Ford Foundation Pumps $50 Million into Documentaries

Some rare good news for documentary producers and fans.

This week the Ford Foundation launched a $50-million, 5-year initiative to find and support "next-generation" nonfiction filmmakers whose themes address urgent social issues.

The new project is called JustFilms. According to Ford Foundation president Luis Ubiñas: "With the growth of the Web and social networks, the potential global audience for filmed content with a social conscience has exploded. We want JustFilms to support visionary filmmakers from around the world... and help them reach and engage audiences."

JustFilms will also leverage the foundation's global network of 10 regional offices to identify and lift new talent from around the world and to strengthen emerging communities of documentary filmmakers.

JustFilms will focus on film, video and digital works that show courageous people confronting difficult issues and actively pursuing a more just, secure and sustainable world. The initiative will pursue three distinct funding paths, each receiving roughly one-third of its annual overall budget:

•Partnerships with major organizations such as the Sundance Institute, the Independent Television Service and others.

•An ongoing open application process that will help JustFilms stay attuned to fresh ideas and stories wherever they may emerge.

•Partnership with other Ford Foundation grant-making programs where the introduction of documentary film could help draw attention to an issue or advance a movement.

Directing the JustFilms initiative will be Orlando Bagwell (pictured), an award-winning filmmaker ("Eyes on the Prize") who has served as a program officer and director in the foundation's Freedom of Expression team for the past six years.

Some examples of works JustFilms is already supporting:

•"Women, War & Peace," a four-part PBS special, examines the enormously disproportionate suffering of women in today's wars, but also how they are emerging as leaders in brokering peace and forging new international laws governing conflict.

•"Higher Ground" explores the efforts of Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed to petition world leaders to save his island from rising sea levels as a result of climate change.

•"Detroit Hustles Harder" (working title) chronicles the lives of courageous individuals who have made the conscious choice to stay in Detroit to help turn the city around. Their lives and dedication represent not only what can transform the city, but what can renew America.

According to the JustFilms Website, the foundation seeks to:

•Enlarge the conversation on issues of importance by investing in documentary films that capture people’s imaginations and engage them in shaping their futures.

•Expand the community of independent documentary filmmakers and lift the voices of new and innovative filmmakers from around the world.

•Help filmmakers craft important stories, and also develop strategies for finding and building audiences across a variety of platforms.

Learn more about JustFilms here.

Explore the documentaries the foundation has previously supported here.

Albert Maysles on Documentary Filmmaking

With his late brother David, Albert Maysles is a giant among documentary filmmakers. Over the past half century, he has produced behind-the-scenes chronicles of cultural icons (the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Marlon Brando, Truman Capote, Vladmir Horowitz, Christo, Jessye Norman), and is best known for "cinema verite" documentaries such as "Grey Gardens," in which the camera captures natural conversations and activities without the intrusion of interviews or narration.

This approach is often referred to as "fly on the wall," a term Maysles abhors, for reasons he cites below. He is currently producing "Handheld and from the Heart," a self-portrait film celebrating his 50th anniversary in filmmaking, in his own words and images.

On his recently redesigned Website, Maysles shares his thoughts on documentary filmmaking:

Why

As a documentarian I happily place my fate and faith in reality. It is my caretaker, the provider of subjects, themes, experiences -- all endowed with the power of truth and the romance of discovery. And the closer I adhere to reality the more honest and authentic my tales. After all, knowledge of the real world is exactly what we need to better understand and therefore possibly to love one another. It’s my way of making the world a better place.

How

1. Distance oneself from a point of view.
2. Love your subjects.
3. Film events, scenes, sequences; avoid interviews, narration, a host.
4. Work with the best talent.
5. Make it experiential, film experience directly, unstaged, uncontrolled.
6.There is a connection between reality and truth. Remain faithful to both.

Some Do's and Dont's

• Hold it steady.
• Use manual zoom, not the electronic.
• Read as much of the PD 170 manual as you can.
• Read book or chapter in a photography book on how to compose shots.
• Use the steady device that’s in the camera.
• Never use a tripod (exception: filming photographs, for example).
• You’ll get a steadier picture the more wide-angle the shot. In a walking shot go very wide angle.
• Hold the beginning and end of each shot. The editor will need that.
• Use no lights. The available light is more authentic.
• Learn the technique but equally important keep your eye open to watch the significant moment. Orson Welles: “The cameraman’s camera should have behind its lens the eye of a poet.”
• Remember, as a documentarian you are an observer, an author but not a director, a discoverer, not a controller.
• Don’t worry that your presence with the camera will change things. Not if you’re confident you belong there and understand that in your favor is that of the two instincts, to disclose or to keep a secret, the stronger is to disclose.

• It’s not “fly-on-the-wall.” That would be mindless. You need to establish rapport even without saying so but through eye contact and empathy.

Maysles also explains why he feels the Sony PD170 is "the greatest technical innovation":

1. focuses down to inches.
2. has a magnificent manual zoom.
3. is supersensitive to light.
4. an excellent zoom range especially with the addition of the Century wide-angle adapter.
5. only 3 dollars per tape.
6. extremely useful automatic focus, also manual.
7. manual and automatic exposure control.
8. single system picture and sound plus two sound inputs.
9. as you shoot, you control exposure simultaneously while observing recorded images.
10. steady device in the lens makes for a steadier picture.
11. unlike the 10minutes 16mm film camera magazine, each tape runs 40 or 60 minutes, virtually no run-outs.
12. with tape you needn’t change stock.
13. camera can be held in many positions with viewer still visible.
14. holding camera below chin, a camera person can see much more than is in the eyepiece.
15. holding camera below chin, camera person's gaze is available to subjects to assure rapport.
16. camera much lighter (only 3 or 4 pounds vs.20).
17. can vary shutter speed.
18. camera costs only around $3500; a 16mm film camera with lenses and magazines around $100,000.
19. the zoom lens is so good you need no other lenses.
20. easy to film in tight quarters; for example, in cars.
21. totally silent.
22. less intrusive.
23. batteries are tiny (3"x 1 1/2"x 1"), weigh little, run for as much as 8 hours.
24. quality satisfactory for TV and can be blown up to 35mm.
25. all you need to shoot goes into a normal camera bag.
26. when necessary can shoot all alone.
27. no waiting a day for rushes. Results are immediately available.
28. fewer or no problems with hot or humid conditions.
29. can go straight to edit; no processing negative, workprint, or transfer to tape.

30. is a near perfect one-up on the 16mm film camera.

You can find news of upcoming lectures and screenings, along with info on purchasing Albert Maysles Eyewear for Barneys (!), here.

New VR Photography Book Teaches How to Create Interactive Panoramas

Scott Highton is a San Francisco-based photojournalist and documentary filmmaker whose credits include over 60 productions for PBS, Discovery Channel, Arts & Entertainment, Turner Broadcasting and the National Audubon Society.

He has also helped pioneer the field of virtual reality photography. You've seen VR photographs on the Web if you've ever encountered an interactive 360-degree panoramic image, where you can "navigate" the scene by dragging and clicking, so that you appear to move left and right, up and down, and closer and further away. VR photography is also used online for giving the appearance of spinning an object around, with your cursor or keyboard, to observe it from all angles and perspectives.

Highton's now published the definitive volume on "Virtual Reality Photography," so that multimedia journalists can learn the required techniques for creating state-of-the-art VR images for themselves. It's amply illustrated in full-color throughout, with tips, techniques, and detailed instruction.

In four sections it covers photography basics, panoramic VR imaging, object VR imaging, and "how to run an effective business offering professional VR photography services, based on the author's 30+ years of experience."

Watch Scott Highton lecture on VR photography here (74-minute video).

See examples of VR photography here and here.

For more info on the book (including sample chapters), or to order, go here.

Video Q&A with Documentarian Ken Burns

Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker Ken Burns ("Brooklyn Bridge," "The Civil War," "Baseball," "The West," "Jazz," "The War," "The National Parks") is the subject of a recent 43-minute video interview on a Website called Big Think, which has conducted talking-head Q&A's with "more than 600 experts, from hedge-fund managers to neuroscientists."

You can watch the interview in one uninterrupted chunk below, or in thematic segments:

* Ken Burns: The Art of the Interview 2:17
* Why Everyone is Not a Filmmaker 3:10
* Is American History Cyclical or Progressive? 3:35
* History as Good Storytelling 4:47
* How the Film Shapes the Filmmaker 3:58
* Ken Burns’s Greatest Themes 6:51
* In a Film About Land, Stories About People 5:41
* What Makes Ken Burns’s Films Unique? 6:03
* Selling Them “The Brooklyn Bridge” 5:45
* Ken Burns: Historian, Filmmaker, Both? 3:03



Burns proves himself to be an excellent interview subject when answering the question, "What's the best interview question you've ever asked for a film?"

There are entertaining lessons here for all documentary connoisseurs -- producers and viewers alike.

'Honest Truths' Studies Ethical Issues for VJs

Videojournalists face a slew of moral and ethical quandaries in every stage of shooting and editing their stories. A new study intelligently and engagingly addresses some of the most prevalent.

It's called Honest Truths: Documentary Filmmakers on Ethical Challenges in Their Work, published by American University School of Communication's Center for Social Media.

This study provides a map of perceived ethical challenges that documentary filmmakers—directors and producer-directors—in the United States identify in the practice of their craft. It summarizes the results of 45 long-form interviews in which filmmakers were asked simply to describe recent ethical challenges that surfaced in their work.

The interview pool consisted of 41 directors or producer-directors who had released at least two productions at a national level and who have authorial control. Most of those makers had experience both with nonprofit outlets, such as public TV, and with cable or commercial network television. Also included were four executive producers in national television programming organizations. The population spanned three generations.

Documentary filmmakers identified themselves as creative artists for whom ethical behavior is at the core of their projects. At a time when there is unprecedented financial pressure on makers to lower costs and increase productivity, filmmakers reported that they routinely found themselves in situations where they needed to balance ethical responsibilities against practical considerations. Their comments can be grouped into three conflicting sets of responsibilities: to their subjects, their viewers, and their own artistic vision and production exigencies.

Filmmakers resolved these conflicts on an ad-hoc basis and argued routinely for situational, case-by-case ethical decisions. At the same time, they shared unarticulated general principles and limitations. They commonly shared such principles as, in relation to subjects, “Do no harm” and “Protect the vulnerable,” and, in relation to viewers, “Honor the viewer’s trust.”

Among the topics discussed:

* Staging, restaging, and effects

* Framing and editing

* Paying subjects

* Sharing decision-making and/or control of final cut

* Protecting vulnerable or endangered subjects

* Reselling or distributing images in other contexts

* Deliberate deception to achieve a greater good

The report concludes:

When filmmakers face ethical conflicts, they often resolve them in an ad-hoc way, keeping their deep face-to-face relationship with subjects and their more abstract relationship with the viewers in balance with practical concerns about cost, time, and ease of production.

The ethical conflicts put in motion by these features of a filmmaker’s embattled-truth-teller identity are, ironically for a truth-telling community, unable to be widely shared or even publicly discussed in most individual cases. Sometimes filmmakers are constrained by contract, but far more often they are constrained by the fear that openly discussing ethical issues will expose them to risk of censure or may jeopardize the next job.

Filmmakers thus find themselves without community norms or standards. Institutional standards and practices remain proprietary to the companies for which the filmmakers may be working and do not always reflect the terms they believe are appropriate to their craft. Their communities are far-flung, virtual, and sporadically rallied at film festivals and on listservs. Filmmakers need to share both experience and vocabulary and to be able to question their own and others’ decision-making processes without encountering prohibitive risk.

Documentary filmmakers need a larger, more sustained and public discussion of ethics, and they also need safe zones to share questions and to report concerns. Any documentary code of ethics that has credibility for a field with a wide range of practices must develop from a shared understanding of values, standards, and practices. A more extended and vigorous conversation is needed in order to cultivate such understanding in this field of creative practice.

Download the study here (PDF file).

Why Not Abandon Expensive Film for Affordable Video?

Colin Mulvany, pioneering multimedia producer at Spokane's Spokesman-Review, recently participated in a panel discussion with local documentary filmmakers, and felt like a fish out of water. Why? Because he's a video guy, and his fellow panelists were devoted to 16mm film.

More to the point, they were devoted to spending years writing grants to raise money to pay for film stock, processing, and post-production costs. Mulvany, on the other hand, has to knock out videos on time-crunched newspaper deadlines -- for a tiny fraction of the expense.

As he reports on his "Mastering Multimedia" blog:

I had to wonder why so many filmmakers stick to using film when high-def video is available for next to nothing. When I asked: “Why not chuck expensive film stock and just go video?” the response was almost universally: “It's the look we like, it's the tradition.”

Funny, that’s the same thing I heard when still photographers were transitioning to digital. I can honestly say now that my images look way better than anything I shot in my early years shooting Tri-X black-and-white film or, God forbid, Kodak high-speed 400 iso negative film.

High-definition video is opening up new opportunities for documentary filmmakers that would otherwise be missed if someone were waiting years to get grant funding to produce it on film. I understand there are still costs, but wow, what one person with decent video camera skills, a laptop and Final Cut Pro can do now. When I look at all the credits on a documentary film, I have to wonder if three-fourths of the names are really needed.

One must wonder if a new wave of documentary filmmakers, freed from the legacy of film and film schools, will focus their small video cameras on stories deemed too risky financially for traditional documentary producers to bother with. I think the film festival circuit is about to get a fresh shot of creativity from a growing legion of former newspaper videojournalists.

Mulvany's full commentary here.