Hits From the Sundance Film Festival
I’m going to Sundance this year, not to promote a film this time, but to spread the word about my editing business, New Doc Editing. If you can’t make the marvelous madness because you’re holed up in an editing room seeking solutions to specific structural problems, I invite you to look no further than the last decade’s line up of Sundance hits. The film that won the 2008 Directing Award, American Teen, is a vivid example of how far the character-driven documentary has come since the 1994 trend-setter, Hoop Dreams. Talk about thrilling audiences with the same twists as a well-told narrative tale! During the first few minutes of American Teen, I thought I had walked into the wrong theater and was watching a feature film.
Multiple Protagonists
If your challenge is how to structure multiple protagonists, you basically have two options. You can intercut the storylines, as American Teen’s Nanette Burstein did so effortlessly, or you can “clump” the stories by telling one after another. Most directors and editors prefer to intercut storylines–if they can get away with it–because it gives the film a more cohesive feel. Two of my favorite examples of how to do are Robb Moss’s Same River Twice (2003), a portrait of five former hippies hitting midlife, and Johnny Symons Daddy and Poppa (2002), in which editor Kim Roberts interweaves three stories of gay fatherhood. I remember being so moved by both films that I introduced myself to both Robb and Kim after the Q&A. They were extraordinarily kind and have since shared multiple storytelling secrets with me.
Perhaps the best way to understand how to intercut multiple stories is to study the talk of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, Brett Morgan’s Chicago Ten. Everyone talks about this film for its groundbreaking use of animation (it is impressive) but what struck me most was how editor Stuart Levy (A.C.E.) managed to checkerboard two complex storylines: the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago and the infamous trial that followed. I recommend watching this film with a notepad and the display option activated on your remote. The first, second and third act climaxes for each of the two stories occur at precisely the right times. The Act One climaxes are ¼ of the way into the film, the Act Two climaxes are about 5/8 of the way in, and the act three climaxes are 15/16th of the way in. Such precision takes the breath away from an editing geek like me.
Now, for all you filmmakers with multiple protagonists, there are two reasons you may want to clump your stories: 1) the storylines are too complex to intercut; and 2) your test audiences have a difficult time telling your characters apart. These criteria can usually be diagnosed upon watching the assembly cut but certainly no later than rough cut stage.
Clumping Documentary Stories
For a great example of the “clumping” method (if anyone has a better word for that, please let me know), watch Iraq in Fragments (2006), which is the first documentary to win Sundance’s award for excellence in Documentary Film Editing. Director James Langley tells three tales separated by location and artistic style.
Another stellar example of a film that tells one story after another is Long Night’s Journey Into Day (2000). I remember weeping at the climax of this amazing film about South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The film’s theme of reconciliation embodies the sensibility of films that we at New Doc Editing love to work on: documentaries that ultimately inspire rather than depress. I took a long walk in the cemetery off Kearns Boulevard afterwards to meditate on the film’s meaning. Directors Deborah Hoffmann and Frances Reid decided to tell their four amnesty stories separately because the storylines were too complex for audiences to follow when intercut. The filmmakers took a lot of heat for starting the film with the story of a white American woman, Amy Beale, who was murdered by apartheid protestors. I think they made the right decision, though, because this story provided an important point of reference for the film’s primary audience, American viewers. The film premiered on HBO.
Starting Your Documentary
Along those lines, if you’re struggling with how to start your film, check out my all time favorite historical documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk (1984). Also edited by the legendary Hoffmann, this four-act film starts with a news clip of a chaotic press conference in which then San Francisco supervisor Dianne Feinstein announces to the horror of the crowd that Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been assassinated. In addition to griping the audience, another important objective this opening achieved was to orient heterosexual viewers who may not have been familiar with or particularly cared about a gay activist named Harvey Milk, but admired Moscone. Starting your film with a point of familiarity, a reference point, is particularly important for films about minority experiences that aspire to crossover and move mainstream audiences. (It’s interesting to note how closely the structure of the new narrative film Milk mirrors the Academy-award winning documentary. Both films start with Feinstein’s press conference and Milk’s tape-recorded will, and both films employ the same act climaxes: his election, the Brigg’s initiative, and his assassination. The documentary has a fourth act climax, the White Night Riots.)
Act Two Momentum
Structuring Act Two can be one of the most challenging tasks of editing, and if you’re wondering how to keep momentum escalating during this long act, check out Tommy Walker’s God Grew Tired of Us. This 2006 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner does a nice job of pacing the increasingly difficult obstacles faced by two African boys after their first act’s climactic plane ride to the U.S. (remember, a climax doesn’t have to be anxiety-provoking; it can be explosively funny). Another example of ramping up momentum can be found in Nanking, a devastating look at the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. This film won the 2007 Documentary Editing Award, so take this with a grain of salt, but I had to stop watching as one horrific incident after another produced an unremitting vision of cruelty, maiming and rape. While storytelling dogma dictates that the protagonist face increasingly difficult obstacles in Act Two, Nanking might have preserved this viewer’s delicate sensitivities by cutting in more moments of insight, victory or comic relief amidst the carnage. On the other hand, part of the film’s power is its unrelenting pace. (For a winning example of how a reversal can create momentum in Act Two, see Deborah Hoffmann’s Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter, a 1995 Sundance crowd-pleaser.)
Climax Considerations
Your film’s climax scene may be obvious, or it may take some deliberation. One of my favorite Sundance films is Josh Tickell’s Fields of Fuel, which won the 2008 Audience Award. (I actually saw this inspiring film at the fresh-faced Gaia Film Festival six months after its Sundance debut.) While I think the storytelling is remarkable and again epitomizes the kind of stirring, solution-oriented docs that we at New Doc Editing love to work on, I wonder if the film ends with just too many success stories. Perhaps if one of these served as the climax, the rest could had been massaged into a short montage, effectively serving as a denouement. Once a film hits its final emotional peak, audiences will be eager to wrap up so they can mull over the film’s meaning.
If you’re still shooting a verite film and don’t yet know your film’s climax, take heart by watching Gail Dolgin’s Daughter From Danang. This 2002 winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize answers the film’s central question (will Heidi successfully reunite and bond with her birth mother?) with an astounding “no” at the climax scene.
With that, I’ll end my first New Doc Editing blog entry with a heartfelt thanks to the three filmmakers from UC Berkeley with whom I’ve had the privilege of working and who have won top awards at the Sundance Film Festival: my first mentor, the late Marlon Riggs, for Black Is…Black Ain’t (1995), my inspiring friend Jon Else for The Day After Trinity (1981) and Sing Faster (1999) and the brilliant Deborah Hoffmann, for Long Night’s Journey Into Day (2000). With deep gratitude, I dedicate the launch of New Doc Editing to these three storytelling heroes.
If you are needing an editor or a story consultant to help convey your vision in a way that will keep viewers glued to the screen, I invite you to a free 30-minute consultation. Email me today to schedule a time. I look forward to collaborating with you!
— Karen Everett
