Impulse

This June, I’ll be shoot­ing my first doc­u­men­tary, record­ing the jour­ney of a friend and three of his bud­dies rid­ing their bikes from sea to shin­ing sea for char­ity. Riding in relay 24/7, Team OC Quattro (as they call them­selves) will start in Oceanside, CA on June 8 and will roll in to Atlantic City, NJ around eight days later. It’s going to be a great adven­ture for all of us and a huge learn­ing expe­ri­ence for me.

In prepa­ra­tion, I’ve been hit­ting the web look­ing for tips & sug­ges­tions, as well as hit­ting up any doc­u­men­tary film­maker I can find for ideas. So far, I see two main chal­lenges: han­dling every­thing as a crew of one, and bal­anc­ing obser­va­tion ver­sus prepa­ra­tion in the sto­ry­telling.
The first is mostly prac­tice & logis­tics: In the mid­dle of the race, we roll up to a rider change point. I jump out of the van with the next cyclist as they start load­ing and unload­ing bikes. I’ve got to fire up the cam­era, com­pose an inter­est­ing shot, keep the micro­phone pointed at humans and not noisy vans & clank­ing bikes, lis­ten atten­tively alter­ing my com­po­si­tion based on the sit­u­a­tion, and maybe ask a few ques­tions while I’m jug­gling the wires, cam­era, and micro­phone. I think prac­tice is key — get­ting the gear early and stalk­ing my friends for a while. Also, putting a good mic in a shock mount on the cam­era instead of try­ing to wield a boom.
The sec­ond chal­lenge, I think, is the most impor­tant one. The end prod­uct must have a solid, emo­tion­ally based story or it’ll just feel like home-movie — inter­est­ing only to those who were there. If I start shoot­ing with no idea of the story, I’ll end up with a hun­dred hours of mediocre footage. If I stick only to a pre-conceived story, I may end up with noth­ing. Reality rarely matches expec­ta­tions, I’d be wait­ing for My Story while many inter­est­ing sto­ries pass by. Obviously, the trick is bal­anc­ing the two: being aware of an over­all struc­ture that I can plug things into as I go along.
In an amaz­ing stroke of syn­chronic­ity, Brian McDonald just wrote about his approach to mak­ing a short doc­u­men­tary. As I’m film­ing, I can keep track of whether this moment fits into act 1 (what was the world like before), act 2 (what hap­pened), or act 3 (what has hap­pened since, or what does “ever after” look like). Similarly, I can ask ques­tions that are specif­i­cally tar­geted at one of those three acts. I think it also will help to go do some inter­views with the folks ahead of time to lis­ten for inter­est­ing sto­ries that may develop. I can keep those sto­ries in mind when I shoot the race.
I think I need a Journalism in a Nutshell class — or a “The only 10 things you really needed from jour­nal­ism school” book. (Every pro­fes­sion could have a book like that since school is just a way of accel­er­at­ing expe­ri­ence to learn a few basics).
If anyone’s got any sug­ges­tions or tips, send ‘em my way.
If you’d like to spon­sor the team (cor­po­rate or pri­vate spon­sor­ship), email me for info.

Update: I fin­ished the film! Click here for the entire saga.

Related posts:

1. RAAM doc­u­men­tary nearly finished
2. First day of shooting!