Northwest Institute for Social Change: The Blog

Portland: A Rather Ironic Discussion about Being Concise, in 455 Words

As much as learning about movie-making skills (technical and interviewing) and receiving daily reminders in the form of more or less scathing criticism [cough cough Phil “Fussy” Busse, haha ] on how to structure a story in an interesting and compelling way have been really useful and made me think a lot differently about what goes into a good documentary, I think there’s also something incredibly valuable in learning this stuff so that I can look at the kind of work with which I’m familiar from a new perspective.

I’ve always been really involved with social justice organizing (i.e. non-profits and unions), both on campus at college and in “real life,” through various internships and volunteer stints. I know I’m not an expert, but I definitely considered myself very experienced in this area. After interviewing one of our characters who is involved in the non-profit world, however, I’ve realized how critically important it is for activists as interviewees to be clear and concise about what exactly your schtick is and why it’s important. We keep hearing this drilled into our heads as the documentary-makers: we’ve done a lot of talking about how to make your “pitch” to someone who might potentially show your documentary or be impacted by it (i.e. someone with political power) – how would you describe this story to a friend in one minute or less?

It’s an extremely challenging thing to do, especially when one is inundated with hours of footage and just totally mired in all of these supporting details. In looking at our footage, one of our rather inarticulate interviewees had an extremely difficult time summarizing the program we’re focusing on and would jump around from clause to clause, detail to detail, without ever really concluding a sentence. Not only is this a nightmare on our end during the editing process, but it really hurts the good PR that the program could gain from this. If our interviewee had been able to give us 2-3 sentence soundbites instead of literally two minutes of rambling, just think about all the wonderful things that would have been said that we could use in our documentary that could really push the story forward, instead of totally unusable senseless words that we have to dump from the story completely.

I really value details. I mean, I REALLY value details. I love them, because I think that if everyone was just a little more detailed with the things they say, a lot of conflict could be avoided, as the people listening can better understand the context and thought process that the led the speaker to his/her conclusions. However, through looking at documentary-making in the mirror, and at activism from across the table, I’m realizing the importance of “meaning before details.”  Clearly something I’m still working on.

-Emily

Portland: Connection, Change

One of the things about this program that most strongly affected me at the beginning, and has been a continuing theme throughout (not excluding my last post), is the rather embarrassingly simple idea that human connection leads to change. I remember interviewing Amy as one of the first exercises we did at camp and listening to her talk about how much she loves theater and acting and that to her, the human body is an object, a medium through which experiences and ideas can be conveyed. It seems kind of simple, but I had never really thought about acting that way before: the body as a vessel for all the un-sharable aspects of being human – feelings, thought processes, ways of understanding – all of these are things we can describe to each other, but never really feel in the same way that the describer experiences them, but are rather felt through one’s own experiential lens. Inspired by Amy, I now see theater as the playwright describing his/her experience through real, animated people – a medium that makes the gap between experienced and described a little bit closer. And that’s what’s really incredible about this whole documentary-making process (and actually, just being a person in general): through interviewing Amy, a connection was made, and I was changed for it.

When I think about all the people I’ve met in these few weeks, whether they be the other NWISC fellows and staff, the guest lecturers and instructors we’ve met with, the people we’ve interviewed for our documentaries, or even just the people I’ve met socially here in Portland, I’ve seen and heard an incredible diversity in the human experience, and have been changed for it. I think that people tend to think of “connection” only in the sense of recognizing a commonality, but a connection can be so much more: something that makes you challenge your own assumptions about people, or even something that you vehemently disagree with. A connection is a joining of two live wires that can electrocute or cozily illuminate. Either way, the situation is changed.

Forgive me the philosophizing, but I really believe that connection is the power in documentary-making, and it’s a beautiful thing to make connections with people as the radio/film-maker, and then to reconstruct it in a medium that describes those connections that have been made. I’m going to quote from something I wrote for this program earlier in the hopes that it better explains what I’m getting at:

“Looking through old journals, I’ve had a few ideas about how I want to be remembered, including one embarrassing account from 2006 in which I wrote, ‘I want to meet people – millions of people. And affect their lives in some way just by being me and appreciating.’ Although I always re-read that with somewhat of a cringe, I think that a fundamental truth nevertheless lies beneath this naïve egotism: human connection can truly be a force for empowerment and social change. I want to be remembered for revolutionizing the way that people think about their daily interactions with each other; for empowering communities by publicly projecting the beauty, pain, intensity, and intelligence of their experiences, thoughts, and innovations to a new community – ’speaking Truth to power,’ whether that power be one family in their living room, a community organization grappling with similar struggles, or a global institutional body.”

I love the access that this program and working in media give to making new connections. If not for making these documentaries, I probably wouldn’t have ever had the opportunity to speak with Jose, an eighteen-year-old from East County, about what kind of car he wants to buy and why he “messed up” in high school (while driving around in a big pink van that sells VooDoo donuts), or talk with Sherry, an Executive Director, about the house her father built and how she applies a program model she developed for the church to a secular neighborhood agency. And now you have the opportunity to “speak” with them through the social meta-narratives that our project groups weave them into, and be changed for it, whether you know it or not.

-Emily

Portland: That’s not out of my league at all

On the eve of our audio documentary final deadline (1pm tomorrow, but in all practicality, 10:20am, since we’re taking a tour of city hall that will consume the rest of the morning), and with our documentary choppy-sounding and still a minute and a half too long (which is, believe it or not, a triumph in of itself – we had 20 minutes of interview clips when we started work this morning), I was feeling rather resentful for the early part of today.

“What? We have to talk with the producer of Live Wire! [ local live radio variety show]…What?? we have to go to her house? Urgh, it’s so far away! And I have no cash for the bus …and then we have that city hall tour all day tomorrow??? What are they doing to us, don’t they know we need that time to work?” (I like to think that I sound less whiny and melodramatic in real life.)

I honestly sounded like the quote that my project partner Rachel and I have been trying to edit:

“Gosh I have so much going on, I work how many hours a week, I’m a single mom, I don’t have time for this!!”

It’s funny to look at my opinions of this morning now after having spoken with Kate Sokoloff, co-creator and co-producer of Live Wire! and Courtenay Hameister, associate producer/head writer/host at Kate’s house over in the Northeast. The visit with them turned out to be exactly the opposite of a waste of time. We left her house feeling so inspired by the discussion that we had had about public radio funding problems, how it’s possible to manipulate the system and make artistic pieces about subjects that we ordinarily might feel compromise our values (for example, working with commercials) and work around systematic rules, what are good ways to elicit interesting information from interviewees, etc. As I walked down her steps and gushed, “Wowwww that was sooo goooood!!!!” Rachel turned to me and said, “I never thought I wanted to do this kind of thing, but I really want to do a college radio show! This really motivated me to do something with it.” And I felt the same way. It was so great to get to know these people a little and talk with them about interesting and useful topics, but it also just made me feel like “Wow! I really want to work for them on their show! And now I know them, so maybe someday I will.”

Here’s surrounding context of the quote that Rachel and I have been editing. I look at it now in a completely different light.

“It just might be that they didn’t connect that dot or know that they already had the skills, they just thought maybe because (31:44) ‘Gosh I have so much going on, I work how many hours a week, I’m a single mom, I don’t have time for this…After going to the workshop, they get empowered with (31:58) “Oh, I can do that! That was simple, not out of my league at all. And so, it usually just turns them on and empowers them…”

And…that’s why we’re here.

-Emily