See more ‘Pulp Fiction,’ ‘Thelma & Louise’ Stars ReuniteĪlan, while you were shooting your film, Clark Terry became ill. So you kind of put everything together and you hope for the best, and then sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don’t. It’s incredibly dramatic footage that’s never been seen before. We were very lucky uncovering a box of undeveloped super?8 footage from a guy’s attic that ended up taking about 12 minutes in our film. And for, it was really important having a visual representation that made the viewer feel present in the moment. RORY KENNEDY Because a historical documentary, I knew what the story was going into it. We don’t know where the story is going until it reaches its conclusion.ĭid any of you have eureka moments where you found archival material or filmed an interview that you knew would really make your movie? But there is this kind of uncertainty that we all have to embrace as documentary filmmakers because we’re filming things that are in many cases actually unfolding. POITRAS Sure, I had started to make a film about NSA and whistleblowers and journalism before Snowden contacted me. Laura, when you went to Hong Kong to meet Edward Snowden, did you know you were embarking on a movie? We made the film for three and a half, maybe four and a half years without even knowing whether it would become a film. Had the Supreme Court not taken, we would have had great material, but we wouldn’t have had that sort of epic structure that I think we got in the end. But Ben, my co-director, and I were very conscious the entire time we were making that we needed a third act and that was the Supreme Court. RYAN WHITE I totally agree with Steve that documentaries have the liberty to go outside that three-act structure. And he was in the hospital in rehab for the rest of the time I was filming. I knew I wanted to structure the film in that way, but there were a lot of things that I wanted to do that I never got to do. And I love the way he kind of used his life in the present as his springboard to the past. He’d been through tremendous suffering from the cancer in the last seven years of his life. What I loved was the fact that he was looking back over his life from the vantage point of a man clearly acknowledging that he’s nearing the end. JAMES Roger had written this terrific memoir. In your film about Roger Ebert, did you know what form it would take when you began? People’s lives don’t often conform to three acts. That’s why people are excited about seeing our stories, beyond the fact that they’re true. Last 10 to 20 years is the fact that we are not confined by thinking about the films and stories as three acts. STEVE JAMES One of the things that makes documentaries so exciting in the So are you asking yourself questions like, “Is there a dramatic twist in the third act”? See more 19 Sequels That Outgrossed the Original Movies ORLANDO VON EINSIEDEL No matter how important the issue is at the center of your film or how much you care about it, if you make a film that is boring, not enough people are going to see it and then it’s not going to have the impact on the issue that you cared about in the first place. And documentary filmmaking, even though it involves journalism, it’s also storytelling. LAURA POITRAS I think all of us are filmmakers first. When you’re deciding on a film, even if you decide it’s a worthy subject, do you first have to ask yourself whether it’s also got genuine drama? Invited to sit down together by THR, the filmmakers shared their war stories, revealed how they drum up financing and told how they’ve found eager supporters such as Quincy Jones, Leonardo DiCaprio and Steven Soderbergh. The films range far and wide, from the Congo, where Virunga, directed by Orlando von Einsiedel, 34, looks at mountain gorillas caught in the middle of the crossfire, to South Central Los Angeles, where Tales of the Grim Sleeper, directed by Nick Broomfield, 66, unearths the tale of a serial killer who preyed on forgotten women. The Hollywood Reporter Wins Webby Award for Its Blackfamous Roundtable
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