Guest Blogger Danielle Prince Interviews Phil about Stirring the Fire Social Documentary Workshops

Today we’ll focus on the social documentary workshops, specifically on the education and collaboration aspects. You seem to have a unique approach. You, as an artist, could be doing them yourself but you place such emphasis on collaboration and education with both the participants and the organizations.  Why these things are so important?

Doing still photography is something you can get away with on your own. With film you can’t. It has to be a collaborative process. In the production phase, if you’re doing an interview you need somebody monitoring the sound, cameras, a good interviewer, so it is a 2-3 person project. When I’m shooting I like to have a second camera so you can cut between the two angels so having a second person is really important. Collaboration is, if you’re going to do it well, necessary. Making film is a collaborative team sport, not a one-man operation.

As far as education goes, you not only have to learn your specific role but also have an overview of all the roles necessary to the process. It’s good to also focus on where you want to excel and, as far as education, learn to work with other people artistically. Especially when you’re starting to make artistic choices in terms of how this piece is going to be edited and produced it’s good to learn teamwork. So it is really a team sport: different positions and different specialties come together and work cooperatively.

Phil shows Ashley, photography student, a moment of “How To”. Photo: Danielle Prince

How does this benefit the organizations and producers? What does each take away?

Number one is the fact that the organization gets a lot more media, a lot more coverage. We’re not only shooting video but stills so they come away with extra media that they can re-purpose later on beyond the film we make for them. They come away with really high-end raw material that can fuel their media efforts for years to come. The second fact is that they can get it at a reduced cost.

In terms of participants, this is what we can give them: a real client that needs a real product that is intended to accomplish a real result. They get the experience of working with an ad hoc team that just comes together in the moment, which many film teams do. They get the experience of doing advocacy work and storytelling. We do empowerment stories, inspirational stories – this is what works the best. We do what Joseph Campbell calls the ‘hero’s journey’. These are the stories that serve an organization best in spreading how they are conducting their various programs.

What topics are covered in the curriculum of your workshops? Do they vary per workshop or are they standard?

I guess they vary a little bit. As much as possible we tailor the workshops to the needs of the organization. We do a lot of pre-workshop work with the organization. Justine heads up this effort. We want to get the organization thinking about the type of media they need and the audience they are trying to approach. We try to make our stories to attract the widest audience possible in the way we tell the story. The story is much different if it is for a general audience versus if they are trying to attract other experts. Then we start talking about storytelling: the importance of storytelling, what makes a good story, the classic story structure and then we get into actual production phase. Capturing audio. How do you do a good interview? Capturing video, stills. What are the technical considerations, the aesthetic considerations? Then we get into the edit. We do less around the technical considerations of editing; in other words we’re not teaching how to use the software (Adobe Premiere Pro) though we give a basic overview of it. What we are teaching is how to put the pieces together to make a compelling story; how you pace it and lay it out. We talk about our particular methodology which is laying out a radio cut – all your interviews and sound bites you want to tell the story – then building all the visuals and B-roll around that skeleton. After the edit we get into distribution: how you get this piece out there. We especially focus on new media and the internet.

Phil shooting stills in Cambodia. Photo: Danielle Prince

In terms of distribution, is this something you work on with both the producers and the organization?

Yes. We work with both the producers and the organization. Whenever possible we have the communication person of the organization be a part of the workshop. They are working directly with us during the whole process. We’re in good communication with them the whole time.

“We know that the media we produce is strong.”

How do organizations take part in these workshops?

So far it’s word of mouth. I’m known for doing this kind of work so when I speak at different conferences and events they come to us that way. Some of them are previous clients like Resurge and One Heart. During the workshop it just depends on the organization. We try to encourage as much involvement as possible on their end. For example, I just worked with Resurge and had the Communications Director, who was fantastic, with me on the job and we could make our decisions on the ground. I had somebody there to tell me “we need a kid with a cute face”, something I would not have known. So having a key person like this to give us on-the-spot feedback is great. Part of the collaborative effort is making sure everyone is on the same page, getting the ok on everything from the rough cut, to what’s said, to stills, to model releases.

In multimedia, revisions can go on forever so we set a limit. We have a rough cut plus one revision. After that it’s an extra charge for doing any extra revisions. But while putting it together and refining it there is a lot of back and forth. You want to identify one or two people in the organization who have a communications background to be your sounding board to make the decisions on the edit. If you have too many people it becomes a design by committee and there is a lot of censorship that goes on that cuts down on the effectiveness of the piece. I’ve seen that happen. You want to screen your pieces and make sure they’re understood, but when it comes to artistic decisions and what makes a piece strong or not, that’s best left to people who know media.

The author working with an interpreter to get a model release signed n Cambodia. Photo: Phil Borges

Who have you learned from? Who is someone in your life who has influenced you?

Oh, that’s a good question. Several people. I just jumped into this and tried to do it by gut instinct. But I realized there is a lot to learn besides your gut instinct. I guess the first place I learned is by watching a lot of documentaries and seeing how they were done. I really admire this organization called Media Storm.  I went and spent a week with them to learn their methods and how they approach it. Everyone has their ideas about what works and what doesn’t. I agree with most of what they’re doing but I have my own ideas as well. I learn from the participants that I’ve taken on these trips. Every time I do one of these workshops I learn something. It’s a constant learning experience.

What is also important is sharing our methodology in our curriculum. Stirring the Fire will be set apart from others because of the open knowledge share we’re planning on doing. We’re in the process of making this happen. We also want to attract new media students. We offer them a great way to hone skills and gain experience.