“Searching for stories, we filmmakers depart the comfort of our own world and travel into another—our station in life, ownership of some camera equipment, and a stack of releases serving as currency sufficient enough to step into someone else’s town, house or soul.” Edwin Martinez.

The adventure of leaving your own comfort zone and immersing yourself within new experiences and mingling amongst new people is one of the great excitements involved with making documentaries. Through opening yourself up to new information, new experiences and new truths, you as a filmmaker not only open yourself up to a new world but also become a part of the subjects world thus opening a world to the audience.

Documentaries throughout history have always had a strong purpose. They can be used to comment on a social issue ‘An Inconvenient Truth (2006) Davis Guggenheim’ or take a strong political stance on a social issue ‘Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) Michael Moore’, but also documentaries can create and explore relationships ‘Amy (2015) Asif Kapadia’. Documentaries come in many different forms  but all exist for the same reason to inform, educate, entertain, critique, observe real life, persuade and change us.

I chose to film documentaries because I want to highlight the unsung heroes in our community, those people who are doing amazing things for the community and don’t receive the praise nor recognition they deserve. Through my past experiences making documentaries about inspiring people, I wanted to learn more through ‘Documentary as Action’ about how to emotionally capture the high and lows of my subjects, how to differently film, stage and capture information from an interview and also how to accurately and ethically represent my subjects and ultimately become a better documentary filmmaker and better understand the world.

This report through my reflections will focus on how I chose my subjects for my microdocumentary series and how I settled on making micro documentaries for a non-for-profit organisation I have been affiliated with for all my life. This report will also cover what approaches I took aesthetically in making my film, what films and readings inspired me to further grow my documentary prowess, the process in filming, editing, interviewing and polishing my micro documentary and finally how the documentary changed throughout the duration of the semester.

My inspiration for making a micro documentary series started with my younger brother who was born with three missing fingers on his right hand. At the time of his birth there was no support for him which motivated and inspired my parents to create the Aussie Hands Foundation for children and adults with hand differences. In October 2000 almost one year after my brother was born the foundation was founded. The organisation has came a long way over its 17 years however adjusting to times and attracting new members with its small support base has been a challenging obstacle. A lack of funding, a lack of adult members and a minuet database to record hand differences at birth meant that the organisation was struggling to grow. This small injustice inspired me to take a stand for the organisation that meant a lot to me.

Therefore I chose Aussie Hands as my non-for-profit organisation. I wanted create new content for the Aussie Hands website to raise awareness about hand differences and attract more members particularly adults. The website has little to no interactive and visually engaging material therefore through ‘Documentary as Action’ I saw an opportunity to tell the stories through the format of micro documentaries on the Aussie Hands website about the foundations own unsung heroes.

Aussie Hands encouraged me to bring to light the courageous story of long time serving member at Aussie Hands Julie McNally. As an adult member she has lived through torment and faced challenging obstacles everyday and the background she could provide for the micro documentary series would be truly compelling according to Aussie Hands.

 

For my aesthetic approach to the micro documentary I was inspired through the #Discovery series which aired during the Australian Football Leagues (AFL) regular Saturday night broadcasting of the footy. Every week the series would uncover a different player’s personal backstory story and a different side to their life away from the footy field. What appealed to me the most visually about this series was through the DSLR filmed footage. I wanted to incorporate how the series used close ups of the subjects. It is a powerful tool through an extreme close up to peer at the subjects in a personal and unique light.  The close ups extend beyond the players emotion in their face to the emotion in their hands. The hands are an important part of the AFL game to take marks, handball, tackle and more importantly hold the football. Hands are a huge part of my documentary, hands can express so much emotion through how the subject uses them when they are explaining something of importance. Julie on first observation talks with her hands, she uses large spanning hand gestures. This with her hand difference will be captured close up and from the techniques used by #Discovered I want to take a leaf out of their book and incorporate these same techniques.

 

Prior to shooting and even planning the documentary I needed to be sure of what my documentary was and how I was going to undertake the task involved.  I was inspired by a short but powerful piece by Fernanda Rossi which got me thinking about the wider impact I wanted to have with the documentary. In her piece she defines the activist documentary which derives from a moral obligation. “You’re making a documentary out of a sense of duty. You experienced something that needs society’s attention.” (Rossi 2003). Simple yet precise, hand differences or hand anomalies are disabilities which people who have them go to great lengths to hide, the human study behind the behaviours of those with a hand difference is fascinating and incredibly untouched. As Rossi mentions the answer is within, I have a burning desire, a connection, now a moral obligation, knowing that Aussie Hands needs help for me to make a documentary to help them grow. This reading reemphasised what exactly I needed to do and suggested ways I could do it.

 

A documentary film that not only inspired me to make documentary films but also make this documentary series was ‘Grizzly Man’ by Werner Herztog. Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog)(2005) is the documentary which presents the life of an extraordinary man, Timothy Treadwell, the man who spent most of life, protecting and understanding nature and particularly his love, bears. This documentary is known as a portrait documentary because the documentary centres it attention and information on the aspects of the life of a compelling person. This type of documentary would be the type I would be filming about Julie McNally. What struck my heartstrings the most was the ending. Documentaries can often leave the audience with circling questions or a bitter taste about society but the final shot before the documentary ends in Grizzly Man inspired me. The subject, Treadwell walking off into the distance in a wide green grassy field with large snow topped mountains in the background, this shot relation, shows the documentary and story has concluding and been resolved, not only is it a symbolic way to end the documentary but it is a powerful way. Although it’s not in chronological order as Treadwell died and that was established at the start of the film, it’s fitting that Treadwell walks into the distance, it’s symbolism, although Treadwell’s gone, his spirit still walks the valley he deeply loved. This message of the subject being alive and their legacy shining in their finest moment in a social impact documentary, wow that is a truly powerful way to conclude. That is the way I want to draw the curtains on my inspiring subjects.

 

Once I had planned the interview, had my questions all sorted into categories and had an idea what I wanted to visually shoot I spend some time with my subject in the place we would later shoot to gain some more valuable insights and grow rapport with my subject. This was possibly the best decision I made as I was able to create a range of many powerful questions through just some friendly chatter with by subject.

I have always struggled in previously filmed documentaries with sound. I have often conducted interviews in the outside elements and have battled with wind, traffic and other external noises which have often taken the quality away from the interview. I couldn’t make the same mistakes this time round. I was determined to take the extra time to record quality sound with a tripod planted boom microphone to record the best possible sound from my subject. I was fortunate enough to have Stephanie Grant from our Documentary As Action class to help me film with a second camera for b-roll footage whilst I conducted the interview. This technique provided a variety of viewing angles for the interview and gave me more options and flexibility when framing the edits.

Of course with every project you have your challenges along the way. My first mistake was thinking I could film two micro documentaries that went for around or over five minutes and have those complete by the end of the semester. It was an ill-considered plan as editing takes several weeks to complete if you do a thorough job. The original aim was to have one documentary compare two adults compelling stories and often cut between their routines and how they deal with their everyday life. However after Julie gave her interview she gave me more incredible responses than first predicted whilst my second adult subject, Mike, didn’t give anywhere near the same emotion and detail. Hence why I decided to focus in on Julie and make the documentary less about her hand difference and more about her. It didn’t end up being too costly but in future I may chose to focus more time on one compelling subject rather than cram two into one short period of time.

I am proud to say my documentary can be used for a social relational purpose. The documentary I have filmed can have strong benefits in inspiring people in Australia to become members of Aussie Hands and find resilience in Julie’s incredible advice in the film. Through my powerful subject and concise nature of the documentary I believe it help grow the Aussie Hands Foundation. The film has allowed me to discover more about thinking upon the wider social impacts a film can have. Thinking about how the film will grow and become something greater in the community than just a film. It has allowed me to notice the smaller details about a subject, about a surrounding and about a story. I would definitely spend more time researching subject, spending time with them asking them heaps of questions so when the time comes to interview them it is well prepared to such a degree, almost every question is used. The fact that documentaries has the power to create waves in the community and change the ways people think, act and are inspired is a truly incredible thing, documentaries play such an important role in not only documenting history but actually changing history, it’s the main reason why I am dedicated to making documentaries for the rest of my life.

 

Michael Serpell

 

Bibliography:

ROSSI, F. (2003). Why Do You Want to Make This Documentary? The Answer is Within. [online] International Documentary Association. Available at: http://www.documentary.org/magazine/why-do-you-want-make-documentary-answer-within [Accessed 6 Oct. 2017].

 

Grizzly Man (2005) Werner Herzog

 

Link to documentary ‘JULIE’ on Youtube: https://youtu.be/QaaIUGwfmFk