Producing and Filming a 20 year Doco - Pt 1
Beginnings and some thoughts on starting a project of magnitude … with hindsight
photograph (C) Max Waldron
I’m sure film makers get involved in documentary projects in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons. Mine is perhaps a little unique but hopefully it will be of help or inspiration to those thinking of dipping their toe.
Just over 20 years ago, during a day off, I was listening to the ‘mystery voice competition’ on Johnnie Walker’s Radio 2 show. The phone-in participant was a serving RAF Engineer, who, with a group of friends, was restoring to flight an English Electric Lightning. At the time I had recently started my own company and, aside the day to day filming and photography, I was interested in creating my own documentary project and was actively looking for ideas. Listening to talk of the restoration I thought maybe this could be my first documentary project … while hoping I wasn’t late to the party. Certainly it was worthy of some investigation.
Following some tenacious research and, as it turned out, a well-targeted letter to the Station Commander of a Norfolk RAF Station, I found myself a few nights later receiving a phone call from Phil Wallis .. “Hi, I’m the guy off the radio”. A week or so later I was then meeting the ‘Project Champion’ and financial backer, Andrew Brodie, at his home in north London, to drive to Cambridge for a curry with Phil, and the other co-founder Max Waldron.
I really knew very little about the project at all but during the drive Andrew was able to fill me in on a lot of the background. It turned out that the aircraft was being rebuilt in Mississippi and that the project had purchased 3 airframes along with the RAF’s ‘War Reserve’ of Lighting spares, which were stored, as yet unsorted, at the former USAF Bruntingthorpe, in Leicestershire. In the previous year the principal airframe, XS422, had been shipped to Mississippi and the rebuild was about to commence. I still think, by pure luck, I was so fortunate to find the project right at it’s beginning.
As little as I knew about the project, I knew even less about the restoration team and their appetite for being the subject of a documentary. I was presenting myself as a film maker and producer, but I had no idea if I was competing with other film makers, production companies, or broadcasters, and was very green to how these negotiations are conducted. I hoped that my being self-funded, and also my knowledge and interest around the Royal Air Force, having grown up with a father in the service, and therefore an above average understanding of aircraft and safety around them, would all be plus points. I was certainly approaching things from a ‘say yes and work it out later’ mentality. And that’s how I went into the first dinner.
I’m pleased to say we definitely found ourselves on the same page and dinner became very much less a business meeting and more just good conversation. It also quickly transpired at dinner that I had been overly concerned about a ‘bidding war’. On the contrary, the guys seemed surprised that anyone would want to make a film about what they were doing, and that it wouldn’t cost them anything. We agreed that I should make a no obligation visit to the project in Mississippi … sort of on probation … to see if I liked the restoration, and if the participants liked me.
A little over 2 weeks later I found myself getting on a plane to visit a part of the USA I had never been to, with a camera, and some sound equipment and little real idea of what I was going to find and quite what the story would be..
The rest, as they say, is history … and in total I followed the restoration for 21 years.
I will revisit my filming experiences with the XS422 Restoration in future Blogs, but I wanted initially to share a few key takeaways from my time following the project. Information that I hope will help other would-be documentary makers.
What’s the story
One of the biggest learning curves for me was trying to envisage a framework for the constantly evolving story. Essentially, aside from knowing the overall goal was to transform the huge ‘Airfix kit’ in containers and boxes, in the UK and USA, into a flying aircraft, and that this would be done by a voluntary team, making bi-annual visits to Mississippi and weekend work visits to an airfield in Leicestershire, I had no timescale or plan of action for what I was filming. I was a self-funded filmmaker filming a self-funded restoration ..
It’s perhaps a bit of a luxury to be documenting something with a beginning, middle and end, a known outcome, and a specific timescale … such things do exist but in the majority of cases it’s more likely you need to find the story as you go along. Don’t be afraid to start filming before you know the story within the story. I trusted that as I got into the filming I’d identify story threads and get to know the guys on camera.
My initial plan was to film as much as possible of the restoration, rely on the engineers to guide me as to what was important, and what might be repeated later. With any sort of restoration you know that you have to get as much as possible of the initial build as it’s unrepeatable, and may develop in significance later, but in the back of your mind you also know the audience will be more interested in the latter stages of the restoration, the ‘sparkly stuff’ when things are being tested and making some noise. So it’s a balance and you have to be constantly editing and making directorial decisions in your head as you go. One clear advantage of being a One Man Band …
The One Man Band - Pros and Cons
‘Very Independent film making’ … a fair description of my whole experience making this documentary. Producing, filming and Directing myself, while born out of budgetary necessity, certainly had its Pros and Cons, but in this instance it proved the right way to go.
The main advantage of being a one man band was having the whole project in my head. I knew what I’d shot, I knew what I was missing, I’d filmed all the interviews so I knew what had been talked about. Even years later I was able to associate early parts of the restoration with current progress. If you grow the crew then you’ve got to start explaining what you’re filming and why, and the links with other previous filming. It becomes less reactive and there’s potential to miss things. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be planning but in this specific case, what worked, was reactive planning, through good communication with the restoration team.
Importantly, working on my own I was quickly able to build a relationship with the team and what have become great friendships too. I became one of the team and the guys got used to having me around. I think having more people on the crew would not have worked in this environment.
It’s undoubtably a lot to do for one person. You have to be always thinking on your feet. Fortunately as the restoration progressed and I became more knowledgable and therefore confident, I was able to take little time-outs to sit with a coffee in the hangar and make some notes or gather my thoughts and plan a little. In this I was greatly helped by the engineers who became well versed at letting me know if they were about to do something worth me filming, or when a task they had been working on for some time was about to reach conclusion. This collaboration was a great assets as it saved a lot of unnecessary footage. It also maintained the good relationship I had with the team as it meant I wasn’t filming all the time and they occasionally got to work undisturbed.
If I were to start this project again, and had the funding to do it, the one crew member I’d add would be a sound recordist. That really turned out to be the key technical challenge of all the filming. Once the pieces became an aircraft in the hangar and there was work taking place in the cockpit, inside the airframe, and often times underneath as well, it would have been great to have a number of radio mics in play as well as a boom out. I sometimes found myself having to move cameras and sound up and down between the floor and the top of the aircraft to the detriment of what I was filming. I think given my circumstances I managed ok but it could have been a lot better.
Funding and Broadcast
I started this documentary taking hold of the shirt tails of the restoration and hanging on for the ride. I was able to finance my initial visit from existing funds but once I. had seen and liked what was being done in Mississippi I then had the same costing considerations as the restoration itself. The biggest cost was going to be airfares, accommodation and a hire car. Fortunately the project, both financially, and in terms of the availability of the engineering team, was only able to travel to the USA twice a year. With the work I was doing as a Lighting Cameraman and Producer in the UK these were costs I could manage. In later years there were times I went a bit more often, especially when the airframe was being reassembled, but fortunately I was still able to cover the costs.
The one big advantage of this was independence. After a year or so of filming I could have perhaps approached the BBC or another major broadcaster, shared some of my footage and a treatment and maybe got a commissioning editor interested and some funding. However, this would have then put me in the position of being a supplier, with all the inherent conditions, deadlines and requirements. It may also have added some sort of AP to shadow my filming trips. I didn’t yet know how I wanted to edit the story and didn’t like the idea of having the edit taken out of my hands or heavily influenced. So I decided early on that I would be totally my own boss and maybe present at a later date, a completed film for sale.
Bottom line .. there will always be avenues to pursue in funding your documentary but the pay off will be the loss of varying degrees of ownership and control. Of course these can be negotiated, with the right knowhow.
As I write this I am about to start finally editing my doco for a broadcast but I’ve moved away from my longtime game plan of a feature length doco, and decided instead to go for an online episodic release. This way I can vary the length of the episodes, and also include more of interviews that perhaps might be severely cut down in a one-off film.
Equipment and Technology … a changing landscape
From a few days after my Cambridge curry with Andrew, Phil and Max, I had to start thinking about what equipment I was taking to the USA, both in terms of getting the job done, but also in terms of luggage. Heavily colouring this decision was also navigating the whole visa / working in America thing. Some fairly basic research flagged up that I would not get a media visa as I was not working for a major broadcaster, that working on a speculative documentary project did not constitute a valid visa qualification, and that I couldn’t be filming commercially in the USA if an American Cameraman could do it. However, as I was the Producer and Cameraman, I wasn’t being paid, and it was a speculative project, which certainly early on was merely documenting the restoration, not necessarily for broadcast, I seemed to fit into the visa waiver scheme most closely. So this is how I would be travelling. This meant of course that multiple flight cases were not a consideration. I chose to rely on available or practical light and on my first trip simply took a Sony PD-150 and a Senheiser ME66 with a table stand and plenty of XLR, and no tripod.
The second visit the following March I took a Manfrotto 501 tripod which made life a lot easier at Stennis, but added to the trans-atlantic luggage. I did that 2 more visits and then decided to leave the tripod in Mississippi and buy another for my shooting in the UK. This was a good move and over the years I added to my kit in the States with XLR cables, clamps for GoPros, mains adaptors and extension leads, some cheap but effective small LED lights, a monopod and a US bought stills tripod. It made the travel a lot simpler, and importantly cheaper.
I started my documentary film in 2000 on Mini-DV, and shot my most recent visit to Mississippi on a Canon 5D Mk2 .. via a number of cameras and formats in between. I also introduced some GoPros once the aircraft was up and moving around, which added some great production value. I never envisaged that the documentary acquisition would last quite so long and that camera and format choices would develop at quite the pace they did. Fortunately everything I have has been acquired digitally but looking back at the rushes there is a clear improvement in quality over the 20 years. Equipment is better and smaller today and greatly favours the independent film maker. How wonderful it would have been to have had the option perhaps of a Black Magic 4K Cinema Camera, a couple of prime lenses and set of Rode Radio mics. I would simply say, in today’s environment, with things settled at 2K or 4K, to pick a camera, format, and codec, and stick with it for the duration. I didn’t have that luxury.
On a smaller scale it’s also worth acknowledging that computer software has changed markedly in the 20 years plus since I started, and continues to do so. I started with various PCs and now exist on Mac, but some of my early production notes have required conversion as they are old Microsoft works documents. Again, if you can, standardise your production documents and think about future-proofing.
As far as sound I started with a camera mounted mic but quickly progressed to that on a long bit of string on a mic stand so I had more freedom of shots. In time I added a couple of Radio mics and a Tascam recorder for the cockpit dialogue.
One other change in technology over the course of my filming that was very much in my favour was the price of storage and hard drive space, which fell dramatically. Initially I was filming to tape so that was a simple punt as to how many tapes to take to America for each trip, based on what the restoration team had advised they aimed to tackle. Once I got to shooting on cards I then had to make sure I had enough to get me through a day, in case I didn’t have time to transfer them to hard drives. This was initially expensive for cards, and then a new hard drive for each trip as a ‘keeper’. Once I got back to the UK, those drives were then backed up on to my main project 8TB drive. Jumping to later in the project the cards had become cheap enough that I was able, particularly for the GoPros, to not re-use them. Workflow, and data management is a big consideration for any project and will in part be determined by budget. If you’re filming something unique and unrepeatable … such as the reconstruction of a classic jet .. then you may want to invest in multiple copies of your rushes .. I’ve opted for 3 minimum.
Release Forms
It’s very easy to forget the basics in the early days of a doco with so much to think about and so much going on. Release forms for participants and locations are an important example.
Normally when I’m out filming on productions in the UK, the release form gets signed at the beginning of the day, or before the interview. To a large degree this is so hours of filming are not wasted for the subject to then turn around and be unhappy with how they’ve answered the questions and refuse usage. In my case, they came into my head from time to time but because I was going to be at this for a few years, the team members had become friends, and most of the team were UK based, I figured it could wait and it would simply be a formality.
I actually eventually got got most of mine signed about 12 years in … (not recommended) … and while most of them were indeed very straight-forward, my tardiness did create one or two issues. One of the participants had a bit of a falling out with the project and left the project, and then decided he didn’t want to be associated with the project, although that resolved for me with some negotiation, and a couple of the older participants sadly passed away, although in one case his family were happy to sign and give their permission. I also had a situation, which I haven’t resolved where I guy locally that I filmed with then left the area at short notice before my next visit, and he is now in the wind. I hope at some stage to track him down.
Long story short, keep the paperwork up to date.
The Documentary Style
Finally, just a thought or two on finding a style for your documentary …
At the very beginning of my documentary adventure I had one huge conundrum as the film maker, and while I thought it was a decision I had to make, it quickly became apparent that it would be decided for me. I initially reasoned that if I detached myself from the protagonists and worked around the ‘Outside of the circle’ then I would get the best results. By being merely an observer I could film the restoration, but also the disagreements, arguments and the times things went wrong. But I quickly realised that I was as invested in the success of the restoration as the guys doing it and it became a collaboration. While this ceded a little editorial control .. “don’t film this Nic” on very rare occasions .. the rewards were far greater. With trust that my overall goal was to show the positive outcome of the project, I entered a world, on the ‘Inside of the circle’ where I was being forewarned of things about to happen, I could film the ‘disasters’ because I was trusted to also film the ‘fix’, the engineers were happy to repeat certain actions for close-ups, and even pause an activity to allow me time to reposition my camera.
The other accidental style that crept in, which also became unavoidable as a director/ film maker, was me featuring in my film … as a voice off-camera. Initially I tried to create situations where I could be cut, but it ended up making for a much more engaging style, with me almost standing in for the viewer and perhaps being their mouth-piece. It also was a lot less formal for the engineering team and made for a better participation all round. I did also unavoidably feature from time to time. When you have a heavy bit of aircraft to lift then why do it with three people when you can do it with four … but I’m definitely better heard and not seen.
It’s an inevitability that some sort of bond will grow with your documentary subjects, especially if you are filming them and socialising with them as well. I started filming my documentary with a group of guys and girls I’d never met before, both here in the UK and over in Mississippi, and those individuals are now life-long friends.