0:00:01 - Nigel
Hi Nigel Levy here, and this is The DocFix documentary storytelling podcast. This episode is a little different as it's a conversation between me and one of my students who's part of the DocFix program, James. James' background is in drama and he came to me to create his first feature-length documentary about the legendary actress Geraldine Page. It's also worth noting that his day job is with the marketing department of Lionsgate Films, one of the biggest production companies in the US. James knows that the success of his documentary will ultimately come down to the storytelling d in our conversation, the US, who make blockbuster franchises as well as smaller or indie films. Because of his background, we cover his experience in the program and topics that I've discussed in other podcasts and in my writing, but as a conversation. So we take it in a few different directions. Please subscribe if you want to know when the next episode of the podcast emerges, and if you'd like to work with me yourself or find out more about me or indeed get your hands on some useful information, go to apply.thedocfix.com and apply.thedocfix.com, and, of course, there are more details in the show notes.
Now, here's my conversation with James.
What's interesting is you are a first-time filmmaker, aren't you? Even though you're in the film business. So how far have you come as a first-time filmmaker? That's an interesting journey, isn't it? Because you came to me and you actually haven't done it before, have you?
0:01:25 - James
It's not a documentary, it's a different beast, and it's like what you said in the very beginning.
What resonated with me was that you have to find the meaning of a story, and that is the core of the whole thing, and I just started going out and shooting things and finding things and getting all these materials out. But it doesn't really add up to anything if you don't have the story completely on an iron grid, like it's like really tight. If that foundation is not strong, the whole thing is going to collapse, it's not going to work, it's not going to hold it. And then you've got to really carefully curate what you're going to tell and why and what's the meaning behind it. Otherwise, it's just like you said it's going to become a Wikipedia page, no one's engaged, and at the end of the day, I know nothing about her. Still, I watched all this stuff, and I don't know what it means. So that's why I think it was the story is king, and that's the whole reason why I came here, because I would have thrown everything in the kitchen sink into this thing, and it wouldn't have added. It wouldn't add up to anything.
0:02:53 - Nigel
So, yeah, right, you actually went to film school, though, didn't you? Because I didn't really I read oh yeah, so what is your training before this then?
0:03:02 - James
I did go to film school. I went to UCLA Film School. I got my master's degree there, and then before that, I was in New York. I was born and raised in New York, and I went to a four-year college here and a minor in film. But prior to that was all theatre, and that's how I got to know who Geraldine Page was, and I studied at the actor's studio and with Lee Strasburg and all that. So she was in the. Her name was always in the hallowed halls there about who's. That's how this all came about.
0:03:43 - Nigel
But it didn't give you what you needed to become a documentary maker: the storytelling skill. That's interesting, isn't it? There is a kind of difference. There is a difference. Can you explain that? Because I think that's fascinating because people see dramatizing something as consistent across fiction and fact. But there is a fundamental difference because you've been schooled in the fiction area of dramatizing things, but it wasn't working for you in the documentary, was it?
0:04:13 - James
No, because the fundamental difference is that when you're doing a narrative film or a narrative television show, you can create the drama you could sit there and you can make. You can create your whole world right on the page on a script. But when you're telling someone's story or an event or something, you have to start mining things and finding things and also and then build it and then you have to compose it in a way that has a meaning. That's different. It's harder to do that because you're going do you have that piece of footage? Do you have that interview? Do you have that audio tape? And then, if you don't, then what is that? Then? How does that impact the story? And all of these things come into play. It's like it's as if I think we talked about this before. It's like having a dossier and you put it on your table and you got all these things. But it's like how are you gonna arrange this so that it all is gonna present a cohesive story? It's how you're authoring it and how you're structuring it is critical to how successful you're gonna be in telling a documentary story as opposed to a narrative story.
I did. I have seen some things elements of storytelling that crossover, like I use that terminology of heroes, journey things like the inciting incident. There is some crossover, but you're dealing with real life and real events and real people, is it? Even though you're showing us how to put this altogether, the other part of it is just saying you got to trust your instincts. Cause your instincts. If that little voice inside of you is telling you what about this, then it might lead you somewhere that you didn't think about. So that's what it does. I just don't know how you can. How well, unless you've really done this for many years and had that experience, I don't know how you can go forward without it. Otherwise, you're not building your house on a strong foundation.
0:06:38 - James
I secretly denied that I didn't really have a handle on the story and I didn't have anything or anywhere to go to to practice it, to examine it, to explore it, to ask the questions, to see how it could be possibly put together, just solely focusing on just the story, nothing else. And I just I felt I was circling the airport but I never was really coming in for a landing, and so this kind of landed it, so that and I needed something where it was just I could. All I wanted to, all I wanted to do was focus on the story, elements of the of it, and that's what this offered. And yet it was worth it. And other people in this seminar have said the same thing. They just you just got to. It's like you're trying to crack a case, you're trying to, you're trying to find that thing that is not there and it comes in various degrees. Like someone said to me oh, just going taking this class, this one fix was worth it, just to get that one fix that cracked the whole thing open and fixed the whole thing when mine needed to be really curated in ass and say this is this and this is this and this is her psychology, this is her story and put it on very firm rails so it could ride along the route and then get rid of everything else and that's that's. That's going to just clutter everything up and diffuse the story and diffuse the power of the story. Yeah, no, it was worth it.
And but the boss on night of the week you also like kept this like super chill and lax and it wasn't like. It wasn't like okay, you've been here for 12 weeks now and let's like wrap this. You will get there when we get there. And and so that I really liked you were patient with us and you just knew that we would get there and you would give us things to do and all that. So that I really liked about it. It was that's what was different from anything else, because I didn't feel like you had to hit your mark right at I'm going to make I'm making this up 12 weeks. If you took you another four more weeks or in six more weeks, you were cool with it. You were fine. You're like just let's keep going. It's like we get there. It showed your investment in us, not just like what we invested in the program. So that I want to say from me to you is I'm very grateful for.
0:09:20 - Nigel
So, oh, it's my absolute pleasure. It is one of the most enjoyable things I do really helping people because I want to sense that, yeah, I want you to see yourself as a storyteller now. It's that transformation, it is life changing in a way, I think, to suddenly see yourself in control of story like this, because if your dream is to be a storyteller, it's like being a musician, I think, who suddenly can listen to a song and recognize the chord, sequence and express themselves because they think it may play it. I want you to have that same feeling around story, that transformation, which is huge but it's possible.
0:10:01 - James
So it's like kind of investment that you can use in other areas as well, but I know that yours is specifically designed for documentary storytelling.
0:10:10 - Nigel
So it has the same. It does have the same elements and there are crossovers. But I just like, as you pointed out, there are unique difficulties that people don't understand about documentary and they assume that there's something wrong with them because they can't take the techniques they can read about in Robert McKee's work or something it's not working. I can't just impose this on the material, just know. What you have to do is forensically examine your material and look at yourself deeply about what you want to say and why it means to you, and then from that an analysis emerges that is very technical and very precise but allows your instincts to flourish.
One of the important things I think I want people to understand is that there's a system to it. It's not just teaching more stuff, because everyone can teach things. You could go on the internet and learn thousand things, a million things, and read books, but what I've tried to produce is just something that's like. It is a system. There is a process. You do this first and then you do this, and it's very cold and calculating. But if the end result is producing something deeply powerful, powerfully emotional for the audience, is there a value in that simplicity, and I've tried to keep it simple.
0:11:39 - James
It's funny because when I first started, I remember just describing the story to you and then you were just like looking down, you were just drawing or something, and then you go on, I figure it out, it's all. This is it. I got it right here. I'm like it's already done because I know what your story is. So I go, okay, he's not, obviously not gonna share it with me, I have to do it myself. But yeah, I didn't hold it back.
0:12:04 - Nigel
I didn't hold it back because I didn't want to present it to you. I could have done, and we talked about it and I did, but the point was you have to learn.
0:12:12 - James
I had to go through it myself. No, and I actually all kidding aside I prefer that you didn't show it to me, because I knew that if you had it, great. But now let me see if I can get there too. And because then it's not, why am I here? I'm gonna send it to me and that would be done, but then I wouldn't have gained anything.
There was a there was, yes, there was a simplicity to it, but also to, I think I just have difficulty when I feel things are being prescribed and not letting the story find its voice organically and it's in its own uniqueness. The only way I could say is to examine the story and just keep pressing on it until you get it clear and simple and you can transmit your idea to the audience. The what you're trying to say. It's the clarity and it's a simplification that that I found really useful in this, because you just can't, you can't include everything and it, like I said, it would be detrimental to the story, to the storytelling yeah, I think there's people that confuse complexity with what's the word sophistication.
0:13:36 - Nigel
In a way, you can have a very sophisticated story that is straightforward. A lot of people get confused. I think we've got to put all these layers in all these things, in everything needs to be in here and needs to be a rich mix of, and then they get very confused about what they're actually trying to say and they can't see what to remove and what to add. But I think the great gift is to do something that's very sophisticated. So it's got. We talked about subtext, didn't we? This was really interesting. Yeah, subtext is the dream of all storytellers, isn't it? It's that idea that what you're saying has so many more layers of meaning to it. Then you feel you're in the hands of a real storyteller, and where subtext comes from is a really interesting place. And to me, the approach that I mentor is that what we do is we ask those deep questions at the beginning that people don't normally ask about documentary. It's not just why you're telling this story, but, deeply, why what's the moral values that you are trying to express by it? What would you want people to think about your story, about life because of this story and various questions about the arguments you're taking and the approach and technical questions as well that that requires you do that at the beginning and then, from that kind of bubbles up, very practical things.
Ultimately, quite quickly, we talked about scenes. What a scene can be is just a person doing something on camera and in itself you think how can that contain so much? But because, in a strange way, that has emerged from these complex and sophisticated questions that I demand that you ask of yourself, and then you find yourself with just a scene that has, that contains a multitude of meaning, and that is one of the most powerful and exciting things, I think, when you put the film together. That is why I was saying to you now put it together, because you will see, you'll begin to see these very sophisticated moments emerging from something you said. I'll just use this interview, this bit of archive maybe I'll shoot this if you're shooting a documentary and it's just a very powerful moment and you have powerful moment after powerful moment of just that emerges out of those questions that I've been asking you to keep asking yourself.
0:16:17 - James
Yeah, it's true, and it's like what you're saying. I think the thing that I got out of this is just a lot. But when you said gave me the notes couple of weeks ago saying simplify, simplify, simplify. And sometimes you notice it's like when you're reading poems like they're very simple, but after you're done with it you go, oh, it's just minimal words, very economic, but it's saying a lot of things I said about packing all this stuff and then you don't see it anymore and you're like what?
0:16:51 - Nigel
Complicated doesn't mean sophisticated, that's right. Also, like you said, there is a sophistication in simplicity. There is. I love those paradoxes because they appear to be paradoxes but they're not paradoxes, just a more truthful understanding of reality.
0:17:11 - James
This is a very specific thing. This is story, documentary storytelling, and I have told you before that I haven't found anything like this before. And I think I found you. I don't know if it was through Facebook or ID, maybe it was something on the IDA or I don't. I can't remember where it was and then I looked into it and then I met you when you were sitting in the editing room. Remember you were in the editing room and you seemed a little God Jesus. Yeah, it's like it is what it is. That's the thing is, depending on who's the player.
0:17:53 - Nigel
You can learn that, though I want to teach you that as well, because then you'll see the film at the end and go, ok, that was worth it. Yeah, you live and you get a film out, and then you do another one.
0:18:06 - James
Yeah, but it can be disheartening when you know how good it could be. And then someone else has got some other this focaccia idea that they got to go in, and I love your new dish. Oh, I know, some like mashugana. Yeah, that's good yeah. Micheguna focaccia, have a happy new year and I'll see you. I'll see you the next week. You got it OK. Bye, nigel Fantastic. See you later.
0:18:36 - Nigel
Bye-bye.
0:18:37 - James
Bye.
0:18:39 - Nigel
I hope you enjoyed that conversation with James. If you're interested in working with me at the DocFix, all the links you need are in the notes below. There's a case study you could sign up for at apply.thedocfix.com that goes into some detail on how the system has been used in some of the TV shows and documentaries I've been involved with. There's a lot of information there you'll find useful. And if you want to get in touch, you can send me an email to Nigel@thedocfix.com and I'd be happy to hear from you.
And as the last thing, if you're enjoying this podcast and want to support the show and help keep the podcast free and the conversation coming, you could do a number of things. One is just to share it with someone who you think would benefit from it and number two, take some time to leave a review. If you leave a review for this show on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts, it just helps the algorithm to get it in front of people who could benefit from it the most. So that's all I've got for you on today's episode. Have a good rest of the day, and I'll talk to you soon.
Transcribed by https://podium.page