52 It´s a Wrap

One of the toughest tasks making docs is seeing a project through the first idea, development, production, post-production and then the hard part - getting it out there to the public. Eki and I are good at it. Very few of our projects have fallen into the black hole of Bright (un-realized) Ideas. But still, I´m surprised we stuck with this blog for a year, It started on a whim and then we got into it.

image by bluegum / sxc.hu

The life of a small film company is a cliff-hanger. There´s never enough funding, commissioning editors disappoint and people who would make great subjects back out. But we´ve been at it for 19 years and have made productions that we´re really proud of. For me the series 10 Finnish Architects comes out on top. It was our first big, BIG project. One of our CEs made the off-hand remark: "But Maggy that´s 100 minutes of film." I pooh-poohed her with:  "No, no it´s 10 ten minute movies."  That long, long project (it took almost two years from start to finish) was fun, traumatic, exhausting and a crash course from Eki to me about making movies

"marihuanaland" is next on my list of favorites. Eki and I financed it ourselves because we both believe that pot, especially medical marihuana, should be legalized. End of story. We also plan to edit and publish online littlemargiedocblag under the title: Diary of a Mom & Pop Film Company (99 cents).  Making movies is so much fun you just don´t want to, maybe can´t, stop. "Action!"

Lesson 52:  Once you get the itch just scratch, scratch, scratch.

littlemargiedoc-blog will take a three month break while on the road.

51 A Tiny Ton of Troubl

image by kovik / sxc.hu

Bought a cardboard shack on a plot of land and decided to write a song (country western, of course) about it. Have been filming since the start and even Eki seemed excited about the idea. The renovation was damn hard and discouraging at times but writing a song is really daunting. I listen all the time to DAC (David Allen Coe), Merle (Haggard), Willie (Nelson) and it seems so easy. But no, not.

I´m also including shots of the town, which has John Ford scenery (one of his main locations isn´t far from here in Ridgeway). And twelve churches and seven saloons. The saloons get all the business. One is right across the road - it´s a great place to drink beer, meet locals and hear music.

The climax of the music video is a Wild West party. It´ll be in a couple of weeks. My guitar teacher, Sharon, and her uke group will be the entertainment. She insists we do a duet - play and sing. And chose "Home on the Range."  I groaned. But found out that simple old-fashioned tune is hard to learn. For the last five weeks I´ve tried to nail it. There are five chord changes and they come up fast. If my mind wanders for even a second I make a mistake. But at least she has me singing in tune. Not like when Eki, Era and I recorded "The Old Gray Mare" and I was hopelessly off-key. When we edit A Tiny Ton of Troubl we´ll put it on youtube. DAC, Merle, Willie watch out.

Lesson 51:  Bite off more than you can chew. Always.

Next week:  52 It´s a Wrap

50 10 Words Every Doc Filmmaker Should Know

• 01 Ambient Sound: background sound to add atmosphere to the sound track (also known as "atmos" and "wildtrack. Eki is a musician and is great at enhancing the audio.
•  02 Animation: one of the things I love in the edit is when Eki animates something. He´ll add a person or object. Or show how a building changes. It might take two hours of work and be on-screen for a few seconds so he rations me.
• 03 Boom:  the pole that holds the microphone out of the shot but near enough so that it picks up the audio.
• 04  Color Correction: after the edit Eki goes through and balances all the colors so they are the same tone throughout. We choose what  color direction we want: bright, shady, blueish, etc.
• 05 Copyright: the artist´s legal right to the use of his/her work. Copyrights can be a minefield. Any doc filmmaker, however small, should be au courant when using someone´s music, art, books, etc.
• 06 NLE (non-linear editing): allows you to insert footage anywhere in the edit without having to remove what was there before.
• 07  Rough cut:  first edit of the un-finished film. You might have one, two or more rough cuts.
• 08 Steadicam: a stabilizing device attached to the camera and worn by the photographer. It allows him to walk through the scene and creates a long fluid shot. Very effective. Our steadicam man is Antti Hacklin.
• 09  Time Code: the seconds, minutes, hours on the top of the film that lets you synchronize the audio and the video. Also a big help in the pre-edit when you want to pick out the best shots.  
• 10  Zebra Striping: lines seen through the camera´s viewfinder that tells you when a shot is over-exposed. 

Edit by Eki: I'd probably define NLE:s by it's difference to old school tape to tape editing. In the stone age (when i used to ski to old school both winter AND summer), the program was cut together in a linear fashion by copying one shot at a time from the source tapes to a master tape, starting from the first opening shot and ending to the last bit of credits. If you then needed to change something in the middle... you were screwed, as the timing of the shots was fixed - the tape doesn't magically stretch or compress to fit the new material you want to put in the middle. With a NLE, making such a changes is trivial, one can easily shuffle shots around in any order. In practice, all current computer based editing systems are NLE:s, so the "NL" part of the abbreviation is unnecessary baggage really.

Other than that, you mostly got it close enough  ;-)


Lesson 50:  Learn the lingo

Next week: 51 A Tiny Ton of Troubl 

49 Make 'Em Sign on the Dotted Line

shho / sxc.hu

It´s one of the ickiest-stickiest problems in filmmaking: asking the main subject in your doc to sign a release form. But oh the possible headaches if you neglect to do it. A guy I heard about spent a year filming his family. It was commissioned by the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE).  After the edit, the family decided they didn´t like his take on them and said it couldn´t be shown. The production was shelved.

We had our own problems with Esa-Pekka Salonen, Finnish composer and former conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. I hated to ask him to sign a release form because I was afraid he would cancel the project. And that his team would make a whole bunch of (written demands). In the end everything turned out OK. But there were weeks and even months of anxiety.

Our release form is simple:        

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

I,  (subject´s name), hearby give permission for Little Margie Productions to use footage taken of me for the production (name of production). These rights extend to film festivals, television, viewings and the internet.

Signed:  (subject´s name)

It´s a drag to ask people to sign, especially if they´re famous and you desperately want to make your doc. But a signed release can save you a whole lot of trouble. And maybe even help avoid a lawsuit.
  
Lesson 49: Nothing like a John Hancock to make it legal

Next week: 50 Ten Words Every Filmmaker Should Know

PS Littlemargiedoc-blog missed a week due to my Mac malfunctioning.

48 Hook Line & Stinker

Before I left Finland for the Wild West Eki and I talked about developing a new project: teaching the Navajo language to kids on the reservation (working title) Tses-naa-Snez (Belong"). I´d read that it´s been compared to Finnish in difficulty. And both languages were suppressed by the US and Finnish  governments at one time. But when I got here I found out that you don´t just walk into a reservation and start shooting. There´s a thick layer of bureaucracy to wade through.

linder6580 / sxc.hu

So when I met a guy (an ex-cop from Wisconsin) who said he had a daughter who worked on the Navajo reservation in Arizona I perked up. But it got better. She was gifted, had got scholarships to Rosemary Hall (a posh preparatory school) and Brown University. Plus, she was beautiful and had been a contestant in the Miss Navajo Beauty Pageant.  Where you not only have to be a knock-out but able to eviscerate a sheep and know what to do with the parts afterwards. Now she was back on the reservation trying to help her people.

I was excited, gave him my card and waited. And waited. He did warn me that she wanted to move to LA and I warned him that a documentary was a long-term  commitment. It´s been three weeks and I just heard at the local hang-out that my ex-cop-connection had put air in his tires and embarked on a 2,000 mile bike trip. Big Disappointment. But I think Eki will agree with me that it´s still a good idea.

Lesson 48 When all else fails have a good cry.

Next week: 49 Make ´EM Sign on the Dotted Line

47 Two Tin Cans & a String

Yes, shiny new DVD:s!!

They can say what they want about the internet connecting everyone, but give me the good ole tel anytime. Last Monday I called Eki.  It was good to talk to him. Like old times. He agreed that it was my turn and that he would do the DVDs for "marihunaland".  It´s been nine months since we´ve finished the edit and I haven´t been exactly patient. But now I´ve just read a review of a book called Wait: the art and science of delay by Frank Partnoy. The gist of the book is that some of the best ideas, inventions and maybe even docs hang around for a long time before they´re launched.

For example:  The Post-it. When it was designed, the people at 3M thought it might make a good bookmark that stuck without leaving a trace. But then they decided there weren´t enough readers to make it worthwhile. The project was set aside. To prove that you can´t keep a good idea hidden for long, employees started using the samples to write notes to themselves and stick them on the wall. Mr Partnoy writes that the 12-year delay between invention and the launch of the Post-it Note was a good thing. A bright idea at the right time.

Here in the US there´s a national election coming up on the first Tuesday in November. At least two states (Colorado and Texas), and maybe more, will have initiatives on the ballot to legalize (or decriminalize) marihuana for recreational use. Ann and Bob Lee, parents of Richard Lee*, founder of Oaksterdam University* (the trade school that teaches you everything you need to know about cannabis), advocates of legalization and avid Texas Republicans should have a DVD copy. They made one of the most moving statements ever for legalization of pot in "marihuanaland". And they have the clout to promote it. So Eki, rrrrinng, rrrrring. "If it´s Monday it must be..."

Edit by Eki: The DVD:s are in the mail now... finally.


Lesson 47:  Dial direct and state your case.


*In April 2012 Oaksterdam University and Richard Lee´s apartment were raided by the FBI.


Next week: 48 Hook, Line & Stinker

46 The Tool(S)

I had to buy this book. The Tools was written by two of the most famous people in Hollywood who nobody has ever heard of (outside of the movie business). Psychiatrist, Phil Stutz and psychotherapist, Barry Michels, are the go-to guys if you want to win an Academy Award. That is if you can get an appointment. But their book promises that those not lucky enough to make it past the gatekeepers can learn how to reach the summit on their own. It´s easy. Just follow The Yellow Brick Road.

• Tool #1 Reversal of Desire (the Higher Force: The Force of Forward Motion) 

This one boils down to getting out of your comfort zone, embracing pain, going straight through it to endless possibilities (there are diagrams to make it easier to understand). Joseph Campbell covered much the same ground in his book Hero With a Thousand Faces (or was it ten thousand?) when he wrote:  you have to go through hell to get to the boon.

• Tool #2 Active Love (the Higher Force: Outflow)

In a nutshell: get out of the maze (read "the trap of the past"). Realize you can only change yourself, not anyone else and accept them as they are. Only then will you have the freedom to go on with life.

• Tool #3 Inner Authority (Higher Force: The Force of Self-Expression)

Get over your insecurity by realizing you have a second self: a shadow. Don´t wait for approval from the outside. Use your inner authority to turn your shadow into the cool, confident person you want to be.


There are a couple of more tools, such as, Grateful Flow and Jeopardy. And finally the conclusion: Faith in Higher Forces and The Fruits of a New Vision. But before I got to them I wondered if it wouldn´t be better to go to a good shrink and talk things over. Now how can I use my new-found smarts (tools 1, 2 and 3) to wangle an appointment with either Dr Stutz or Mr Michels? Then Sundance here we come.

Lesson 46:  You can´t tell a book by its cover

Next week: 47: Two Tin Cans & a String