Lively Narration About Death
It’s not exactly cocktail party conversation, but I’ve been thinking a lot about death lately. As friends’ parents die and I approach 55, I’m preoccupied with what happens after death–if anything.
So when filmmaker Cathy Zheutlin approached me about structuring her documentary Living While Dying, I was immensely intrigued. Since Cathy’s film is a personal documentary in which she struggles to come to terms with her mortality, her narration would be vitally important.
Cathy was eager to get her film out into the world and lead discussions about dying, so she joined our Finish Your Film program. After four weeks of working with our editorial team (myself and one of our talented editors) she progressed from thirty hours of raw footage (and no script) to an excellent, late-stage rough cut.
As my editor and I helped write Cathy’s narration, we’ve been able to transform amorphous thinking into discerning self-inquiry.
For example, midway through her journey, Cathy meets an Australian shaman who likens death to walking through a bank door, then turning around and speaking to someone on the other side of the door. It’s a powerful metaphor, but in her first draft, Cathy’s reaction to hearing the shaman’s story was missing. I advised her to write narration that described how his story impacted her.
In the next draft, she wrote, “This truly resonates with me. I do think there’s more to us than these bodies we inhabit. I find comfort believing that consciousness goes beyond a simply material experience.”
“Much better!” I said. A direct declaration about her belief showed incremental character transformation. But something was off. How did she arrive at this realization so quickly? Surely she had heard the concept of life after death before. So why did this particular interview resonate so deeply with her?
Cathy thought about it and said, “Because he mentioned communicating with people who’ve died, and I’ve talked with dead people all my life.”
“Really?” I asked. “Wow, that’s an important thing to know about your journey…and it’s entirely missing from this cut. So we need to find a place to work that in, either as a backstory or as a plot point in your transformation.”
Writing good narration is an iterative, demanding and ultimately rewarding process. Especially for a personal documentary, it can be immensely catalyzing to have an outside perspective to help you clarify your own journey.
Does your narration suffer from vague thinking, repetition, or deadly clichés? What critical lines of narration are necessary to launch your quest, convey key insights or conundrums along the way, and articulate your takeaway transformation?
Whether my consciousness survives death or not (and trusting those NDE stories), one of my purposes in life is to empower other seekers, messengers and visionaries in expressing their visions.
To that end…I’ve recently revised my Finish Your Film program to make such guidance more affordable and focused. Whether you are in concept development, production or post, I invite you to email me about exploring an exciting collaboration.
