| SOC forum explores how to make documentary films entertaining BY MIKE UNGER Norman Vaughan’s story is unquestionably one of remarkable determination and achievement. A musher on Richard Byrd’s 1928 expedition to Antarctica, Vaughan returned to the South Pole in December of 1994 at the age of 89 to climb a 10,000-foot peak Byrd named in his honor. He made it to the summit eight days after he and his team embarked, and filmmaker Larry Engel, a professor at AU’s School of Commu-nication, was there to document every minute of the adventure. While taken as a whole Vaughan’s accomplishment was undeniably exhilarating, the actual climb was quite tedious. Moving at the pace of, well, an 89-year-old man, Vaughan took excruciatingly small steps on his way up. As a point of comparison, Engel’s crew, its gear in tow, once made it to the top in just six hours. Documentary films can be enlightening, educational, interesting, even inspirational. Unfortunately, occasionally their merits are lost amid one harsh reality: they can be boring. This was the challenge facing Engel in capturing Vaughan’s story —one documentary filmmakers everywhere must constantly confront. Last Tuesday at a forum sponsored by AU’s Center for Environmental Filmmaking and Filmmakers for Conservation, Engel and his colleague, SOC professor Maggie Burnette Stogner, shared their insights on how to make documentary films entertaining. “It’s an art,” Engel told the audience at the Wechsler Theatre in the Mary Graydon Center. “It depends on how you tell the story. Most stories at their core have been dealt with [already]. So what makes them unique? I like revealing the pieces of the puzzle slowly. The rhythm and pacing is what filming is all about.” While shooting Vaughan’s journey Engel said he constantly heard his editor’s voice echoing in his head, urging him to film from new angles and capture images that could somehow be used to tell a portion of the story in a unique manner. “What we could do 20 years ago we can’t do today,” Engel said. “You have to adapt or die. A lot of what may be defined as entertaining is determined by the point of view. You have to listen to the client to be able to articulate the story in an entertaining way.” Burnette Stogner worked at National Geographic for a decade before coming to AU. Among her proudest accomplishments was Africa Extreme, a documentary that chronicled conservationist Michael Fay’s 1,200-mile walk through West Africa from the jungles of Congo to the beaches of Gabon. While Fay and his group of Bambendjelle Pygmy assistants encountered many fascinating animals and ecosystems during their nearly three-year voyage, Burnette Stogner, a senior producer on the project, and her team were tasked with the challenging job of melding more than 600 hours of footage into an entertaining one-hour documentary. “Walking is not a very interesting activity, even in the jungle,” she said. “But if there is one thing that makes a documentary entertaining it is having a great story. We had a great story with interesting characters and areas that hadn’t been filmed before or seen by most of the western world.” Ultimately, the filmmakers decided to balance the education and conservation components of the film with the inherent adventure and suspense surrounding whether the expedition would succeed. The result was exceptional. One of the final scenes, in which the expedition members finally set their eyes on the Atlantic Ocean, drew gasps from the crowd at the Wechsler. The key for documentarians in crafting entertaining films can be found in five key words, Engel said: passion, exploration, risk-taking, wonder, and courage. “You must have a passion for life and the medium in which you’re working,” he said. “You have to be willing and interested in finding out about life, the world, and yourself. It’s about risk-taking in terms of what you want to do and what you’re willing to sacrifice.” For Burnette Stogner, it all boils down to one simplicity, regardless of the topic or technology involved. “The combination of broadcast and networks and computers is coming really fast, but I still think it all comes down to story,” she said. |
