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: 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

Portland: Too cool for school?

Our program assistant Ashly recently asked us students to write out our goals for and the skills we offered to NWISC.

This next sentence is going to make my colleagues want to slap me, or at least stop reading—but give me a chance. Here goes: Caught up in two weeks of classes, assignments and others’ technical difficulties, I started to wonder why I came.

I’m Sara. That’s right, Sara. Not Sarah, as my username might lead you to believe. Blame the wife of Abraham for popularizing the latter (less cool) spelling, or something. I’ve been in journalism for four years. I’ve had plenty of arguments over ethics—dealing with student deaths, bomb threats, headlines that say “fuck!” and columns advocating student-professor relationships. I’ve conducted more interviews than I’d like. I’m quite familiar with every aspect of print. I host a radio show. I work in a multimedia lab (shown below) where using two screens to edit with Audacity or Final Cut Pro is the norm. I’ve been using WordPress for a year. At school, I’m often late to class when I get too involved in troubleshooting computer problems for other students.

When I first heard of NWISC over a year and a half ago, I knew it was an ideal opportunity. But in these two weeks, I started to forget why. I began to think, maybe I didn’t have as much to learn as I thought I did?

Boy, was I wrong.

While working on my resume this weekend, I recalled that which I was forgetting—a crucial aspect of this program. First, I certainly don’t know everything there is to know about the tech world. I was kindly reminded of that by my cocky former manager from the aforementioned tech lab, when I sought out his resume an example for my own. (It was awesome.)

But second, and more importantly, just because I have journo skills and tech skills, it doesn’t mean I have anything to do with them. I see a lot of passion in my fellow students, which clearly translates into their words and behaviors. But for me, knowing the keyboard shortcuts in Audacity doesn’t compel me to do anything positive for the world around me. I’d like to, but I just don’t.

And that’s why I’m here this summer: To learn from my peers, who have taken action without necessarily having the “skills” to do so, to start looking for ways to put my own “skills” to good use, and to strike a resonant balance between the two.

— Sara