As my sold-out program “The Ultimate Guide to Structuring Your Documentary” enters its final weeks, I’ve received lots of requests and feedback from filmmakers for a more in-depth coaching circle, where filmmakers can find more community and individual critiques on cuts. So I’ve created a terrific new program to address this need.

Please join me for a free teleseminar next Tuesday, July 13th, at 6-6:30 pm PST, in which I will explain my unique new program, the New Doc Inner Circle. Register at http://newdocediting.com/land/inner_circle_teleseminar/

Find out how this master-level coaching program will provide you with community support, in-depth critiques of your cuts, and week-to-week mentoring you need to craft a compelling documentary film.  It can be lonely making a documentary film, and my intention is to provide support and veteran guidance!

I’m very excited that the New Doc Inner Circle program begins August 17^th.  Tuition for this 6-month program is $3979.97.  I have room for five motivated filmmakers, and I expect to have this special circle filled by mid-July.

To register for the free teleseminar on July 13^th about the Inner Circle, go to http://newdocediting.com/land/inner_circle_teleseminar/

First I wanted to let folks know about my upcoming seminar at the San Francisco Film Society, “Structuring the Character Driven Documentary”, on July 10 and 11. It’s $180-$200 and you can register here: 

http://www.sffs.org/classes-and-workshops/upcoming-classes-and-workshops.aspx

If live outside the Bay Area or can’t make the date, the seminar is available online, get it online here:

http://newdocediting.com/land/sffsproducts/

Now…what exactly is a motif? And why would you want to edit one into a documentary film?

During one of my recent group coaching calls for the “Ultimate Guide to Structuring Your Documentary” program, we addressed these questions. Since the interest level was high, I wanted to expand here on how a motif works, and why you would want to use one in a documentary film.

You’ve probably heard of the word “motif” in terms of novels or other literary works. In Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” the flute is a motif conveying a bucolic rural setting.  Simply put, a “motif” is a recurring object or place or sometimes a statement which symbolizes the film’s topic. In other words, a motif is a vehicle through which the film’s narrative theme is conveyed. 

For example, in the recent documentary “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work“, Joan’s datebook is a recurring symbol for her dedication to her work. Early in the film, Joan is desperate to find work. She jokes about how she needs to put her sunglasses on when looking at her date book, because of the glaring white space. The editor weaves the datebook throughout the film. By the end of the documentary, after Joan wins “Celebrity Apprentice”, her very full datebook conveys not only the flood of gigs she’s getting, but also her signature, almost obsessive love affair with work.

In the documentary “Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter” by filmmaker Deborah Hoffmann, several motifs appear to convey what it must be like to deal with Alzheimer’s disease. Hoffmann, the filmmaker and the protagonist of this moving personal film, cleverly weaves in images of clocks to symbolize the passage of time, “white-out” to symbolize a fuzzy memory, and suitcases to convey her ailing mother’s move from her home into a nursing home.

When and how do you develop a motif for your film? Ideally, during production. Stay alert to objects that can stand in for the film’s larger meaning. If you notice such an object early on, you can not only direct your cinematographer to shoot this object in an interesting, artful ways, but you can also ask your characters to expound on the object’s larger meaning. For example, Joan Rivers’ jokes about her datebook get at how this common object can embody a larger meaning.

Sometimes you may not notice a possible motif until postproduction. Again, you want to stay alert to the possibility or you may miss it. In the entertaining documentary “No Impact Man“, Collin Bevans sets out on a quest to survive a year with his family in New York City without having any impact on the environment. In my humble opinion, his wife’s agony in giving up her cherished Starbucks drink (the disposable container is a no-no) could have been pushed a bit further to become a motif symbolizing our society’s addiction to being “wired”.

Sometimes a motif is a recurring statement or a recurring element of the natural landscape. For example, in the documentary “Same River Twice” by Robb Moss, the river itself is a motif for the passage of time, which is the theme of this engaging documentary about aging baby boomers.

Have fun with developing a motif.  Gather your film’s team for coffee and spend an hour brainstorming about possible cinematic/visual and sonic/audio candidates for motifs.  Not every viewer will register the motif consciously, but this literary invention easily translates into you film’s ability to convey themes subconsciously.

First I wanted to let folks know about my upcoming seminar at the San Francisco Film Society, “Structuring the Character Driven Documentary”, on July 10 and 11. It’s $180-$200 and you can register here: 

http://www.sffs.org/classes-and-workshops/upcoming-classes-and-workshops.aspx

If live outside the Bay Area or can’t make the date, the seminar is available online, so email me if you are interested.

Onward to the debate!

Last week I blogged about the benefits of starting your documentary with news footage, and a talented colleague begged to differ.

Ken Schneider, co-editor of the Academy-nominated “Regret to Inform“, emailed me saying, “I find the news opening a bit, um…pedestrian.  I want to know, in the first scene of the film-in the first SHOT of the film-that I am in the hands of a filmmaker.”

Ken goes on to say that it’s precisely this evidence of artistry early in the film that distinguishes us from TV journalists.

And I couldn’t agree with him more! End of debate.

So I am officially clarifying my stance.  Placing news footage near the top of your documentary will give your topic or character credibility with your viewers, and it can also seduce them with sexy, exciting footage.  However, your first shots are critical in conveying your authoring of the film.  So delay that news footage a bit.  (There are exceptions; see the newsreel footage of Lyndon Johnson in “Chicago Ten“, which acts as a great inciting incident.)

For more examples, Ken suggests looking at the soundwaves at the head of “Sound and Fury,” the POV into the darkened shack of “Brother’s Keeper,” the bees at the start of “Colony.”  These images all convey a sense of artistry, letting viewers know they are in the hands of a talented filmmaker, not a TV journalist.

Thanks, Ken, for the tip!

You can find a more in-depth discussion of this topic at:

http://newdocediting.com/2010/06/editing-a-sexy-news-hook-in-your-documentary/

I teach my documentary film students at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley several techniques for organizing their footage.

I’d like to share one of those tips here.

First, create a “+Master Clips” bin for all the clips you have ingested. The “+” will send the bin to the top of your browser, so you can easily find it.

Next, create one bin called “Interviews” and another bin called “Themes”.

Each of these two bins will contain sub-bins. The “Interview” sub-bins will be labeled by the name of the person interviewed. The “Themes” sub-bins will be named by the various topics that make up your film’s ideas.

Next, create subclips from your master clips.  Make one subclip for every soundbite or idea.

Then put the appropriate subclip in the appropriate “Interview” sub-bin. Are you still with me?

For example, let’s say that you have a subclip, which is a soundbite from John Brown about his prediction that interest rates will rise. You will put the subclip in the “John Brown” bin.

Next, duplicate the subclip and put the copy in the appropriate “Themes” sub-bin. Perhaps in a documentary about the pending collapse of the stock market, the sub-bin is labeled “Inflation.”

Having duplicate copies of sub clips in the correct sub-bins helps you to easily find your footage and structure your documentary film.

For more information on how to structure your documentary, please check out my online E-course, “Editing the Character-Driven Documentary” at http://newdocediting.com/land/editingdocumentaryecourse/

I recently got a great question from a filmmaker who has exciting news footage of her protagonist. She asked, “Should I use the news footage as a hook at the start for film, or as a plot point that shows her protagonist becoming more famous?” Great question.

My answer is “both”.

Splitting the footage into both an opening tease and a later significant plot point gives you the best of both worlds.

You can see this technique at work with “entertainment footage” in the award-winning documentary film, “No Impact Man“.  More on that in a minute.

For viewers, news footage is not only exciting and sexy, thus reeling them into your documentary, but it also says, “This topic or person is important.”

In other words, the use of news footage within the first minute or two of your film legitimizes your protagonist or issue. It begins to answer the question, why should I watch this film? (And the fact that you had to license the footage also gives your film a badge of legitimacy, saying to sophisticated viewers that this film had the budget worthy of high production values.)

News footage at the top of your film also serves another important function: as an entry point to a topic or place with which your viewer may not be familiar.

For example, many viewers were not familiar with South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the topic of the film “Long Night’s Journey Into Day.” But news footage of Amy Beale, a white American killed in South Africa, gave many viewers a point of reference because they remembered that news story.

If possible, save some of your news footage to illustrate a plot point later in the film as well, thus keeping the momentum going with this sexy material.

As I mentioned, the documentary film “No Impact Man” employs this strategy (not with news footage, but “entertainment footage”.   We see our protagonist Colin Beaven in the green room of the Stephen Colbert Show at the start of the film. He’s sweating it out; it’s a very suspenseful opening.

Then later, at the Act I climax, as the protagonist enjoys fame for his quest to live sustainably, the editor cuts back to Colin, who has now left the green room and is engaging with the host, Colbert. It’s definitely worth watching again to analyze the structure.

For more information on how to structure your documentary, please check out my online E-course, “Editing the Character-Driven Documentary” at http://newdocediting.com/land/editingdocumentaryecourse/

One of my documentary story consulting clients is about to begin production.  She lined up several interviews, and then she asked me if there was any particular order she should follow for posing questions. Chronological, perhaps?

While that’s not a bad idea, I advised her that her guiding principle in organizing her questions should be creating a mood of trust. Starting with softball questions is advisable.

Another way to build trust is to begin with questions about background information. These questions may even be exposition that you already know and that you will use in narration, not in an interview soundbite. The point is that a few of these questions will warm up your interviewee. (If they’re not already warmed up under the hot lights.)

Remember that what you’re after in your interviews are three important things.

First, you want the storytelling information, that is, the relating of important plot points.

Second, you want emotion, not facts. This can include controversial opinions.

Third, you want to elicit important story building blocks such as the “Protagonist’s Statement of Desire”. (I won’t go into that here.)

If you are interviewing an expert, know in advance what they will say.   And if that expert is going to be a counter voice in your film, make sure to get that counter opinion on camera.

One of the best ways to do that is to state other people’s judgments, and ask your expert to respond.

For example, in an investigative documentary, you might state to an EPA official, “Some people say that the EPA is a joke. They point to the handling of XYZ and how it should’ve been done this way. What would you say to these people?”

I hope that these tips will help you elicit the kind of sound bites you’ll need to structure a riveting documentary film.

For more information on how to structure your documentary, please check out my online E-course, “Editing the Character-Driven Documentary” at http://newdocediting.com/land/editingdocumentaryecourse/

Documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger is in trouble, and some filmmakers think the foundation of documentary filmmaking is at stake. 

Berlinger, whose award-winning documentary chronicles the biggest environmental lawsuit ever, is being subpeoned by Chevron.  The big oil corporation is engaged in a 17-year lawsuit with Ecudorean rainforest dwellers.

Now Chevron wants the filmmaker’s 600 hours of original footage shot during production.  Find out more about this landmark issue and how it affects the documentary filmmaking world here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-redford/joe-berlinger-vs-chevron_b_600433.html?ir=Yahoo

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/crudefund/crude-fight-for-the-first-amendment?pos=1

Yesterday I worked with a client who has been hired to direct a biography of a woman (now deceased) who rose to fame in the dance world. She’s facing a challenge that many filmmakers run into.

After pre-interviewing nearly thirty relatives and friends of the deceased, my client was still unable to answer the most important question you can ask about a character-driven documentary, “What does my protagonist want?”

It seems that her protagonist’s rise to fame was never a goal per se, it just sort of “happened”.

Honing in on a protagonist’s quest, also known as the “object of desire” in screenwriting world, is essential to keeping viewers glued.  I advise filmmakers to elicit during interviews what I call the “Protagonist’s Statement of Desire,” a simple sentence in which your main character states his or her goal:  “I wanted to bring home an Academy Award one day.”

So what do you do if your famous protagonist seems to have no specific goal?

First, realize that in a biography, that is, a life story, the goal may change as a person ages. But the underlying psychological desire often remains that same.  For example, in the documentary “William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe”, the famous civil rights attorney wanted social justice all his life (his underlying psychological DNA), but the particular “object of desire” changed of course from court case to court case.

Second, I suggest utilizing the following simple exercise with each interview, especially if you’re having difficulty eliciting your protagonist’s statement of desire. Remember, the statement doesn’t have to come from the protagonist. Ideally it does, but if she’s dead, as in my client’s case, the statement of desire is going to have to come from someone else.

So I advised my client to invite her interviewees to play a little game. Explain that this little exercise is designed to get at the core of someone’s complex character.

She would ask them a one-sentence question and they would give her a one-sentence response. Then she would quickly follow with another question, and they would give her the first response that came to mind.  Would they be willing to do this simple exercise?  (Get their permission before starting.)

The questions would be formatted like this: “In her love life, what did Mary want?” The interviewee would answer with the same sentence structure: “In her love life, Mary wanted X (fill in the blank).

The director would then go to the next area of Mary’s life: “In her career, what did Mary want?”  The interviewee would respond with the first thing that comes to mind: “In her career, Mary wanted X.”

The director could also frame the questions to address different times in her protagonist’s life. For example, “As a college student, what did Mary want?” “As a new mother, what did Mary want?”

I told my client that before starting, she should also explain to her interviewee that after the game, they could go back and talk at length about any of their responses.

This exercise is designed to cut to the quick of your character’s core desires–both psychological wishes and concrete goals.  Of course, the exercise is also designed to provide your editor with a plethora of “Protagonist’s Statements of Desire” to choose from-not only from one interview, but several interviews.

The power of this simple statement in focusing your viewer on your documentary’s narrative arc is enormous.

I’m looking forward to hearing how this exercise works for my client-and for you!

For more tips on eliciting the interview you need to craft compelling documentary film, check out my online learning course, “Editing the Character-Driven Documentary” at http://newdocediting.com/products/.

One of the filmmakers in my new program, “The Ultimate Guide to Structuring Your Documentary”, is having trouble finding her main character’s inciting incident. As I think our work will help other filmmakers, I’m sharing it here.

First, a definition:  the inciting incident is the event that throws your protagonist’s life out of balance and gives rise to their quest. For instance, when Harry Potter receives a letter inviting him to wizardary school, his guardians forbid him, but he becomes determined to go.

The problem that my filmmaker faced in finding the catalyst event was compounded by the fact that she was making a personal documentary.  Looking back at her recent life, there seem to be several possible inciting incidents that gave rise to her desire to pursue a career revitalizing education for Native American children.

She kept asking herself questions like, “Was it my mother’s insistence that I get a real job?”  “Was it my father’s reluctance to pay for more education?”

I reminded her that the inciting incident is an incident, that is, a specific event located in space and time. Her mother’s monotonous insistence that she get a real job was more accurately framed as part of the “setting” of the film.

Her father’s reluctance to pay more money for graduate school also falls into the category of “setting” — unless there was a specific incident in which he said, “There’s no way I’m giving another penny toward your useless education!”

In other words, a conversation or an argument can be an inciting incident, if it’s life-changing.

I encouraged her to search her memory for other things that gave rise to her desire to provide healthcare to Native American children.

Was it a book she read? Was it a film she saw? Was it someone she met? Was it her realization morning that if she wasn’t going to do it, who would?

As she sifted through the events of her recent past and shared them with me, what popped out to me was the fact that she had been fired at her latest job because, essentially, her soul wasn’t into it.

This led her to examine what she really wanted out of life.

Getting fired, getting a diagnosis, getting a letter in the mail — these are all specific events that occur in a specific location and at a particular point in time. They are disruptive events. They throw your protagonist’s life out of balance. And this feeling of vertigo leads to a quest to restore equilibrium to one’s life.

If you simply can’t find an incident that meets those qualifications, then look for what editor Ken Schneider calls a “representative anecdote”. This is a little moment, often in someone’s childhood, that represents the impulse toward a future goal.

This technique works particularly well for biopics. In fact, I used this approach in my PBS biography about the late Marlon Riggs, a controversial filmmaker.

The film starts with Marlon on camera relating how when he was a little boy, he would look up at the stars at night and think, “I’m going to be somebody!”

This statement of intent, or “representative anecdote”, is later supplemented by his mother’s comment.  After watching her son’s speech at school, she used to say about her eloquent youngster, “That boy’s goin’ be a preacher!” She was right; he became a controversial filmmaker.

For more techniques in locating your documentaries inciting incident, check out my online learning course, “Editing the Character-Driven Documentary” at http://newdocediting.com/products/.  You can get the first module for a buck!

I recently helped a documentary filmmaker from Japan who hired me as a story consultant for his “documentary”. The film was grounded in the true story of a materialistic young man who decides to become a Peace Corps volunteer in order to find a more meaningful life.

When I started viewing the beautifully shot footage, I quickly realized that this film was shot not in the vérité tradition of capturing real-life scenes but more like a narrative feature. The scenes were set up in advance, shot in several takes, and most of the film’s dialogue would later be dubbed in.

I told the director that his film did not appear to be a traditional documentary by U.S. standards, but more of a hybrid film — part narrative (fictional) and part documentary. Some terrific examples of “documentaries” from this emerging genre include Vicki Funari’s “Paulina” and Roko Belic’s “Twilight Men”.

My client was happy that I saw the project as an interesting challenge, rather than dismissing it because it wasn’t a “real” documentary.  In fact, once we moved past the genre distinctions, I quickly became enamored by film and the opportunity to flex my screenwriting muscles!

The film’s stunning cinematography was marred by a highly undeveloped story. Our protagonist sets out on a quest and has a breakthrough at the climax (good), but he experiences no real challenges or changes along the way.

I asked the director if I could take liberties with the story and make events up. He was happy to add a fictional dimension to the film, as long as it did not violate the essence of his vision. Essentially, he wanted to portray a man on search for meaning by being of service.

After years of working with documentary filmmakers, I was thrilled to be able to think like a screenwriter without the shackles of sticking to what actually happened!

At the same time, the challenge that I was facing was precisely what many documentary filmmakers face, that is, the film’s story was lacking conflict. So I beefed up the plot, first by identifying the key plot points of the classic three-act structure.

These include:

• Inciting Incident
• First Act Climax
• First Challenge
• Second Challenge (Midpoint)
• Third Challenge (Act Two Climax)
• Film’s Climax (Third Act Climax)
• Dénouement

Having laid out the key plot elements of a traditional dramatic structure, I then searched my imagination for the plausible events that would satisfy the mandates of this dramatic construction-and “feel right” to the director’s vision of the film–and also jive with the footage that was already shot.

For example, the film’s first act climax could happen at the airport scene (already shot). I decided that the protagonist would get call suddenly reassigning him to an area to which he did not want to go, a slum in Thailand. This dramatic event spinned the film in a new direction.

The midpoint, or first sign of character transformation, would occur during a monsoon (also already shot) in which the protagonist argues with his supervisor by phone. During this relationship crisis, the protagonist finally agrees to share his cramped quarters with a new volunteer. This is the first sign of his growing transformation into a generous person. Since with a small pickup shoot we would have the footage to sustain these plot developments, all we need to do is add narration and dub dialogue over the wide scenes for it to make sense. It will be interesting to see how that pans out.

Making up events was fun, if time-consuming, and the real challenge was making sure that the events and character’s decisions were credible.

For documentary filmmakers who want to borrow screenwriting techniques to develop their story, the real challenge is a bit different. Surveying all the events in the film and ordering them into a dramatic structure requires making sure that the plot points you are crafting are ethical, that is, true to what actually happened.

The challenge of applying the three-act structure to films about real-life is the topic of my popular course, “Structuring the Character-Driven Documentary”. I will be teaching this course July 9 and 10th through the San Francisco Film Society. Find out more at http://www.sffs.org/classes-and-workshops/upcoming-classes-and-workshops.aspx

You can also purchase the online version and take it any time here:
http://newdocediting.com/land/editingdocumentaryecourse/