 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
(written by Tod Lending, copyright 1999)
How It Began
In 1994, I was producing and directing a documentary series for PBS called NO TIME TO BE A CHILD. It was a series of three programs, filmed over three years, which looked at young people, mostly teenagers, who were successfully overcoming the devastating effects of violence in their communities.
In the first program of the series, entitled Growin' Up Not a Child, Dorothy Jackson, the grandmother and matriarch of the Collins family, talks about the despair of living in the projects, the violence and decay, and her dream of one day owning a house of her own. Two hours after my interview with Dorothy, her grandson, Terrell Collins, was shot to death only a few blocks away.
In the second program of the series, entitled Breaking Ties, I followed Nickcole (Nikki) Collins, Terrell's cousin. I recorded what it was like for her to grow up on welfare, and what she was doing to try to change her situation.
Following the production of Breaking Ties, I decided to continue filming the Collins family. I was most interested in discovering how Terrell's death would affect their lives, not in the short term, but in the long term, over several years. I was also interested in seeing whether or not Alaissa was going to end her dependence on welfare, and what that process would entail. I didn't know for how long I would film them or where their story was going to take me.
At the time, Dorothy was still trapped in the projects. Her daughter, Alaissa, was stuck on welfare; and her other daughter, Wanda, was heavily addicted to crack cocaine and was working the streets to support her habit. The only one who showed a real sense of hope was Nickcole, Alaissa' s 16-year-old daughter. She was clearly on her way to graduating from high school and going on to a university, the first in her family to do so.
Besides Nickcole, I sensed that a transformation of some kind was possibly going to occur in Alaissa and Dorothy, despite the economic, social, and psychological barriers that confronted them. These two women had a drive, an intensity and focus which often overshadowed their personal entrapments as well as the oppressiveness of their living conditions. Wanda, on the other hand, was remote and inaccessible to me. She was deeply immersed in her world of addiction and prostitution. I didn't have a hope in the world for her. In fact, I didn't even think she had much longer to live. Fortunately, and to my astonishment, she proved me wrong. Some of the most profound changes and approach to life came from Wanda.
When we began working on LEGACY, the Collins family was entangled in the destructive web of urban poverty; living in public housing for generations, having to contend with gangs and community violence, depending on welfare, dealing with drug addiction in the family, single mothers raising their children without the support of fathers, and living in a neighborhood that offers little in the way of jobs or education.
Nikki was amazing to me, as was Terrell, for they had grown up exposed to all of these negative social factors, yet it was clear that they were determined to transcend their situations. I wanted to know what support structures and coping mechanisms Nikki had in place for helping her to overcome these barriers. It was apparent to me that working in her favor was a strong sense of faith, a supportive family, the safety of the Boys & Girls Club and guidance of Kenny Butler (her mentor and director of the Club), decent schooling through the Catholic school system, self-esteem and discipline.
Assembling the Film Crew
Achieving intimacy and building trust with the people whose lives are being filmed is essential to the success of this type of documentary. In filming Legacy, the last thing I wanted was a large crew that would draw attention to itself. With a large crew the act of filming often becomes the "event," or focus, drawing attention away from the subjects and the scene you are filming. On this project I worked with a very small crew: just me and one cameraperson, and no more. I did my own sound, so I eliminated the need to have a sound technician. I filmed using natural light only, thus eliminating the distraction of having a lighting person and the lighting instruments themselves. In making LEGACY, the challenge for myself was to develop a relationship with the Collins family that was natural, intimate, trusting-one that allowed for filming scenes and situations that did not draw attention to the filmmaking process.
The person behind the camera is extremely important in determining the visual style of the film. One of the great drawbacks to filming a documentary over a five-year period is finding one cameraperson to do the whole thing. It is impossible to find such a person, unless this person is your partner. On LEGACY, six people operated the camera, including myself. On a number of occasions, no one was available, so I used a digital camcorder for what turned out to be some very important scenes. As a result, the visual style of the film is somewhat uneven. But because LEGACY is a documentary, I think most people will understand that this is a result of the length of time the film covers. In order to achieve a visual continuity, I described my particular approach to filming this story to each camera operator. I stressed the uses of extreme close-ups and smooth, hand-held movements, as well as panning away from the point of focus when other events were happening in the scene.
The editor, Danny Alpert, was the editor on this project. We are both trained film editors and it was tempting for me to want to edit this project on my own because of the passion I felt for the story. But it was because of this very passion that I knew I would be the wrong person to edit the material. In a film like LEGACY, in which I have spent five years filming and becoming friends with the main subjects, maintaining an objective distance in the editing room is extremely difficult. In this case, another editorial voice is essential, and Danny had a distance from the story, enabling him to maintain an objective eye while editing this project. He was immensely helpful in shaping the material and making quick editorial decisions that would have taken me much longer to make.
Establishing Trust
I first met the Collins family in a time of extreme crisis the day they lost a beloved member of their family. They saw me the very next day at the site where Terrell was killed, and they saw me at his funeral. I waited two weeks after the funeral before I approached them again for a family interview, hopeful that they would be willing to talk to me about their loss. The interview lasted two hours and was very intimate and emotional. A level of trust was beginning to develop because they saw that I was different from the news media. I wasn't there just to get a 30-second sound bite. I wasn't there just for the tragedy. They knew that my original intention was to film Terrell because of the success he was having in school, and because he represented something good in the family and in the community. They appreciated this. They respected what I was doing and trusted my intentions. Their belief in my intentions was the key to establishing trust, which then developed into intimacy.
My most difficult interview was my first with the Collins family, in which I asked the family to discuss their experience of losing Terrell. I had never conducted this type of interview before. I knew it would be very emotional and I was concerned that I would appear exploitative. But all of us were feeling personal pain that day. Terrell's funeral had torn me apart: it was very difficult to maintain a professional distance and do the job I was there to do, and I remember just wanting to sit in one of the pews and cry. After the funeral, I wasn't sure how long I should wait to interview the family. On the one hand I wanted to leave them with time to grieve, and yet I didn't want too much time to pass because I wanted to capture the rawness of their unfiltered emotions.
I waited two weeks and then asked if they were ready to talk. They said yes, so we went to their apartment in the projects for the first time. I gathered the entire family in one spot and began the interview. I wanted to interview everyone together, rather than separately, or in small groups, because I thought it would be important for members of the family to interact with one another. If they had different reactions to the experience, different perspectives and different ways of dealing with it, I wanted to capture that aspect of their loss.
I remember the room was extremely tense. I wasn't sure how I was going to break the ice, so I began by asking members of the family to tell me about who Terrell was, since I never had the chance to meet him. This gave them the chance to focus on the positive aspects of his life before I asked them questions about the killing. It also allowed them to get comfortable with having the camera in such close proximity. Soon they forgot about the camera and became focused on their feelings. The interview was one of the most powerful I have ever conducted, and at the end there was a sense of relief and catharsis on all of our parts.
Crafting the Story Over 5 Years
I try not to have a vision of the film while I'm in the middle of making it; at least not a conscious vision. Subconsciously I know that a vision is in the works, but consciously, I form a vision of the film and define the structure of the story in the editing process. That is where the images, scenes and interviews that you've captured speak to you. Images and scenes that were captured during filming derive their meaning from the context they are placed in. That context takes its form and shape in the cutting room. Editing becomes an act of discovery more than creation.
Many stumbling blocks occur in doing a five-year longitudinal film about a family. One is simply maintaining your momentum over such a long period of time. The filmmaker has to constantly stay in touch with the family and make decisions about what is worth filming and what isn't. Sometimes the decision is obvious, but often it isn't, so one has to rely on instinct to decide whether or not something should be filmed.
Additionally, in following a family over such a long period, it is important to understand when your presence is an imposition to the family. It is often nerve-wracking for people to be in front of the camera so much. They feel exposed, vulnerable, worried that they might say the wrong thing and make fools of themselves. The trust you establish is imperative to help alleviate these types of worries. It is also possible that your subjects will get too comfortable with the camera, that they will begin to play for the camera or lose their intensity while being filmed. The camera has the power to increase a person's focus on what he or sheis saying and doing. If that power is lost, then the scenes will not be as interesting.