OK I’m fully a third of the way into screening 100 docs. And one thing is clear: I’m most captivated by the small filmmaker teams, the people who manage to make film after film with just a couple of people. People like Werner Herzog, Marshall Curry, or Ross McElwee. Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill are two filmmakers who have a long history of collaboration, with Nick often in front of the camera, which is run by Joan. But Broomfield is most known for being an early adopter of the “self-reflixive” style that would later be adopted with overwhelming box-office success by Michael Moore. For Broomfield, how the picture was made is part of making it, and he explains his thinking, questions, and includes the bits where he was wrong, which is part of the appeal.

Synopsis: In 1992, Broomfield and Churchill made a film about death-row inmate Aileen Wuornos, who was convicted of killing 6 men. In that film, she claimed she had killed in self-defense to avoid being raped. Broomfield picks up the story years later in this 2003 film, as Wuornos date with the death chamber looms, and makes some discoveries that call into question both his previous beliefs about Wuornos, call into question her sanity, and the fairness of the legal system.

Story Structure: Broomfield approaches his films the way an investigative reporter might approach a story – he patiently visits the people involved, gets them on camera filling in details, then he follows the trail wherever it takes him next. Along the way, he shares his thoughts, questions his earlier beliefs, and generally takes you along on the filmmaking experience, so that you are (often quite literally) looking over his shoulder the whole way. Broomfield actually takes the witness stand in the trial at one point, putting himself squarely in the middle of his film in a style that has been called Les Nouvelles Egotistes. Underlying the personal approach is roughly chronological storytelling – the film opens with him catching you up to speed on the details of the story, his own involvement with it, and ends with the execution of Wuornos.

Cinematography: Joan Churchill operates the camera, in a cinema verite style that is unremarkable but remarkably effective. She catches Broomfield putting mic on, has the camera rolling when prison guards ask if they have any hidden cameras as they enter the prison (to which Broomfield, without missing a beat, says “just that rather large one there.”)

Editing: One thing I noticed in this film, which made it feel more like TV journalism than film, was that names were occasionally beeped out and faces obscured.

Sound and Music: There was some fairly bad audio in the film, like planes flying over during interviews and such. Again, this all combines to make the film feel like a piece of TV journalism, rather than a “film.” As the film ended, we hear a song that Wuornos requested be played at her wake. As it was being played, the camera follows one of Wuornos friends to her home in Michigan. It seems obvious that the next scene will be the wake itself, with the actual audio. But it’s not. The film just ends. Which felt like a missed opportunity to me.

I’m seriously intrigued by this approach to storytelling. I don’t think I have the presence or desire to be “on” all the time while making a film, but I’m fascinated enough that I’d like to try it on a short film just to see what happens. There’s something magical about inviting people to share your thoughts while making a film the way Broomfield does. But this early in my career, my thoughts aren’t very coherent, so I’m not sure they’d be worth sharing. Yet.

Against my better judgment, I am becoming a real Werner Herzog fan. Even though I find his megalomania and world view repulsive, there’s something deeply human and irresistible about his films. There’s an authenticity you don’t often find in filmmakers, a transcendent realness and willingness to invite you to share his thoughts. And I love that he makes films about the things that matter to him: in this case, Klaus Kinski, a German actor with whom Herzog made 5 films.

Synopsis: My Best Fiend is filmmaker Werner Herzog’s 1999 homage to actor Klaus Kinski who died in 1991. Herzog returns to the location of some of the films Kinski and he worked on together, and interviews actors and other people who worked with Kinski to paint a picture of a tortured genius. The film makes frequent use of clips from the films they worked on together, and details the frequent outbursts that colored their tumultuous working relationship.

Story Structure: The film is structured as a non-linear personal journey, in which Herzog makes use of archival footage, previous films, still photos and interviews to paint a portrait of Kinski in relationship with himself. In fact, the film doesn’t really tell us anything about Kinski beyond his relationship with Herzog, to the point where this film could be said to say more about Herzog than it does Kinski. Herzog and Kinski, it seems, were made for each other.

Cinematography: Straightforward style shot by single camera operator, Herzog’s dp, Peter Zeitlinger. Lots of shoulder mounted following shots during interviews, everything appearing to be naturally lit. The more memorable clips in the film cinematographically were pulls from the films Aguirre, the Wrath of God, and Fitzcarraldo.

Editing: Lots of long sequences cut together simply by Herzog’s editor, Joe Bini, who uses an unobtrusive, simple cutting style to link the interviews by showing supporting film clips while Herzog’s voiceover narration carries the story. I particularly like the choice of opening – a long sequence in which Kinski is playing Jesus, and you seriously don’t know whether he’s crazy and should be handcuffed by police, or applauded for his performance. It’s also disconcerting that there are no subtitles, so you don’t even know what is going on, which of course is the point.

Music and Audio: Herzog makes frequent use of chanting vocals, and my favorite place where he does that in this film is the Machu Pichu scenes, in which he’s describing the filming on Aguirre. Interviews are recorded with visible lav mics. And in an interesting and unusual twist for Herzog, what appear to be actors are used opposite his narration to translate what the other characters are saying in many scenes. This was a little awkward and hard to follow at first, but once I figured out what was going on, it worked.

I learned a lot more Herzog trivia from watching this film: did you know, for example, that one of the crewmembers working on Fitzcaraldo saved his life by sawing off his foot with a chainsaw? He had been bitten by a deadly poisonous snake, and after realizing he would be dead very soon, he sawed off his leg, thus saving his life.

Can a 1929 film made in Russia have anything to teach a beginning filmmaker today? That question was on my mind today when sat down to watch Dziga Vertov’s film, Man With A Movie Camera. The mere fact that you can instant-play the film on Netflix 81 years after it’s release is a clue. This film wasn’t simply trying to show life: its stated intent, shown in brief subtitles that occur mainly at the beginning of the film, is to create a language of film, a cinema without intertitles, without scenario (story), and without actors. In short, it was an act of film rebellion, very much in keeping with the rebellion that he was part of in the fledgling Soviet Union.

Synopsis: Dziga Vertov trains his mechanical eye on ordinary life, composing a visual symphony from a series of carefully paced sequences. A woman rising, streetcars passing, carriages riding down busy streets, athletes performing, audiences watching and many more scenes are explored in slow motion, fast motion, split screen, and superimposed sequences, techniques that are still in use today. Further, he includes himself (or another cameraman) as a character in the film, as the observer and participant in modern life.

Story Structure: Basically when is film is called “experimental,” that means it doesn’t have a traditional story. What that means in this film, is that it simply shows life unfolding in a series of tightly edited sequences, which are cut to music, not unlike Koyaanisqatsi and Baraka would be cut many years later. We see a range of human behavior, from waking up, to a funeral procession. An almost comedic sequence shows one couple signing a marriage contract, followed by an unhappy couple signing a divorce contract. The whole thing is strung together with numerous transportation sequences of trains, streetcars, horse-drawn carriages, and automobiles, on which the camera is sometimes mounted for tracking shots.

Cinematography: First revelation is that 1929 cameras were portable! That caught me by surprise. I always thought the first cameras were huge ponderous beasts that were virtually immobile, but not so. The man with the movie camera is everywhere in this film, with his boombox-sized camera mounted on a wooden tripod, slung comfortably over his shoulder. Lots of special in-cemra effects: for example, there’s lovely fast-motion sequences of clouds moving rapidly over a bridge. There’s a special effect in which people dissolve into a scene that is empty until the person dissolves into it. The film must have been at least a little scandalous in it’s day in filming topless women in mud baths. You get the sense that the filmmaker was very confident in pursuit of his images.

Editing: Split screen technique deployed to show man with camera towering over masses of people. Freeze frame action. There’s even the most basic kind of animation in this film, in a comical sequence that shows the film camera cranking itself and dancing, spider like, on its tripod legs. There’s even a pile of dead lobsters with one animated by hand crawling that’s quite freaky. We see pictures of Vertov’s wife editing the film, which are intercut with images of sewing machines, referencing the metaphor of editor as stitching together reality. The role of the filmmaker is ever present in this film. Rapid fire image sequences are at one point intercut with a blinking eye, cut with blinds opening and closing and finally the lens of the camera with it’s iris opening and closing.

Music and Sound: This of course was a silent film, but it’s not silent in that an orchestra would perform with the films of the day. The filmmaker left notes about how the score should be performed, and the version I saw noted that these notes were followed in the production. What we see a lot is that the musical score is fast and bubbly at times, in which editing matches the score (or vice versa). Other times it slows down, and the pace of visuals matches that. There are basic sound effects – such as a pan being hit every time a machine stamps out a widget.

What I learned about filmmaking from this film is that filmmakers have been pressing the limits of what a camera could do from the very beginning. And that the more filmmaking changes, the more it stays the same. Many of the techniques that we use today go back to the very beginning of filmmaking.

Alan Berliner is a name that keeps popping up in books about documentary film that I’m reading. So I finally decided to investigate the Berliner buzz by ordering a copy of The Sweetest Sound. Turns out there’s a lot to this name. Enough, in fact, to make a 60 minute documentary film. But what this film proves to me is that if you can make a film on this subject, you can make a film about anything. Whether it’s a film worth watching is less clear.

Synopsis: New York filmmaker Alan Berliner launches a personal investigation into the origins of his name with the help of his parents, people on the street, and 12 other Alan Berliners.

Story Structure: Structured as a personal essay, the film attempts to launch a story train with this line from the filmmaker: “when it comes to names, there’s no such thing as community property.” In essence, Berliner lays claim to the name and calls into question the right of other Alan Berliners to “his” name. He sets up a meeting with 12 other of them by flying them to New York and putting them up in hotel. However, there’s no specific challenge, or other “must see” reason to see what happens when the 12 of them meet. In fact, very little happens when they meet. They basically stand around talking as if they were at a Chamber of Commerce event. While it may be a flimsy story train, it is a train nevertheless, and Berliner  then uses interviews with people ranging from his parents to people in the street, to explore what Alan Berliner is all about. Maybe if my name was Alan Berliner, I would care. But it’s not.

This film strikes me as being made for TV, rather than as a film, at exactly 60 minutes in length. I think it would have made a much better 30-minute TV show, than a 60-minute one. That would have allowed for him to edit out the duplicated devices that were interesting once, but not after the 3rd or 4th time.

This film reminded me a lot of Ross McElwee, reflexive filmmaking. But it isn’t nearly as interesting as Sherman’s March. It’s problem, perhaps, lies less in its approach and more in its subject: which topic do YOU think is more inherently interesting: someone’s investigation of their name, or someone trying to find a girlfriend?

Cinematography: There’s one scene in this film that I’ve never seen done before, and I think works extremely well. It’s the last one in the film. The 13 Alan Berliners are all gathered around a round table, and they are having a toast. He put the camera on a lazy susan, and spun it very carefully to follow the glass clinking as it travels all the way around the room, until it ends up on the filmmaker, at which it suddenly stops. This rocked. He used the same technique earlier in the film, as a device to whip-pan through all the guests, to stop on a specific one at the point where that person begins talking.

There are lengthy narrated sequences in which we see circa 1999 websites being clicked and searched on. Perhaps this is interesting for one reason – it shows how badly the web sucked in the years prior to Google. But it’s a tiresome device.

I liked the way he filmed the his nieces, who were swinging. He put camera in front of them on sticks, locked off, with enough depth to keep everything in focus. Works.

Simple animation of name being written works, but it’s predictable after first use, and like many of the other elements in the film, he returns to it again and again. In fact, if there’s one take-home lesson for me from this film, it’s this: Use cool effects sparingly.

Editing: It felt like a 30 minute film edited to be 60 minutes. One innovative thing: He continues narration throughout credit roll. Haven’t heard that one before.

Music and Sound: I don’t recall any music in this film. But what I DO recall, in fact what I wish I could forget, is the never-ending mouse clicking and computer keyboard pressing that this filmmaker made use of. That device was cute for about 30 seconds, but it never ends. Another nice effect: sewing machine sound effect with tombs scrolling past rapid-fire.

While this isn’t one of my favorite films, I give Berliner major props for putting himself squarely in the middle of his films. That’s always a bold move: some people (me) aren’t going to like it. But for those with im the story resonates, it can resonate big time, and Berliner has had great success in getting his films screened at major film festivals and is widely perceived to be an “artist” filmmaker, with his work being recognized with a retrospectives of his films presented at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC). But for me, I’d take a movie theater over a museum as a showcase for my work any day.

In continued honor of editor Karen Schmeer, who was killed by a hit-and-run driver last weekend in New York, last night I screened The Fog of War, the most acclaimed film she worked on. I was surprised to see that she was one of three editors listed in the film, which is directed and produced by Errol Morris. Which leaves me curious why Morris uses more than one editor on many of his films. I did a little Googling and found an interview in which Morris explains how he went through half a dozen editors on this first film before he could find someone who could make a film out of his footage. Fog of War, though, began as TV series he ran briefly, called First Person, in which Morris interviewed interesting people for 30-minute episodes. He had the idea of inviting Robert McNamara, and the 30 minute interview was so good, that he knew it had to become a film.

Synopsis: Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, widely regarded and reviled as the architect of policy that resulted in the Vietnam War, recounts the story of his life and muses on the lessons he’s learned about the limits of power.

Story Structure: The film is interview-driven, and structured around  11 lessons from McNamara’s life, which serve like chapters in a book to break the film into distinct parts, which loosely follow a chronology of his life. The classic elements of Morris filmmaking are all here: Penetrating eye contact with the interview subject, supported by news footage, historical photos, and occasionally the voice of Morris asking questions.

Cinematography: Memorable shooting/editing technique: This is the first time I’ve ever seen a sequence played in show motion, with fast-motion layer running over it simultaneously. The result is a dreamy state, a pause in the pace to reflect on the words that are being said, a disassociation with reality, stepping into another world. It’s a device used repeatedly throughout the film, and it’s killer. It was used when someone is flipping through pages of an open book, and also to show people walking down a street. He uses it again to show the Vietnam Memorial – with people lingering in slow motion while people rush past at a fainter percentage of visibility. It’s a beautiful technique that I’m totally going to borrow and build on in my own work.

There’s a memorable scene which plays forwards and later in the film backwards, which shows dominoes falling across a map of the world. This is of course a reference to communism taking over the globe, the rationale for getting deeper involved in Vietnam. It’s shot at a high frame rate, and played in silky slow motion. The b-roll of tape recorders (with shallow depth of field) is also shot in slow motion, looks really beautiful, and works against the tape recordings it’s paired with.

The film is wrapped up with a series of shots of McNamara driving in his car through rain-soaked streets. It’s beautifully shot: close up on his glasses reflecting trees passing by, but with his eyeball huge; top of his head and rain-dropped window above. It reminded me a little of the driving scenes of Al Gore in Inconvenient Truth, only Gore as a passenger in those. The fact that McNama is driving himself seems to portray how his time and come and passed.

Editing: What’s different about this film from most Morris films, and mildly disconcerting, is the amount of jump cutting. I’m pretty sure it was included for a reason: to show how difficult it was to get McNamara to answer in complete sentences, and to show how much he attempted to steer the conversation.

An interesting editing technique (which might more probably be called an animation or special effect technique) was a shot in which the camera floats down a column of falling bombs (animated, presumably, but begins with a still B&W photo and it’s like we can travel into the photo, and down among the bombs, which drift past us as we continue down into them. It’s way more powerful than the typical zoom and pan on photographs for it’s impact to draw you in.

Playing things backwards is also a recurring device used in this film to show that things we thought happened actually didn’t. For example, the torpedo boats that supposedly attacked US warships in Vietnam, and were the inciting incident for massive bombing by the US, in fact never happened.

The film ends with a powerful line delivered by McNamara, who is quoting TS Elliot:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Music and Sound: Philip Glass again provides the soundtrack for the entire film, as he does on previous films like Thin Blue Line. My main critique is that if you’ve heard one Glass soundtrack, you’ve heard them all. The music is almost invisible to me in the film, and maybe that’s why Morris keeps returning to this composer, to keep the attention on the subjects with as much force as his Interrotron.