Documentary News Letter (1947-1949)

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100 DOCUMENTARY FILM NEWS The Stuff of Documentary THE MAKING OF A MAGAZINE STORY by LESLIE SHEPARD every four weeks we make a cine-magazine. A one-reel news film with four items in each issue. Each item a miniature film. Investigation On the train you rummage through your satchel — pyjamas, toothbrush, soap and towel — and find the dope sheet. It may be a newspaper cutting, a typed quarto sheet, or just a scrap of paper with address and phone number of contacts and a scrawled mnemonic : 'Water is story but inter-cut production and watch men' ... or something. This is your precognition of the sort of thing you expect to find. On the train you let your imagination spread over the dope sheet. Keep fluid, supple, to find and shape your story. You will have three hours to sort out the ingredients. Get the facts — find the story. It will run for a minute and a half with something like twenty-three shots. You can draw on commentary, music, effects, and occasionally synch. Have you ever tried to write a triolet? It's a very precise verse form with infinite variation possible in its rigid pattern. . . . As well as your story (which you will script on the night train back or in the office within two hours next day) you will find out the routine details for lining-up — electricity supply, what lamps, time-tables, hotels, and so on. The item will be shot the day after tomorrow, unit returning by late train or following morning. The script will have passed through producer and sponsor, be fought and agreed in one afternoon. What is the story? There isn't one — yet! This is screen journalism. That Export story. You spent the morning with the admin, boys at the docks, soaking up facts and figures; being told what to and what not to shoot; collecting data that would never register on celluloid. Then a junior employee guided you to a place you didn't want, but you kept him talking. Then you saw what you'd come down for — the desolate rail wagons, the broken rails running into pools of water — the shots, mind you, not the story. But you kept a man talking and he wrote the story for you in the words of men who had lived with and by coal export; had seen prosperity, depression and the turn of the tide. The day when a ship brought foreign coal to a Welsh port and there were tears in the eyes of the men who unloaded her. And now, with coal being exported again, the images of that story were all around you — the men and the background. Trimming a cargo by the quay that held the ruined weigh-sheds where the seagulls and the man on the job ruffled the broken balance and rippled the reflection of the truck wheel, axle-deep in water. . . . That queer little feeling when you find the right pieces; they fall together and have a truth of their own. Of course it never passed through that way. That was only part of the job. You took the shots — yes! — stole them while pretending to get something else, but the sponsors wanted a broad canvas for the story, not epitome. This or that policy line wasn't quite right. They wanted you to squeeze in something the Press hand-out and the Picture Post story had said. . . . What of it? We re-vamped the story, fighting all the way. Two units worked over different locations and the new story fell together with the pieces of the old. The item was made on time. You wonder if you'll make it this time. Something is going on somewhere, if you can see it, feel it, and record it. On how many other stories have you arrived in a strange place faced by an unexciting fact? You don't rush at it. Get people and let them talk. Watch. Waste time, but keep them talking, while your mind waits for the old magic — the pattern that turns the facts into a story. Shooting On the train you chatted to the other two or three people who were there to help you shoot it. A cameraman and perhaps two assistants. Perhaps you played a bit upstage, knowing that different technicians have different temperaments. The cameraman was your working partner for the next day's shooting. George was slow, indecisive; you had to talk deadpan facetious on the job to keep him going, be calm and never show the indecision you felt yourself. Michael was quick, competent and irritable. You had to fight him for the set-ups. If you hesitated he'd be taking them himself. Always be one move ahead asking for the scenes and have some brave talk to justify what you were doing. Let him take over a scene you didn't really want, to keep the rhythm of work and get the essential ones without fuss. When you were older, perhaps, you would dominate people, the big. confident director. Action! In the meantime, these were early days. You really knew when the cameraman pulled you through on that pan with six characters (big stuff!) and you knew you made the item with those two cut-ins that he didn't want to take. A unit on a magazine story is small and compact enough to work out these things. There wouldn't always be a script. There's a kind of story that is nearer to newsreel proper. You have to make a 'coverage'. This means you script the item in the camera. No second takes and no waiting for sun. You have an hour for the key establishing shots while you're waiting for the action, then for the scenes that the cameraman makes or breaks, because he must take over half your directing now. But you watch all the time for the sort of thing that illuminates the action. Sometimes it happens in front of your eyes and you will have to reconstruct it. Sometimes a whisper to the cameraman and a little distraction will get the shot while the reality is still in it. All the while you figure out how this or that is going to cut. You've had three key midshots — pegs for the editor, but on one of these you're committed on direction of action for the i cut-ins (when you get a chance to get them) (Continued on page 103)