Interview With Film Maker Ted Fisher Part Two
Today I continue my interview with documentary film maker Ted Fisher, as he discusses his process and the challenges of moving from short documentaries to feature length documentaries.
Hoop Springs Eternal is a very interesting story of a woman who makes a living using hula hoops. How did you find this story and what compelled you to tell it?
Ted: When we participated in the Doc Challenge, our worst fear was drawing “sports” as a genre. Sports documentaries can be great, but when you only have five days, you’ve ruled out following a team for the season or watching a competitor struggle to improve. So I became hypersensitive to sports or activities that people might do anytime. Hula hooping was one of these, and with a little research I found that there were hoopers of every conceivable type. We focused on two because they had both come to New York to act, and had “accidentally” become professional hoopers. One, Jenny McGowan, performs with her hoops (sometimes in a burlesque act) and another, Loren Bidner, now teaches hooping as fitness training. To me, the classic New York story of coming to the city to act and then having to find a way to fit in and survive is fascinating — and the fact that both characters lives changed in an unexpected way makes it more interesting to me. I think that’s one of the things that is always revealed in documentary: life doesn’t do the expected thing.
The toughest element in production in our era of Reality Television and polemic documentaries is to convince someone that you just want to get a glimpse at their life. It’s very easy for them to expect you have an agenda, or want to trick them, or make fun of them. Or, to think “this will make me a star!” and expect the film to work in that way. So my goal has always been to try to be as honest as possible: I think you are interesting, what you do is interesting, and it might be great as a film. There’s not much else you can promise, except to show up on time.
Ted Fisher behind the camera
Ted: There’s a cliche in a lot of police shows: a chase proceeds up to the rooftops, and a character realizes the only way forward is to jump across a huge gap to the next rooftop. The move from shorts to features feels like that for me, at least at the moment.
We live in an era where if you can work with people, can borrow a camcorder and buy a few tapes, you can plausibly go out and shoot a good short doc. Since I made my first documentary short in 2002, however, the ladder up to feature work has gotten much harder to climb. Everyone seems to be struggling to find funding, or if they’re adventurous or resourceful enough to complete the film somehow, then they’re struggling with distribution. There’s more competition, fewer resources, less of a potential pay off in the end, and a lot of confusion and doubt. There are still people doing it, and people succeeding, but the jump seems further. The professional process — develop an idea, get access, shoot some on the cheap, cut some type of funding trailer, get funding, develop a team and finish the film, then get it into festivals and sell it — still exists, but seems to be working for fewer than in the past.
So, as with my other production, I’ve developed a list of possible feature-length documentaries. I have careful notes about who I can get access to, what travel is required, what archival materials need to be licensed, how many crew members it would take to get everything shot, where we might need a location to interview, and all the other details. And that’s where I’m going.
But that gap between roofs looks huge. Wish me luck.
Film schools are a training ground for many young film makers, and many schools are hiring well known filmmakers to teach in their programs. For those filmmakers interested in teaching how would they proceed in finding opportunities? And for those students interested in attending film school, what can they hope to accomplish?
Ted: After a career in the arts — I was a public art coordinator for five years, then a photography curator for another five years — I moved to New York so my wife could complete her Ph.D. I very purposefully decide to avoid jobs that would lock me into a rigid work week. How could I make films if I couldn’t show up for interviews or location shoots? So I’ve been mixing freelancing and teaching for several years now.
A typical term for me is teaching an editing class and a TV studio production class at Bronx Community College (part of the CUNY system), teaching an editing class and a visual effects class online at Westwood College, and teaching a photography class through Hunter College Extension. That’s roughly equivalent to a full-time teaching load — many college teachers do four classes each semester — but I try to set it up so there’s some freedom with my schedule. Half of documentary production is showing up, so I tend to value that flexibility.
For me, teaching is a way to continue my education. In the tradition I come from (I earned an M.F.A. in art before I got seriously involved in documentary) all the best artists taught as part of their practice — but in the film world it’s often looked at as a fallback career. Of course, now that the economy is the way it is, I’m seeing some great filmmakers suddenly ask “hey, how does that teaching thing work?” Of course, in Europe, that model of filmmaker / professor is very well known. Michael Haneke is a professor at the Vienna Film Academy, other great filmmakers teach at places like La Fémis in Paris.
The main thing for filmmakers who are considering teaching to know is that your credits on IMDB.com and your stack of great reviews become just part of the picture when you apply. A typical hiring committee will want to see academic background, preferring a terminal degree and maybe some publications or conference presentations in your area of the field, a willingness to develop into a good teacher, a willingness to do those things academic departments need, and a different type of communications skill from filmmaking: the ability to teach, lecture and clarify. There are some great filmmakers with only a B.A. who teach, but in general that’s fading away and the requirement is now generally an M.F.A. or — in some departments — a Ph.D. may even be desired. And most of the people hiring you will have come from a “publish or perish” background, where academic papers and conferences are a part of the practice. Most importantly, they want to feel you are fantastic at taking the complex ideas of filmmaking and making them accessible to students. There are a lot of great filmmakers who confuse the heck out of people when they try to teach: they know how to do it, but that’s not the same as being able to help someone else to do it.
The upshot is that while you can point to your awards and festival screenings, you can’t waltz into the best school and expect to be named department chair. For most people this means starting with adjunct classes, typically based in a specialty like editing, cinematography, or audio. You’ll develop a syllabus, have your teaching observed and get student evaluations. And you’ll want to collect student projects if appropriate. Document everything, and after enough work at the adjunct level you can, if it turns out to be your thing, apply for the full-time tenure-track gigs, if that’s your interest and it fits your lifestyle. But be aware: even the adjunct jobs are receiving hundreds of applications these days.
For students, my best advice is to think of sports stars who get an offer from a pro team, leave college to take it, then get injured. There’s a lot of pressure on people in school, once they start to show skill, to “go pro” and it can be very tempting. My take is that the real value in the college process is you have an opportunity to focus on your own work and improve to your full potential. In a lot of ways, that’s plentiful when you are in school and then instantly disappears when you go out to a job. School forces you to complete your film, to go through critique processes, to master elements of the field you wouldn’t on your own.
You don’t have to look far, however, for the folks who say “film school is a waste of time, I learned more my first week on the job.” There’s an element of truth to that, but the counterargument is this: take any filmmaker, put them in a good program, and they improve, often in ways they had never considered before. That “first week on the job” can wait. But for school to be valuable, you have to use the opportunity that’s there: a chance to focus, a chance to get great support and great critique, and a chance to prove yourself. Everything depends on you, not on a lucky meeting, the right person reading your screenplay or anything else. For students that do the work and take advantage of the possibilities, there’s no question that it can be a foundation of ideas that you can’t get by being self-taught.
The thing my students are always surprised about is that we’ll cover an idea, and then the next week they’ll happen to watch a film and see it implemented — and realize they just couldn’t see it before. The process is about making people see the world in an a new and different way.
Thanks Ted for taking the time to join us and sharing your process and insights.
Find out more about Ted by visiting his blogs New York Portraits,and Actualities and his website.
