Off to the Races!
1. Explore and acquire the skills to an adjacent medium for visual story telling.
2. Force us to learn about real people and the real world.
3. Hopefully get very comfortable with some of your classmates
Documentaries are a fan favorite for many students for its uniqueness in terms of limitation. We got a bump up in runtime, going from 2:30 to 7:30 of content; and for some who dare, you have the option to double up with a classmate to get an even larger content runtime of 12:30. Doubling up is basically when two students come together to work on a singular documentary, often it's 2 co-directors, though occasionally someone might decide to be specifically a cinematographer or producer for a doc and not direct their own. More excitingly, students have the freedom to film their documentaries anywhere within the continental United States.
To further contextualize the ethos of doc's, it should also be acknowledged that historically, our school makes some damn good documentaries that go far. Students have gotten the chance to go to NFFTY, the Student Oscars/Emmys, and even Cannes. That's not to say that doc's are made specifically for these festivals, but just that they have the potential to be really important to the filmmakers.
With all this in mind, and faculty during the Fall emphasizing to not worry about doc's until Spring, I did my best to follow that suggestion. My winter break was a detoxes for the most part. I had some initially ideations for what I would want to gain from the documentaries experience. I had done a lot of new package work during my time in high school, and even made a similarly lengthed documentary about photography and authenticity (Instilled). I wanted to make something completely different than what I had done in the past. I wanted to explore new places, new people, and new experiences. I also wanted to take a more observational approach with the project, having really enjoyed documentaries like Free Solo and Exit Through the Gift Shop. I particularly thought back to my experience during Instilled and about what I wanted to do more of and I remembered about how the b-roll of the film served as a glue for the story and how important cogs to the machine were from the unplanned moments of B-roll. I grew fascinated by the idea of making a documentaries of purely these kind of moments.
Another thing I thought about a lot was the idea that I feel more comfortable and enjoy capturing things. Many news packages of my past told these larger than life stories that I didn't have the curated footage to support emotionally. I also would often feel weird reaching into a stranger's past to make a story; maybe it was the nature of the assignments of my past or the intent, but I really wanted to just sit and observe for this documentary.
All this made me think about the topics or better the experiences I wanted to capture. Those that read this blog are probably aware of my enjoyment of rock climbing; this hobby of mine has also prompted me to be fascinated by hands and tactile-ness. I thought that in a perfect world, I could document the life of someone who lived by their hands and could explore.
Any who the time arrives and we are now sitting in class during our first week watching these fantastic documentaries from former students with all kinds of stylistic varieties. The end of the class outlined what the semester would look like in broad strokes. Unlike the 10 weeks we had for planning our 3 minute F1's, we would now have 8 weeks for planning our 8-13 minute documentaries. Because of the shortened schedule, next week we would have our first round of pitches, followed by a 2nd round the week after. Everyone would have to present their ideas to the entire class and our 2 primary documentary faculty. The idea's to basically see where everyone is idea wise, location wise, and if anyone would want to double up too. BUT there was 1 small detail about the pitches I haven't mentioned. Everyone would pitch an idea in which they have some sort of a contact (a potential interviewee, someone knowledgeable about a topic, etc...)
In other words, on our first day of doc class, we're being told to have a pitch for an idea ready for next week with a contact already established... You also had the option to present 2 pitches as well during that time (since everyone would have to pitch 2 ideas regardless over the 2 rounds of pitching**).
With that information, I went back to my shitty apartment and sat to solidify my ideas and plan on how to get a contact. I opted to make a post about my situation on r/VanLife. I had explored several subreddits in hope of finding a consistent poster that I could reach out to specifically, but given the time constraint I figured I might as well fire a flare and see who cares to reach out.
Now I want to acknowledge, I was never going to blindly trust the first person who I found. It is the internet. I purely wanted to see how much attention a post about interest in a documentary would get and a possible pool of people to choose form.
After about a day I got a couple comments. Mostly from people saying the idea sounds cool, but hoping the documentary will focus on people in situations where they have to live in a a van rather than some more affluent people who have the means to choose to live in a van for vibe or a trend. I did get a response and DM from 1 individual who was very open about himself and his interest in the project. He on his own provided a mini-bio about how moves between North Carolina and Oklahoma for summer work. He also shared his Instagram which confirmed his pattern of work. Both his Instagram and Reddit accounts I feel both built a perception of a person. He has worked around food for much of his life, finds Anthony Bourdain to be a prolific thinker, is a socialist, and a vocal hater of institutions of Capitalism such as United Health Care. He seemed like a decent person, and meet my requirements for how far I was willing to go geographically with him being in North Carolina (I didn't want to travel more than half way across the country for someone). I reached back out to him to start a dialogue and provide him with some more context of the documentary such as the focus for it, length, style, and window of time for filming. After explaining the details I reconfirmed if he would still be comfortable with being the subject of a documentary. He said yes.
This was a good start. I still had some questions to ask him, but for the time being I technically had a contact, so I started preparing for the pitch.
**as per what was said to us during our first class
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