Film making lessons from the Duchess of Documentaries

Not many people are fans of documentary films. To many, documentaries are those boring things that hit you with the reality and at times have a preachy tone and sad ending. I too had some of these misconceptions in mind when I appeared at the Mequinez Palace auditorium to attend the Master Class by Oscar winning documentary filmmaker Megan Mylan and Sophy Sivaraman.

 Megan Mylan, by showing us the trailers of some of her films and sharing her stories and experiences during the making of the films laid out what makes a great documentary film and a great documentary filmmaker.

It is important to be an observational filmmaker first. Funding comes later, said the director.

A good documentary filmmaker stays true to his own style of storytelling regardless of the consequences. It is one own choice whether to pitch a proposal to NGOs or other organizations which might lead the influence of the benefactor to creep in, or to work with a modest budget, choosing sponsors who give you complete creative freedom.  That way, the filmmaker retains complete control over the narrative right from choice of the topic to pace and duration of the film.

It is a difficult road to take and you almost always work with a shoestring budget if you choose to be an independent filmmaker. Ms Mylan is dared take this long road to success, which she finally earned  with an Oscar for the film Smile Pinky. 

Moving on, you need to have two more important things if you want to be a terrific film maker (assuming you have the talent for storytelling and patience for research.) 

1. A supportive and efficient team.
2. A clear outreach programme.

You need pretty tenacious team to help raise funds and market the documentary to the audience.  She did not elucidate more than that on the team but here is where the outreach programme comes in.

When you pitch your film proposal to NGOs, or people to raise funds, you should be able to convince them that the research question at the centre of your film has merit and give them a clear idea of how you intend to gain market for the film. Apart from screening the film at film festivals, holding screenings elsewhere, efforts must be made to screen the film in mainstream movie halls. While her first film Lost Boys of Africa failed to gain much attention at the beginning, Smile Pinky came into spotlight after winning an Oscar. The film was later screened at PVR cinemas and the President and Prime Minister of India met Pinki. This of course helped create lots of awareness about the issue.

The film is great work. Which brings me to what the director said about being an able documentary filmmaker.

You should be true to your own style of storytelling. Even when you are bombarded by suggestions and pressure from your funders, you must hear your own voice. As the filmmaker and the funder push each other’s opinions, it becomes a delicate dance. If you want to preserve your freedom, you must have the patience to choose the funders that give you complete creative freedom.

Speaking more about her own approach to documentary filmmaking, Ms Mylan stated that she tends to be an unobtrusive filmmaker, just hovering around with her camera while the subjects go around their daily business as if the cameras do not exist.

It is very difficult to do that. People are bound to become cautious when there are cameras around, she said but as you spend more time with the subjects, they get used to you. Some of the best filming can be done when the subject stops noticing the cameras.  That, Ms Mylan said, takes time. That is the next key quality in filmmaking.  The research is going to take time, the subjects are going to take time to cooperate and you must have a bottomless reservoir of patience for that.

If you have heard Steve Job’s theory about connecting the dots, you will understand exactly what Ms Mylan meant when she described how she researches for the films. When pitching a proposal, she submits a rough plan with stated goals and questions but when it gets down to actually doing research, she just forgets the plan and goes where the information takes her, believing that one eventually stumbles upon a good topic during the research.

That is where she said being an independent filmmaker really helps. You decide how much time you are going to research.  Somewhere in the pages of those books lies the question you did not know you were looking for.

Again, what makes a documentary film great is not just a brilliant research question.  What matters is how the audience connects with your film. For that, you must identify the problem faced by your subjects. For example, in case of Lost Boys of Sudan, it was the loneliness and economic insecurity they faced after coming to the US as refugees.

Ms. Mylan describes herself as a hands-off filmmaker who does not deliver any help to the subjects while the documentary is being shot. The camera just shows us the life of the subjects and remains unobtrusive. The help comes later when the film is released and marketed and the unit will work to raise awareness about the issue.

The director also made an important point about storytelling which I think is the cornerstone of aesthetics in storytelling.

The audience connects more deeply with your documentary if your hero is NOT very heroic.  You take ordinary people who are going through some pivotal life-changing situations and try to broaden the scope of the narrative so that ordinary people highlight important issues faced by the whole society.  That makes people easily relate to your film.

The last point Ms.  Mylan made while replying to a question by one of the audience revealed to me why many of my own attempts at filmmaking have been stuck in production limbo.

While technology has become cheap and everyone is hammer and tongs at shooting something, taking out time to edit and fine-tune work and finding a good crew is difficult and expensive. While technology has become cheap, human resource has not.

Building a good team, raising funds and devoting time to filmmaking are daunting tasks. There exists an organisation that helps emerging filmmakers pitch their films to funders, work with narrative as well as technical aspects of the film and finally market it. The organisation is called IDF- Indian Documentary Foundation. Sophy Sivaraman is the CEO of this organisation. Please visit its website to learn more.