These Documentary Filmmakers Know When To Enter the Scene
Thoughts on when and why to put yourself in your documentary film.
How a documentary filmmaker puts themself in their film understandably changes the experience of watching the film. Done deliberately, it’s also a potent way to affect how the viewer perceives the subject of the film. To see what I mean, let’s look at three of the best documentary filmmakers working today: Morgan Neville, Fishers Stevens, and Errol Morris, and three similar films they all made. Each film is about a successful (male) celebrity and each filmmaker has their own specific way of including, or not including, themself and their voice in their films.
Do we have sympathy for the subject of the film? Do we connect with them? These filmmakers quietly influenced all of this through a deliberate creative decision to enter or not enter the film. Here are their approaches.
Approach 1: The Invisible Director
Morgan Neville's most recent work STEVE!, is a two-part documentary about Steve Martin. A few of Nevile’s other films include the Anthony Bourdain doc Roadrunner and Won't You Be My Neighbor about Mr Rogers. Nevile takes what I’ll call the Invisible Director approach. In STEVE!, we never hear or see Neville. Martin acts as the narrator of the film. I imagine that Neville spent hours interviewing Steve Martin to get this audio then stitched it together in the narrative he wanted.
Neville avoids leaning hard on any interview back-and-forth format in favor of this narration style (and really clever use of archival imagery and light motion graphics). In one recurring segment, Jerry Seinfeld is introduced to act as an interviewer of sorts, to have a conversation with Steve Martin, perhaps to break up the single-voice narration and introduce another voice, but Neville never enters the film. The result for the viewer is a very direct and intimate connection with Steve Martin that feels unobscured.
Approach 2: Voice of God
Fisher Stevens' most recent documentary film Beckham is about, you guessed it, David Beckham, but he's also known for The Cove, which won an Academy Award. Unlike Neville, Stevens puts himself in the scenes with Beckham, and although it’s a totally different approach, it also serves the subject well in my opinion. We never see Stevens but we hear his voice from the very first scene, from behind the camera, asking Beckham questions.
This is a classic documentary reportage approach, also seen for example with the Maysles brothers in Grey Gardens. It works for a couple of reasons. If you’re making the film it’s just easier. You can keep a small crew, hold the camera yourself, and ask questions. It eliminates some conceit that the filmmaker is just a fly on the wall and admits to everyone that they are part of the process. For Beckham though, it works because it shows him responding to impromptu questions that are seemingly (and I think) unscripted. We get to see the real Beckham, and this is what we all want anyway. So the result is something that feels like an honest portrayal of someone who has been shrouded behind media/brand marketing polish and artifice.
Approach 3: Director as Character
Errol Morris's doc about John le Carre The Pigeon Tunnel is just the latest of many amazing Morris docs including The Fog of War, which profiles Robert Mcnamara, Wormwood, and many others. Morris is known for using a machine he invented called the Interrotron, which allows him to interview subjects and capture them looking directly into the camera, to give the viewers an extremely personal experience. Films shot with this device give the viewers the sense that the subjects are speaking directly to them. I don’t know if used this device for the Pigeon Tunnel, I don’t think so but I do know that Morris does something else. He sits down with John le Carre and interviews - interrogates? - him, making himself a major character in the documentary, which becomes a tennis match of wits between the two who spend the duration lobbing and volleying back to each other. It’s interview theater.
Most interviewers could never pull this off, but Morris’s experience pays off and the result is in my mind a really gripping watch. This is the approach that is needed to win trust to tell the story of a former spy who is known for his secretive life and ability to spin a yarn. It’s incredibly engaging and works so well.
It’s easy to overlook how a documentary filmmaker chooses to incorporate themselves into their films (most of the time), but this decision makes a huge impact on how we perceive the subject of the film. When writers like Gay Talese and Tom Wolfe put themselves into their own writing decades ago, it completely broke the long-form narrative format. Today, documentary filmmakers can dip into their films really any way they want. We’re used to seeing it all. Yes, the decision can manipulate the viewer, as does any creative decision, so it’s worth asking you the filmmaker when you shoot your film: How do you want your audience to feel about your subject and how will you enter or not enter the film to influence that?
Reading this Week
Superformats Will Save Media in the New Internet from On_Discourse
In the Walrus, Are Workplaces Inherently Toxic?
Seventy years of Nigerian album covers – in pictures in The Guardian
Good for them. Gen Z is losing interest in email jobs via Morning Brew
This seems entirely reasonable: First He Came for Cancel Culture. Now He Wants to Cancel Smartphones in the New York Times.
Watching
Cool new series from the Trackstar Show team. Excited to keep an eye on this.
A brief one we put together in Miami at Aspen Ideas: Climate. Please check it out!
Listening
Put this one on for a little Friday vacation of the mind.
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