreams” screens tonight at the IFC in New York, on the occasion of its 15th anniversary. Roger Ebert, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times about his first viewing of that classic documentary, reminds us that the film is far from just a sports film. (The original 1994 Ebert review is here.)

I believe “Hoop Dreams” is the great American documentary. No other documentary has ever touched me more deeply. It was relevant then, and today, as inner city neighborhoods sink deeper into the despair of children murdering children, it is more relevant.

“Hoop Dreams” is about compelling characters in pursuit of compelling goals, about the Horatio Alger notion of the American Dream, about the struggle for greatness, about quiet revelation and sometimes stunning epiphany, and about what we value as a culture.

One of the things that makes “Hoop Dreams” great, in my mind, is that while the two young men it chronicles come quickly to mind – Arthur Agee and William Gates – come quickly to mind, the name of the makers of them film come less quickly. I say that as a testament to them, in an age of documentary filmmaking in which the Michael Moores, Chris Rocks and Morgan Spurlocks often push their own subjects off the stage.

Steve James, the director of Hoop Dreams, along with producers Frederick Marx and Peter Gilbert, shot 250 hours on film. They were three young men without established backing, who had set out to make a 30-minute film. But the story just kept happening. James recalled that,

We kept right on filming. We ended up five years later with 250 hours of film. We edited it down to just under three hours. We only had enough money to shoot a half-hour film. We never did get much more, but we kept on filming.

For those dramatic film writers who swear by Robert McKee’s Story as the ultimate screenwriting guide, “Hoop Dreams” fits every notion of what McKee calls a great story, especially in how Agrre and Gates turn out not to be single-minded basketball nuts, but rather young men with complexities brought about by their lives and where their talents have brought them, and where they think will bring them. In the end, they fail at the purported goal (which was always nearly impossible) and find deeper truths within themselves.

Ebert notes that,

It wasn’t even nominated by the Academy’s documentary committee. We learned, through very reliable sources, that the members of the committee had a system. They carried little flashlights. When one gave up on a film, he waved a light on the screen. When a majority of flashlights had voted, the film was switched off. “Hoop Dreams” was stopped after 15 minutes.

In this age of cheap camcorders, cheap hard drives and laptop editing, one would think other films would have surpassed “Hoop Dreams.” At least Ebert doesn’t think so. And the reason is not because it is or isn’t 1080p with Dolby sound, but rather that James and his producers knew to chase the story, knew what to look and listen for, didn’t give up in the face of the struggle to fund it, and didn’t stick themselves into the story. Great story telling has a better shelf life than all the new technology hitting the market.

Awesome marketing ideas of the week: “Watch-ins” and “Couchfest”

In this age of finding new and creative ways of getting one’s documentary film out there, the makers of “Money-Driven Medicine,” a documentary about health-care costs, are urging “watch-ins” of the film.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that California Newsreel, the San Francisco-based distributor of social documentaries, has connected with organizations such as Consumers Union to push the “watch-in” idea. They report there have been a about 175 such events.

I love this idea for certain types of films. Over on the book-publishing side, one of the phenomena of the late 1990s was the “book club,” which turned reading from a solitary pursuit to a group event. Publishers eagerly packaged discussion guides and other support material to encourage these kinds of gatherings. The downside was that only certain types of books (chick lit, primarily) and certain types of audiences (women, often stay-at-home moms) partook of book clubs, making that type of book and audience the Holy Grail of publishing and marginalizing many other good books.

But, a watch-in of a film, a gathering of like-minded people, and a discussion following that might make viewers into opinion leaders, could be great. “Money-Driven Medicine” is 86 minutes long; I wonder if a shorter film, say 60 minutes, might be more conducive to a watch-in.

This weekend, “Couch Fest 2009″ takes place Saturday night in Seattle. Its slogan is “Watching Short Films In Strangers’ Houses: Awkwardly Awesome.”

Here’s the skinny on Couch Fest:

What am I expected to do?
Oh, this is where it gets interesting. You are, first, supposed to enjoy yourself. To host, you should be excited about opening your glorious residence to film lovers. On the day of the event, a new set of film lovers will be coming to your house every hour. They will watch a 30 minute program of short, amazing movies. There will be a 10 minute intermission. At a basic level, you should have a TV and a DVD player. Other than that, it’s up to you. Some houses are excited about hosting and have developed themes. Some houses are considering serving homemade lemonade. It’s really up to you. Show off.

How many people will be in the house each hour?
Good question. There will be anywhere from five people to the absolute max of twenty respectful people ready to watch films in your dandy house.

Can I sell food or drinks?
We thought about this question. We wondered if it might feel a little tacky selling things to people. But, if you wanted to have a yard sale in front of your house while hosting, well, that would be pretty rad. So, if you aren’t sure, just drop us a specific question.
Will I get paid?
We aren’t charging a submission fee to filmmakers and we will only be charging a very low admission fee. For this second year, we will be honored for film-loving citizens to be a part of our sequel. But, honestly, we can’t afford to pay you to host yet. On the other hand, we will provide a unique day, one non-counterfeit Couch Fest Films T-shirt and one copy of the Couch Fest Films 2009 highlights DVD.

Couch Fest will host a documentary shorts program, with 5 films ranging from 1 to 7 minutes in length. If you’re interested, go to 316 NE 53rd Street, Seattle, pay $10 at the door, and hit the couch. The homeowners have a “friendly cat and dog,” so maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll get a free lap warming, too.

The pre- and post-Moore documentary landscape, and a fascinating rediscovery

Shawn Levy of the Oregonian in Portland has a thoughtful post on the effect Michael Moore’s work has had on filmmaking, as exemplified by two films showing in Portland this week – The little-seen 1978 documentary film “Fast Break,” and the Chris Rock vehicle “Good Hair.” That’s film vs. vehicle, as the Moore Effect seems to be either the celebritization of documentary filmmakers of the documentary filmmakerization of celebrities.

Before Moore, feature documentaries generally presented themselves as fly-on-the-wall, you-are-there productions made by impartial chroniclers unobtrusively observing, say, a mental hospital (Frederick Wiseman’s “Titicut Follies”), a rock star (D. A. Pennebaker’s “Don’t Look Back”), a labor conflict (Barbara Kopple’s “Harlan County, U.S.A.”), or a capital murder case (Errol Morris’s “The Thin Blue Line”).

He goes on to note,

With 1989’s “Roger and Me,” Moore shattered the mold forever. Not only did he confess to his biases, but he walked around inside the film and argued them out loud. Yes, he made strawmen of his enemies and overpraised those who shared his views. But that was, effectively, happening in those earlier films as well, albeit behind a guise of decorous disinterest.

The story of “Fast Break” is fascinating and sad. In 1977, filmmaker Don Zavin followed members of the Portland Trail Blazers as they spent the off-season after winning the 1976-77 NBA championship. Zavin focused on Blazers star Bill Walton, the counterculturish UCLA grad as he rides his bicycles down the Oregon coast, takes part in a native American ceremony and generally acts far more interesting than today’s professional athlete. Those who have seen the film more lately speak highly of it, and its contrast to the unapproachable multimillionaire athletes today may well lend it a poignancy and fascination.

But the film ran only one week at a Portland theater. In his post at PowellsBooksBlog, Matt Love notes that,

Fast Break suffered the cruel marketing misfortune to debut in Portland at the precise moment when Oregon had come to loathe Bill Walton because of his accusations of medical malpractice against the team and demand for a trade. It also didn’t help that Portland’s two leading film critics, the Oregonian’s Ted Mahar and the Oregon Journal’s Bob Hicks, panned the movie. Mahar: “It has little to say… no clear concept… sequences go on at ridiculous lengths.” Hicks: “Idolatry… don’t look here for the answers to today’s perplexities… somehow the invented athletes of Semi-Tough (Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson!) seem more human than the real people who star as themselves in Fast Break.” Zavin failed to find a national distributor for Fast Break in 1978. Apparently he kept trying, and then in 1979, another film titled Fast Break, a big-budget studio comedy about a misfit college basketball team starring Gabe Kaplan of Welcome Back Kotter fame, was released. This bizarre coincidence precluded any chance that Zavin’s Fast Break would gain national distribution.

After Zavin’s death, his widow donated his film archives to the Oregon Historical Society, where the film was resurrected and will play this weekend at the Clinton Street Theater in Portland. Here’s hoping for the DVD to go on sale!

Making sense of depth of field, Part 3

Part 1

Part 2

There are two more widely divergent ways of creating separation of subject from background in your documentary interviews, which creates hallow depth of field. One is the use of so-called depth-of-field adapters, sometimes called “cinema adapter.” The other is by using your editing system and green screen to create a similar effect.

1. Depth of Field Adapters

DOF adapters use the same simple technology found in the earliest still camera, which is to project an image on a ground glass. Because the sensors on the most-used HD camcorders are in the ¼ -inch to ½-inch ranges, they don’t create much separation.
A DOF adapter is a clever device. On the front of it goes a 35mm still-camera lens. The back end attaches to the front of the camcorder lens. In the back of the DOF adapter is a ground glass roughly the size of a 35mm full frame (about 36mm by 24mm), and therefore with the kind of depth separation 35mm still cameras provide. The lens out front projects an image onto the ground glass, so that what your camcorder records is actually filming is the image on the ground glass.
Because the ground glass is translucent and has a graininess to its surface, the DOF adapters have a small mechanism that vibrates the ground glass to create a smooth projection surface. On adapters such as Cinevate’s Brevis, the ground glass moves in very tight circles, roughly a millemeter or two (if you get a piece of dust or fleck of dust on the ground glass, it will show up as a weird little circle on your video. Generally you should either blow air on the ground glass, or even wash it lightly with dishwashing liquid and warm water to remove that). On the most expensive DOF adapter available, the $4,500 Letus Ultimate, a circular “Smart Spinning” ground glass actually revolves within the mechanism.
Because the image sent through a DOF adapter will hit the camcorder’s sensor upside-down, most of these devices now come with an added element that flips the image back to the right side up. In the Cinevate Brevis 35, it’s called a “Flip.” In the Letus, it’s “Image Orientation Correction.”
I have both a Cinevate Brevis and a Letus Elite, and these devices can yield excellent footage when used properly. The challenges are as follows:
a) Achieving best focus: With a front-end lens, the DOF device itself (with the adapter’s ground glass and lens – called an achromat- and flipping optics), and the camcorder’s lens, you’re sending light through a lot of glass. Not only should you be sure to get a good, sharp lens up front (Nikon and Canon manual-focus lenses are seeing new life as people grab them for use on DOF adapters), but you then want to think counterintuitively and set up high depth of field on both lenses, especially the front-end lens. The front lens is best at f4 or f5.6, because it creates enough depth of field within the mechanism to make sure the ground glass is being hit with a sharply focused image. In the same way, having the camcorder lens set at f4 or f5.6 does the same thing from the back end. Because each lens is projecting onto a very close surface, the resulting image will still give nicely shallow depth of field. Having back-focus ability also helps. When I was using a JVC HD100u camcorder and a Cinevate Brevis, I used the JVC’s excellent back-focus capability. Now that I’m using a Sony EX1, the Letus Elite I’ve paired it with has the backfocus adjustment on it. Either way, you can fine-tune. Philip Bloom, who is a guru of DOF adapters, recommends setting up your back focus with the adapter turned off, so you can use the grain on it as a guide. One last note: Camcorders with removable lenses, such as the Sony PMW-EX3, can put a so-called “relay lens” in place of the camcorder lens, to link camcorder to adapter with much less glass between. But relay lenses are expensive – the Letus relay lens for the EX3 is $3,500. So an EX3/Letus Ultimate/relay combo is going to run $16,000… whew!
b) Light loss: The Letus Elite claims only a half-stop of light loss, but when you’re stopping down the lenses on each end to get best focus, you’ll need to light your subjects well.
c) Size of the rig: Here’s a picture of the longest rig on the planet – my JVC Hd100 with the Brevis adapter and a Nikon 85 f.1.8 on the front of that. Below that is the rig I’m using on my current project, the EX1/Letus/Nikon combo. Needless to say, all this is meant to be used on a very solid tripod.
d) Vignetting and soft edges: One of the problems with DOF adapter is the darkness at the corners, or vignetting. You can zoom in more with your camcorder lens to get past that, but then you get increased graininess in your footage. Soft edges are a result of dropping focus at the edges; while that is often solved by the f-stop recommendations above, when you open up for more light it can be a problem. In using both the Brevis and the Letus, I’ve found the Letus to be superior. When I paired the Brevis with my EX1 – even after buying Cinevate’s $300 “fix” on the problem I still had less-than-optimum footage. At the top of this post is a frame grab from my interview with novelist George Saunders, where I used the Brevis/EX1. You can see the softness at the edges.
The problem with the EX1 was that it uses ½-inch sensors, where the DOF adapters are made to interact with 1/3-inch sensors standard on most HDV camcorders. Buying the Letus was a $1,800 fix for the Cinevate problem, unfortunately.
e) Durability: The Brevis and the Letus are delicate devices held together, like stages of a Saturn rocket, by a series of tiny hex bolts. Loosening and movement has been a problem even just from the jostling of travel, much less work in the field.
All told, though, the adapters can yield great results. If you believe that “film” look is worth the bucks, you can do some really interesting things. And while I’m not using the Brevis with my EX1, I have popped it on my Canon HF S10 small camcorder with pretty good results – here’s a video I did this summer behind the house, and below it is an interview series my son did with the same setup.

Summer Day – HF s10 and Brevis from ted delaney on Vimeo.

2. Technical tricks

A lot of money can be thrown toward this rather ephemeral quality in your video, and some people are doing something quite different: Using the green-screen technology available on Final Cut Pro and other editing programs.
When people use green-screen, they invariably put the subject in front of a sharp background, exactly what you buy all the DOF accessories to avoid.
Here are two photos I pulled off the internet. One is of a woman in front of a green screen; the other is a photo that is completely out of focus. The result, below that, is of the chroma keyer on Final Cut Pro.
A few things to think about if you try this:
a) The better the format, the better the trick. HDV and SD can leave some tell-tale jagged edges, so using darker backgrounds can help.
b) You can use blurred video background with motion in it – say, traffic – but a photo often does well, too. If I were to use this technology, I’d do it as a last best try… an impossible interviewing environment, say. There must be some ethics to this, and it would follow that you don’t place the subject in a certain presumed space that would be misleading. But if you shot the subject’s office wall way out of focus, and sandwiched it with green screen, you’re ending up with what the DOF adapter might have gotten.
c) Light the subject well. The mismatch of lighting and background can be a telltale sign. A dead give-away is broad, flat studio lighting matched with a darker, more shadowy background.
d) It takes a different skill set. Good green-screening is a matter of both lighting well in the field – the more even the gree, the fewer headaches – and using the tools well. FCP is pretty easy.
If it’s done well, it’s hard to tell it’s not real. I’ve noticed ESPN doing a lot of shots with such blurred-out backgrounds I feel nearly certain they’re using greenscreen, such as the shot of Tom Brady here. Is that real or not? Hard to tell.

In closing, the real question is how much DOF even matters. Plenty of superb documentaries have flat video, lavalier mikes fully visible and crappy lighting. Nice effects will enhance a good story, but the effects will never save a badly told story.

Interview with “Battle of Brooklyn” director Galinsky: “I’m not a journalist” (?)

NetsAreScorching, a subsite of ESPN.com, has an interview with Michael Galinsky, director of “Battle of Brooklyn,” who has spent six years and amassed 350 hours of footage documenting a battle between an organization called Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn and a big land-development project built arount moving the New Jersey nets basketball team to Brooklyn.

What’s interesting to use is Galinsky’s quote on how people understand documentary film. He said,

Our film is a character-driven, verite documentary that mostly follows a few of the people fighting the project, so we’ll want to get their take on the situation. The idea of a verite documentary film gets confusing because most people are used to Michael Moore or old school PBS docs. We aren’t journalists and we’re not activists either. The idea of this film isn’t to get to the bottom of everything that’s happened along the way but instead to follow characters as they deal with some of the situations that they face. Not even Norman Oder could put together a book that covers everything and is still readable. As such, we have to be very selective in what scenes to focus on. So the short answer is: yes we’ll be shooting, but who knows what will end up in the film. With over 350 hours of footage shot, only about 0.5% of what we shot has any chance of making it in to a 90 minute film.

Of course, selectivity is part of the editorializing process. The very acting of pulling out 0.5% of all footage – and the fact that even 350 hours of footage is an editorial choice itself of what to record – means it is a process of choice.

But what is also fascinating is Galinsky’s statement that as documentary filmmakers, he and his group are not journalists and not activists. Then what are they?

Documentary film is, obviously, a form of entertainment, but to take on a very complex and controversial story involving government and public matters, and then not make the claim of being a journalists, seems odd. It seems to both absolve the filmmaker from full responsibility for accuracy but yet claims to be telling the kind of story a journalists tells.

In writing “In Cold Blood,” Truman Capote held himself out as writing a “nonfiction novel” rather than journalism, and I think that for those who view the term pejoratively, there is an investment in characterizing oneself as an artist rather than as a journalist. Michael Moore may see himself as something different than polemicists such as Limbaugh and Beck, but he really isn’t. Doing the work on film, or video, does not remove the journalistic responsibility that the recent ethics report from the Center for Social Media. The First Amendment does not allow for certification of journalists, and therfore anyone can be one. There is not training required, and no set of clear controls up front – libel law is a back-end remedy.

It’s interesting when documentary filmmakers choose to take on matters of political importance, and it’s worth commending them when they use their particular medium to try to enliven a debate by pulling it off the pages of the newspaper (or web) and create a longer-term understanding of the situation. It’s also interesting, however, when documentary filmmakers who are clearly functioning as journalists claim they are not.

Making sense of depth of field, Part 2

Part 1

Part 3

In Part 1, we discussed the many ways of controlling depth of field in video. That discussion covered sensor size, aperture and shutter speed. While those are primary ways of controlling the look of video, there are some other considerations that go along with them. Remember that here we’re mostly talking about gaining separation of the interview subject from the background. The kind of tight rack-focusing shots that seem to be gaining popularity to require equipment that goes beyond these tricks.

They include lens focal length, camera-to-subject distance, subject-to-background distance, the background itself, and finally use of DOF adapters, sometimes called “cinema adapters.”

1) Lens focal length – The “normal” focal length of a lens is dependent on the surface on which the image is being projected. For example, on a 35mm film camera that shoots stills, 50 millimeters is the “normal” length, meaning it is the most like what the human eyes sees. Longer than that – and common lens lengths are 85mm, 105mm, 135mm, 180mm and 300mm – and those focal lengths change as the size of the image surface changes (for example, when a Nikon standard lens is used on a Nikon digital camera with a smaller chip, the magnification factor is about 1.5 – a 50 is a 75, a 100 is a 150). So the range of focal lengths on a zoom built into a digital camcorder tends to range from medium-wide to medium-long. On many camcorders, the zoom is represented as a percentage: On my Sony PMW-EX1, I’d guesstimate the range of the zoom as mimicking about a 40-200mm on my film camera, with normal running at about 30 percent.

Go somewhat longer than normal – on the EX1, it might be about 40-50 percent – and you’re into what photographers call a “portrait lens.” While wide lenses create a bit of distortion (the nose might seem bigger, the chin smaller), shooting at moderate telephoto creates a flattering flattening effect for the subject. It also creates separation from background through blurring. But the long lenses also create compression – the object behind the subject will simultaneously appear closer to the subject, yet more blurred.Using a long lens often means framing the subject very tightly – from the throat to just above hairline. That can be very effective, especially for documentaries destined for web exhibition or for small devices such as iPods. Using a telephoto and still leaving room around the subject requires repositioning the camera, which is the next option.

2) Camera-to-subject distance – Shooting an interview subject from about six to eight feet away, instead of a more common four feet, can be an effective way of using the telephoto to heighten separation from background. It requires use of a moderate telephoto and helps make depth of field more shallow. It can be the simplest way to get the effect. The most common negative is that of the audio. From ten feet away, you’re not going to use an on-camera mike without getting distant, echo-heavy audio. Either you’ll need to use a lavalier or a boomed mike just outside the frame. The second problem relates to the first. If the person doing the interviewing sits in the customary place by the camera, the subject, despite being miked, will have the tendency to speak more loudly, to be heard from ten feet. The solution is to position the interviewer close to the subject – three feet is ideal – and just beyond the lens. The subject will modulate his/her voice properly. That can be tough when one person is interviewing and shooting; in some situations like that I’ve had someone available – such as the personal assistant of the interview subject – sit in and give the subject a target to look at and to speak to. It will lessen the tendency of the subject to raise his or her voice, which will then accentuate echoes in an already large room.
In theory, shooting from even greater distances gets more of an effect. What if you shot from thirty feet away with a long telephoto? The flattening effect may become more apparent, or too apparent. This graphic shows four frames with a combination of greater distance and more zoom. The question is whether if, on the longest lens, you can see a difference, as in this black-and-white:
You don’t want to look as if the interview was conducted from the National Geographic Range Rover. There is such a thing as too long, but it can also be an arresting effect. And, beyond that, the depth of filed is so shallow, any forward or backwards movement will take the subject out of focus. Remember that if the subject’s eyes aren’t in focus, the subject isn’t in focus.

Remember, too, the shot should use the widest aperture possible to heighten the effect.

3) Subject-to-background distance – The first thing I usually do when I enter a subject’s home or workplace to shoot is to find a room in which I can get the most distance between the subject and the background. With a 1/3-inch chip camera, such as the JVC HD100 I used to use, I’d look for at least fifteen feet behind the subject. That might mean shooting the subject in one room with the background in another room, or shooting from a hallway with the subject sitting in the doorway to the room that served as background. It’s amazing with video how it won’t look nearly that far away.
The picture here is of an interview with the author Andre Dubus III. I used the JVC HD100 with an aperture at f4. The fireplace is about 20 feet behind him, although it appears much closer. He is sitting about six feet away from the camera, which is set on a medium telephoto.
Again, in theory, the best shot would be with the camera ten feet from the subject with another twenty feet behind the subject. Rooms aren’t often that big. When forced to choose, I lean toward more room behind than in front. The benefit of a closer camera is a bit more perceive intimacy; the subject really doesn’t notice what’s behind.
Putting a subject within five feet of a background nearly nullifies all other efforts for shallow depth of field. Always use space behind to create the effect.

Next week, in Part 3, I’ll talk about some more technical solutions – the use of depth-of-field adapters and of computer tricks to create the film look.

Documentary filmmaking on the cheap: old software, old cameras and beyond

Charles Deemer, a professor of screenwriting at Portland State University, notes in his blog “The Writing Life II” that buying older video editing software is ridiculously cost effective. He notes that copies of Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0 are selling on Amazon for about $18 a pop, and version 3.0 (2006) at $60.

That argument can be extended: The “newest, latest” philosophy acquires equipment at high prices and high depreciation. My JVC gy-HD100u, which I bought for my last project, cost me $6,000 in 2006, is selling for a “Buy It Now” price on eBay for $2,000, and still delivers great footage. Question is whether that 10% increase in video quality by purchasing a brand-new $6,000 camcorder really makes any difference. Isn’t quality work about whom you interview, what they say, what you witness and how you present it?

The obvious question is how desperately we chase technology and how important it is to the audience. Storytelling is timeless, and equipment and software seems obsolete months after it’s introduced.

I’ll come back to this. Prof. Deemer makes a simple but useful argument for being 3 years behind the tech curve while staying true to content, quality and vision – something money doesn’t always buy.

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