Filmmaker Philip Shane shares strategies to create award winning documentaries - Hosted by Heather Lenz

Our special guest today is the award-winning documentary filmmaker, Philip Shane. A few of his career highlights include co-directing, writing, and editing BEING ELMO, which won the Special Jury Prize at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. For his editing work on DANCING IN JAFFA, which had its World Premiere at the TriBeCa Film Festival, Shane won the Best Editing Award at Israel's DocAviv Film Festival. He worked at ABC News for nearly a decade and edited many distinguished long form programs including Ted Kopple's Iraq War documentary, TIP OF THE SPEAR, which won the DuPont Columbia Award for Broadcast Journalism and MARTIN LUTHER KING: Searching For The Promised Land, which won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Program. Beyond filmmaking, Shane also produces and hosts the long-running podcast, WHAT THE IF. Each week he invites scientists, science historians, and journalists to show us how they would use real science to explore extraordinary imaginary scenarios. Shane has also become a regular speaker and consultant on the use of Artificial Intelligence in documentary filmmaking and beyond. Currently he is directing and producing a feature documentary, THE WORLD I WANT TO LIVE IN, about Myst, a video game currently in The Museum of Modern of Art in New York. Recently he directed and produced JADE DOSKOW: PHOTOGRAPHER OF LOST UTOPIAS, which we’ll discuss today.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Today we are joined by our guest host, filmmaker Heather Lenz, best known for directing and producing the Sundance documentary Kusama Infinity. Our special guest today is the award-winning documentary filmmaker Philip Shane. A few of his career-winning documentary film pardon me, a few of his career highlights include co-directing, writing, and editing Being Elmo, which won the special jury prize at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. For his editing work on dancing in Jaffa, which had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, Shane won the Best Editing Award at Israel's Doc Aviv Film Festival. He worked at ABC News for nearly a decade and edited many distinguished long-form programs, including Ted Koppel's Iraq War Documentary, Tip of the Spear, which won the DuPont-Columbia Award for Broadcast Journalism, and Martin Luther King Searching for the Promised Land, which won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Program. Beyond filmmaking, Shane also produces and hosts the long-running podcast, What the If. Each week he invites scientists, science historians, and journalists to show us how they would use real science to explore extraordinary imaginary scenarios. Shane has also become a regular speaker and consultant on the use of artificial intelligence in documentary filmmaking and beyond. Currently, he is directing and producing The World I Want to Live In, a feature documentary about the video game MIST, which is currently on display in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Recently, he directed and produced Jade Dascoe, photographer of Lost Utopias, which will be discussed today.

SPEAKER_02 3:37

Well, thank you so much, Claire, for the introduction. And thank you, Philip, for joining us today. I'd like to start by discussing your film about the photographer Jade Dascow. For anyone who hasn't seen it, can you please tell us what it's about?

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Yeah, so uh Jade Dascoe is a photographer in um Brooklyn, and um she's uh uh done a lot of work, both um kind of landscape, you would call them landscapes or and urban landscapes, um, as well as portrait work and other things. Uh these days she's a uh major photographer, does a lot of work with the New York Times, um, has done some incredible um the New York Times commissioned her, I think, to uh do studies of like uh go all over New York City photographing um the changes to the city since Hurricane Sandy. Um she is also the only photographer, the sole photographer who has been appointed to document the 25-year transformation of Freshkill's landfill into Freshkills Park, um, which is this gigantic area of uh Staten Island in New York City, uh, an extraordinary place. And uh something I've I've done a little bit of filming with her there, but I hope to, you know, um document some of her work there too for a future film. Um way back when, um I'm trying to remember what year, it was in the mid-2000s, what was it around 2016, I think. Um, I saw on Twitter, back when it was just Twitter, uh, that uh uh she was doing a Kickstarter. I actually saw it through uh a friend of mine, um, fellow filmmaker Gary Hustwit, who's an incredible, who's made an incredible filmmaker, made Helvetica and a lot of other films. Um anyway, he had retweeted this thing that uh this person was making a uh doing a photography project where they are setting out to go all over North America photographing every one of the world's fair grounds that remained from the world's fairs going all the way back to the 1800s, uh, whether something was there or not. And uh I just thought this is an extraordinary project. I love World's Fairs and things like that. So um, and I was looking for a project to document at uh looking for a project to do at that time. Um, I particularly love I my my career has gravitated towards something I'm I just absolutely love, which is portraits, portraits of people in particular, um, sometimes in science, sometimes in politics, um, but often in the arts. And uh sometimes there they've been musicians, some well-known musicians I've worked with, um, and other things. So uh here was a photographer doing something amazing that who was actually also in my the same borough of the city. So I went out to meet her and asked if I could document her work, and so I did. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:31

Well, nice. And um, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about, I guess, how that first meeting happened and um also what it was like to be at her side as she took uh these photos and um prepared for her gallery exhibition.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

Yeah, it's interesting. Wow, I'd love to know what her perception of it was. I should ask her actually with you know, first meeting me, but I I I think she had said something at some point like that it was much different than she imagined it would be. Like it was, you know, with I come out of the school of Maisles Films and Cinema Verite. So I started at Maisles Films in New York, and um, unfortunately, um of there were two brothers, the Maisles brothers. If you don't know them, look them up. Um, but uh David Mazels, the older brother, uh, was uh had died some years before, but Albert Mazels was still there, and a lot of the the people that worked there had worked on the Maisel Mazels films or were trained in the tradition of cinema verite. And so, you know, part of that is being just you know, relating to people uh without artifice, um, you know, just showing up and getting to know them as a person, and then being as unobtrusive as possible when you're filming. Um, so I went out to her uh place in Red Hook, I think at the time. She had this studio and um where she lived with her her young family, young son. And um yeah, I think I mean, fortunately, she was into the idea, you know, you don't know what people will think, but uh I think we found that we had somewhat similar attitudes towards the work that we just wanted to share, you know, the creative sharing the creative process I think was important to her as as of course it was to me. So I think we that just set us going. And then I just said, I will follow, you know, whatever you do, I will try to follow within my budget, which wasn't very much. Um, but we began right away. She was uh starting off by photographing places in New York City. Uh, there's a famous uh World's Fairgrounds, uh, as some may have seen in the movie Men in uh Men in Black. It doubles as a I think a I forget the headquarters for the bad guys or something like that, uh, a Philip Johnson structure, the New York State Pavilion. And we set out filming, uh, she set out photo photographing, and I set out filming her photographing in sub-zero, unbelievable freezing temperatures. But hey, you know, it made for a beautiful uh actually ends up being the opening scene. There was her just dragging all her equipment, and and uh I'm not a tall person, and she's not nearly as tall as I am. So and yet here she was trudging with this massive amount of these lenses and this camera, which is her camera, is one of these old-fashioned cameras, uh um I think a four by five, if I've got that correctly, with the old the kind of curtain that she puts over her head, the cover, and she gets under it and takes pictures, looks like something out of the turn of the century. Uh, but yeah, it was really fun.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

Well, I will say, um, for the indie filmmakers out there, it is smart to pick a subject that lives so close. Although you didn't have to raise money, obviously, for other travel, but that is a smart move. And I'm wondering how long did you spend filming her and how long did the documentary take to make?

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Um, that's a good question. How long I spent filming her. I uh the number of days that I spent filming is probably only like 10 or 12. Um, but they're over a long period of time because I wanted to cover the full process. And like making films, her process takes a while, you know. So she would photograph all these films, but then it was a question of where would they be exhibited? And so we kept waiting for a place that might pick them up and show them. Uh, there was even one point where it looked like maybe the Queen's Museum of Art, which happened to be one of the world's fair buildings uh in New York, was gonna show it. Unfortunately, that didn't work out. Uh ultimately she did get, she actually ended up deciding to publish a book. She got a book published of all her work. So then I followed her through that and then the gallery show and the book signing, the book release. I filmed all these events and then got to film her in the bookstore at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the book was on the shelves. And so that was really fun. Um, so I it was a few years at least. Uh, you can see her son, her son starts out five years old, I believe, in the beginning. And by the end, he's gotta be at least eight or nine. Then by the time the editing took me a while for no good reason, other than it was um, you know, I'm always working, working, working. And uh, so this was my own project. And um, so I had to kind of squeeze it in. And I also found one thing I will give a shout out to all the other indie filmmakers out there who may be making their first film. It really was one of my first films that I was making on my own, you know. And uh it just as an editor, I've often seen editors asked, Did you edit your own film? And they'll say, No way, I couldn't do that. And honestly, I have always thought, well, what a wimp. Come on. I mean, I'm an editor, I could cut my own film. My own, I would love that would be the dream come true. Well, it is no, it's bloody terrifying to cut your footage that you shot and you're the only film, you know, you're it's all on you. So that honestly added to the part of the process. It was so uh difficult. But finally I was able to push through and we got it done. So um, I mean, at least six years probably over the total total process.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

That is something that I had planned to ask you about. You know, you're obviously the super accomplished editor, award-winning editor, and um, but you didn't edit the film, and so as you mentioned, you didn't work with someone else. Did you start off trying to edit it and just feel like it was like too challenging? Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Yes, exactly. And then I got um an amazing editor who uh had been a student of mine. So I teach at the New York Film Academy part-time, and I've done that for many years. It's a wonderful school, and uh it's a school that's largely international. I think 90% of this the student body at the New York Film Academy comes from other countries. And uh I'd had many students, but uh one in particular, Anais Michelle, uh, was extraordinarily talented, um, both shooting, directing, and editing, um, but really a wonderful, wonderful editor. And yes, as I struggled with my editing, finally I realized this is not gonna happen. Um and I, if I hired her, I could go back into more directing mode, which is actually something I was more comfortable with. And one of the things I said to her was, okay, do me a favor and just don't show me any of my really bad camera moves. You know. Um, and I think I I I have to say, you know, honestly, when you work on highly, highly professional things, like I'm in on ABC News and the Maisles and stuff like that. And then you and you're used to that level of quality, I couldn't disconnect from that. You know, I thought I I need to be as good as that. If it's not as good as that, then uh, and so I was extra harsh. And I and Anais helped me in many, many ways. First of all, was a wonderful editor. I mean, really sensitive, uh, and really grasped, I think, the relationship between um uh Jade and her work, but also Jade and her son and her husband and her family and the balance between those two, um, and just did a beautiful job. And she's wonderful with music and things like that too, but also worked with me. And many editors will tell you, and I can say as an editor too, that that there's a psychological component of the editing job, which is working with the director and dealing with, frankly, their anxieties uh and and trying to ease that is part of the job. And uh I'm grateful to her for the for having done a beautiful work on all counts. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

Yeah, well, it turned out great. So um, and I'm I guess you touched on this a little bit that this was your own film and you were doing other jobs, you didn't come out and say it, but presumably for money, and that this is this was a passion project. But could you about funding? I mean, was it entirely just um on you? Like, did you do a crowd campaign? Did you win grants? How did that go?

SPEAKER_01 14:33

This one I intended, in spite of the fact that it did end up taking a while, I actually set out to I knew I wanted to make my own films. And I actually started out with the sense of this is a starter film. I mean, I I've in the past I've made some short, really, really short things. I I've made a number of short comedy films. I was with the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater for a while and did things there. But um, you know, I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna just not I could fund it myself because it was it was that's one of the reasons it would take a while, but I I could manage it. And um uh I kind of wanted to remove that from the equation and some and some other things. So and and the fact that I did a short I did a short film intentionally because I thought, you know what, let me get my feet wet, so to speak, doing this. So that was really the main uh reason.

SPEAKER_02 15:22

You know, uh one question I I would like to ask. Um we see in the film that she's such a perfectionist, she's like obsessing over like a you know, an eighth of an inch difference in the framing and stuff. Like, what was it like you established this relationship with her? What was it like to show her the film? I mean, knowing she's such a perfectionist, was that um, you know, intimidating, or how did that go?

SPEAKER_01 15:45

She was wonderfully supportive. I mean, I never felt any kind of um intimidation whatsoever, nothing but support. I mean, I was, of course, nervous as you are before you show any film to anybody, especially if the person's in the film. Um, one of the funniest critiques we got was she she watched it, and I didn't ask her to do this, but wonderfully she decided to uh have the first screening of the film, nearly finished, but not finished film, uh, with her husband and her young son, like who I like I said, at the time was maybe at that point, maybe six or seven. And um, there's a funny scene that uh Anais had done a wonderful job on where uh in the film Jade is and her husband are um putting pictures on the wall for a gallery show, and there's they're very highly perfectionist about it. Meanwhile, their son is running around like crazy in the gallery space and run stepping on bubble wrap and making all kinds of a ruckus, and they're amazing, they're just like not phased by it whatsoever, you know. That that's him, he's having a good time, he's a kid, whatever. So just that was wonderful. But um uh Anais really had fun with almost the comedy of the boy kind of constantly interrupting things, and so you'd see him run across the camera, and then there'd be an interview with Jade a moment, and then and then he would run across the camera again. And when it was over, uh, she said, Um, Benjamin, would do you have any thoughts on the film? And he said, Well, there's that one film, uh, well, there's that one scene that's clearly about me being annoying. And I don't think it was a critique, it was just an observation, or it's a little bit of embarrassment on his part, but uh it was very sweet. But no, no, nothing, nothing but uh support on her part, which was great. And I must say, that's when you, as a Verite editor or documentary editor in particular, you know, you edit down people's interviews tremendously. You really do craft the things that the sound bites, right, that they say, for instance, among the many other things, you know, you it's it's a huge amount of condensation for the person who lived the real life. And I always say, and and and Bob Eisenhart, who is one of my who was who's an amazing editor, Oscar-winning editor, um, who was my mentor for many years at Mazels, um, would say, you know, you've done it right when the person in the film, you know, doesn't say anything to you, like, oh, that wasn't what I said, or that isn't what, you know, they just think they just saw their life uh as it happened. So that's good.

SPEAKER_02 18:09

Well, I love that you captured um Jade as a creative woman, but also as a mother, like juggling these parts of her life. That was um nice to see, especially because um, you know, there aren't as many films about women artists as as their male counterparts, so it's nice that you, you know, capture her.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

So um yeah, I just want to add that, you know, another one of the I think I would have chosen Annais as the editor anyway, but I I thought it was it was extra good, it was extra helpful to me that she was a the Annais' female, and she really, you know, we agreed that that the struggles which you get in the film a little bit of um struggles that Jade had in her career being a woman or a mother um with men and stuff like that, powerful men, and and uh comes out a little bit in the story. And uh, but again, Anais's perspective is another thing I think you want from your editors to not just do a technical job, obviously, but to bring their own perspective is really helpful.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

So yeah. Um we may have a technical issue. Uh Claire, can you hear me? I was muted, sorry. All right, sorry. Okay, we'll carry on. Sorry, there was a freeze there. Okay, so moving on. So the film about Jade, it's entirely shot in the present. As you said, it's a cinema verite approach, and there's no archival footage in it. And so I'd really like to compare that to one of your earlier films that you worked on, Being Elmo, which combines present-day footage with some really terrific archival footage. I mean, I was like amazed you had some of this archival stuff to use. So, um, but for anyone who didn't see Being Elmo, um, could you just tell us what it's about?

SPEAKER_01 19:57

Yeah, Being Elmo is about um this little red guy on Sesame Street that you've probably heard of, named Elmo. And it's really about the creation of Elmo and who's behind Elmo. Um, firstly, with you know, Jim Henson and uh Frank Oz and Sesame Street, but then the story of uh Kevin Clash, this uh young puppeteer, this young African-American uh puppeteer, or or just person originally, just this boy uh from Baltimore who was obsessed with Sesame Street and puppetry when he was young and uh dedicated his life to it and ultimately ends up on Sesame Street uh doing Elmo and creating probably one of the most famous puppets in history. Um so that yeah, that's that the I must for the archival say that uh I give a shout out, as I always wanted to give a shout out, to uh um the producer director of the film, Connie Marks, uh, who I've worked with for many years and I'm working with again now. Um she found she andor her uh producing partner uh Corinne Lapouc, who did an astounding amount of work on hunting down archival footage, um, both photographs and films, at some point found this episode of a show called Big Blue Marble that I remember growing up seeing as a kid. I may have been on PBS, I'm not sure. But anyway, they had done a whole episode on Kevin when he was like 17 and uh how he had become this young puppeteer. Um, so that gave us an incredible amount of uh footage. Now, by the way, it's interesting, it's only 10 minutes, and you would swear watching the film that there's probably like 30 minutes of it in the film because we had to, you know, spread it out uh throughout throughout.

SPEAKER_02 21:39

Yeah, I I agree. Yeah, it's amazing footage. I I was like blown away you had it. And I have to say, this is just for anyone who hasn't seen it, it's a super heartwarm, heartwarming film. But um, could you talk about the process of what it's like to build a documentary where you are building in this um archival versus just staying in the present? Because even watching the Jade film, I thought, wow, this would be such a different film if, as an example, you had started building an archival of like the world's fairs or whatever, you know, versus staying in the present.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

I actually, by the way, uh with the Jade film, I did experiment um in the early days with uh using archival and and that kind of stuff. Um, but ultimately decided, yeah, just like I wanted to stay in verite mode. If there's an immediacy to it and a personal intimacy to it that I like. Um, but uh I love that you say staying in the present, because frankly, one of the things that I do, I I don't know where I came up with this. Uh this is one of those things I don't think was taught to me. It may have been taught to me, and I forgot who taught it to me. So if I did, I forgive me. But at some point I said, as I'm working with interviews, and so I started when I was at ABC, I started out with Verite Film, where you have some interviews, but not a lot. Then I went to ABC where I started editing more historical docs, like we did one about Martin Luther King. And so it was, you know, your typical thing. We interviewed a lot of people who knew him, and there was some contemporary b roll of places he had done his work, and then we had all this archival footage, right, from the 60s and stuff. And at some point, I decided that I would model. To me, the the fiction film, frankly, is the gold standard. And I don't mean to demean documentaries in any way, but like uh I would ask myself, if I'm gonna cut this interview, what is, you know, how do I use the fiction film as a model or something? And I realize that fiction film tends it really happens in the present. It's always in the present. That's what one of the things that makes it so powerful, you know. Um, yeah, there are the occasional exceptions, but for the most part, that's how it is. And so when I go to cut interviews of somebody telling me something that happened in the past, I actually use it. So I'd also studied and wrote a lot of screenplays in in my early days. And um, in screenwriting, you learn to sort of write in this kind of, I don't know what the technical term is, but kind of in the present tense or this. And so I would cut the interview. So if somebody said to me, you know, there's for instance, Kevin told me, you know, I remember I remember I was sitting in Jim Henson's waiting room waiting to meet him for the first time for my job interview, you know. Um, I would I would edit that so that he said, I'm in Jim Henson's waiting room, waiting for so I make it the present tense, you know, so that I could then show, we used animation in that case, you know, some kind of illustration, right? Or you could show archival footage to make it feel like so you're always in the present tense. And I also remove from any scene uh any sense of uh what would happen in the future because I feel like the character, quote, wouldn't know what's gonna happen. So when someone, when you interview somebody, they tend to jump all over the place. That's fine. They don't know why they shouldn't, but you know, it's like he'll he would have said, for instance, I was waiting, I was nervous, I was about to meet Jim. Now, in later years, you know, Jim and I would become friends, and we ended up doing this thing. I went to Disney World with him, and so I knew it was gonna turn out fine. And what are they? Well, I just cut all that other stuff out, and I just say, I'm waiting, you know, and and I'm scared, something like that. So keeping it in the present tense is very something I work like literally word by word to uh maintain a sense of that, and then you put pictures with it and music with it, uh, and it keeps this tension going that I think is very, very powerful.

SPEAKER_02 25:26

So I've never heard anyone say this. It's super interesting um perspective from an editor. Yeah, it's great advice. And so um going back to Elmo, um, how long did it take to edit the film?

SPEAKER_01 25:39

So interestingly, um uh Connie had some when working with other editors, I was busy editing a film, um uh a program about Einstein for the History Channel, and so I wasn't available. And and she had other people editing for her for about two years. Um, she she had shot tons of Verite footage of Kevin doing his work all over the world, uh, all kinds of things that he does, um, and some interviews, uh, with the sense of again, she had approached it in that verite style. Connie also worked with the Mazels, uh, and so in fact, she in an earlier time. Um, so she approached it with that. It turned out, though, that you know, you every every individual scene would make you cry because it was just so beautiful. Kevin working with kids or things like that, um, sometimes sick kids and things. Uh, everyone was powerful, but but there wasn't sort of a story carrying it through, and that made it really difficult. It was just sort of a string of of footage. Um, and so I came, she asked me if I could do anything to help. I tried working with the footage and realized immediately, I was like, Yeah, this is not the editor's fault or anybody's fault. It's like this is just a tough thing to do. And I was just coming off a biography, one of many biographies I've I've done over the years. And I said, you know, when I I found myself tell when I told people about this story, I told them Kevin's life, just like I just told you. He was this young boy who ended up. And I said, I think we should maybe let's interview him and get him to tell his life story and use that as the framing and turn it into more of a straight-on biography. And she was like, that sounds great. And so we did that. Um, and so because of that, we sort of, I don't want to say we started it again, but I did a bunch of research uh to just get to know his whole life so that we could then write up new questions, and then we interviewed him again and did that. So um technically, I would say it was about three years of editing. Um, but you could say the second version of the film was about just over a year. Um, and I brought in at one point I brought in a second editor and then a third editor, uh, Justin Weinstein, who's an amazing editor and producer of his own, came in to work with me uh both on the writing and the editing. And then uh Constantine Limpiris also came in and helped me out with the editing.

SPEAKER_02 27:56

So yeah. Do you now I know that you weren't weren't a producer on this film, so you weren't the one responsible for raising the money. But um, since you've repeatedly talked about uh biographical films, which I also really love. Could you just talk about some of the special challenges funding them? Because a lot of the big documentary funders will not fund document. I mean, biographical documentaries, even though they will put them in big festivals, they won't offer funding. Have you noticed that? And could you like talk a little bit about that? You know, because it seems like the funding is all for, you know, um quote unquote social issue films, even though there can be social issues baked into these biographical films. They're just not supported in the same way.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

Yeah, I don't know. I wonder if part of it is um to some degree um biographical films, especially about the arts or sports or you know, things like that, um uh profiles of celebrities for lack of a better term, um, or let I what I like to think of as you know, tremendously inspiring people. That's how I approach it. Um can nothing is easy by any means, but they can sell the the better than some other films. And so unfortunately, a social issue film may have a lot of trouble getting sold because it's political or whatever. Um, it's gonna be of interest to specific uh audiences for sure and may raise funding in those areas. Um, but I I wonder if that's just part of it. I wonder if actually they're seen almost as too commercial uh in a way. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

That's that's an interesting take.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:39

Well, so the Jade film, as we um mentioned, was a short, but being Elmo was a feature. And I'm wondering if you could talk about the pros and cons of make making a feature versus a short. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

Well, uh again, let's say that if if the short, if if your short was your total focus, it would it would it would also take a short time to be made. Um, so yeah, uh the one of the reasons I do a podcast. So you mentioned in the beginning, I do a science podcast. And one of the reasons I do a podcast, A, I love science, and this just allows I actually had a career in science a little bit before I switched into filmmaking, but um uh allows me to keep you know keep my toes in that area. But um uh one of the reasons is a podcast is, as you know, recorded and done and up and posted and finished, you know, within hours, let's say, maybe days at the most, a week at most, you know. And um on the other hand, you have features which take years to make. Now, I remember working on features and thinking, wow, I'm really taking a long time of this, or this project I this project I'm a part of is taking a long time. Um, we must be the slowest people ever. And then I, you know, we go to film festivals and I started listening to the opening remarks that the director would make before they showed the film. And usually one of the stats that they would give is uh how many years it's taken them to make the film. And I began to notice this. Uh, again, this might be the scientist in me, but I began to notice a mean, an average number coming up of seven years from conception to completion. So I think that's a pretty fair way to go, which means there are some that get done in two years, but there are others that get done in many much longer. I worked on a film, an amazing film that's out now that everybody should see called Um Sabbath Queen, directed by Sandy Dubowski. Um, and I think Sandy spent more than 20 years making that film. Yeah, not every day, but uh but a lot of days, um, and a lot of editors, you know, and um it's an extraordinary film. So uh seven years, you know, is the thing. So that that to me is the main difference. The other thing is um a short, it's interesting because it's the difference between a short story and a novel for anyone who's ever set out to to learn writing or to to write. Um, it's a different structure and um it's not necessarily easier, you know. Isn't there's an expression that uh something like I wrote you a long letter because I didn't have time to write you a short one. Right. So as we all know, you know, whittling down, perfecting something, it takes a different time. So I would say those are the two main things. The other things are at the distribution end or the exhibition end, significantly different experiences. So with a short film, uh, I caution everyone that uh the the length of a short film seriously affects how whether you'll get into festivals or not. Now, there's a there's a question now about what how how important are festivals compared to how they used to be. That's a whole nother topic. But nonetheless, let's say going to festivals, which I do think is a valuable experience for the filmmaker. Um under 20 minutes in the United States is a good length. You may get in from 20 to 45 minutes. It'll still be counted as a short, but it's much harder to program. Uh, in Europe, it's a little bit more accepted. But anyway, the you can get into with shorts in general, you can get into a lot more festivals. With a feature, obviously, it's it's a much bigger commitment of time on the part of a um programmer and a judge and an audience, therefore, there are far fewer slots for features. Um that being said, nothing nothing goes the psychological and philosophical diff uh depth to the philosophical depth that a feature does. I mean, it's a really powerful, powerful experience. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:54

And uh so as has come up, you have experience as a writer, a director, producer, and an editor. Um, could you talk about uh what you like least and best about each of these roles?

SPEAKER_01 34:07

That's interesting. Uh let's see, writer, I absolutely love it. I don't think I have anything to complain about being a writer, except uh um it's hard to get that credit. That's a whole nother thing. But anyway, writer, a writer is a wonderful thing. Um producer, for me, producer is really hard because I am, you know, as they always say, there's the artist and there's the business person, right? And the truly successful person will kind of have an ability in both areas, and yet that's a really hard thing to do. So um I find producing quite difficult. And um, and I find it far from the creative aspect. When when I went to Mazels, for instance, I was a production assistant, and where you, you know, you're the lowest uh bottom of the totem pole, so to speak. And but on the other hand, you get to do all kinds of jobs in all the departments. So one day your job is to um, you know, work with the camera equipment, and another day you're painting the office, and another day you're buying the coffee for the office, and another day you're sitting in the edit room helping the editor do something, and so you get to learn all these different things. And and then you see the also sometimes you help the producers. And so I got to see all the different things that people did. And I remember saying to myself, okay, at some point I have to choose. I thought I should choose what what I'm gonna do. And it seemed to me that the editors were the ones who literally, literally had their hands on the art. I mean, they had the back in those days, it was film when I started, uh, physically had the film in their hand. They were like touching the art. I was like, that's where I want to be. Whereas the producer was he was way off in another room at a big desk and had an adding machine and stuff like that. So that's what I say about producer. Um, director is pretty great, especially during the well, director is pretty great because you can sit with incredibly talented people. First of all, you get to hire very talented people if you can afford them, if you, as the producer, work out the budget so that you can hire the talented people. But I mean, just to uh one of the greatest experiences I had was directing this Einstein documentary for History Channel. So I got to travel all over Europe with this incredible uh camera person, Erish Rowland. And then back in, you know, when we were editing, I get to work with the editors and um and the writer and and all that kind of stuff. So directing is a pretty fun. That being said, I still I was jealous of the editor at times as I was directing. I was like, oh, he gets, you know, I have to now go off and do other things, all these other miscellaneous things. Um, I have to now have meetings and things like that, whereas the editor just gets to sit there and keep editing and having fun making beautiful work. So was that all the roles?

SPEAKER_02 36:49

Yeah, yeah. That is true. The editor doesn't have to get the money for the editing to continue.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

Yeah, that's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 36:56

So, in addition to being an accomplished filmmaker, you're also super knowledgeable about AI as a tool for filmmakers. And I'm wondering if you could discuss some of the pros and cons of AI when it comes to documentary filmmaking.

SPEAKER_01 37:11

Yeah. Um yeah, I must say, but it's interesting because just my connection to it is that um, like I said, I had this background in science and I, you know, worked with computers since I was a kid. And um so I remember when when I was at Mazels, in fact, in 19, I started there in 1992. In 1993, I was still working there, and uh everything was still on film. We were editing on Steam Beck's uh flatbeds and um with actual film and all that, and nonlinear editing had come out, and so uh the office manager or somebody at Mazels asked me and another friend there um to could we figure learn about this computer editing thing and figure out if they were to buy a computer, maybe they'll buy a computer, um, which one it should be. And so that was amazing. So me and Dan Partland, who was the equipment manager at the time, he's since become a multi, multi-ME award-winning uh producer, executive producer. Um, anyway, we got to go try all the different editing systems, and we decided that Avid was the best one at the time, and it turned out to be a pretty good choice. Um, others have since come around, of course. But um, and then I ended up teaching, and I've always enjoyed teaching, uh I ended up teaching all the editors there, all the film editors there, how to use this computer editing thing. And I saw a lot of fear, a lot of anger, some excitement, you know. Um cut to today, and AI comes out, and I'm seeing this. So for me, it's a little bit of deja vu. So, right away, I just I was like, great, this is another place I can sort of make a difference, I can help, and I it's something I enjoy doing, which is helping people learn things. So um I jumped into AI, learned all about it. It's super fun, but boy, is there a lot of I mean it's all amped up because it's happening much faster, even. Um so I know even in our audience right now, I'm sure there's a there's a wide range of emotions about the issue. And then you add documentary to it, and it almost seems counterintuitive to some people. Like, what the hell AI is a terrible thing anyway. And then the last thing it has anything to do with is documentary because it's all made up, stuff like that. Um, that being said, uh, the simple answer in terms of how we can help documentaries right now, and it's we have just started, we've hardly seen any, I've yet to see a finished documentary that's included that's gotten all the way to the end because this is also new. So some people are a lot of people are experimenting with AI, but we've yet to see a lot of things. Also, the broadcasters are leery of it because there's some copyright issues, obviously. So, um, however, just this week, even I'm starting to get up literally today. A friend of mine who's an editor emailed me and said, Oh, another editor friend, you know, just had an interview and they asked if if they knew how to use AI because that was important. I have a friend who's a producer who's saying, Uh, can you recommend some editors who know how to use AI? So it's really starting to become part of the process. All right. Cut to the chase, how to how can AI help documentaries in two ways. One, um, the chat bots, so like Chat GBT and Claude and others, can be very helpful. And I've used these a lot uh in sort of helping you with outlining, um, brainstorming, um, all kinds of things like that, organization. They can help you with transcripts. If you're comfortable uploading transcripts, I'm actually not comfortable. What if I have interviews with celebrities? I'm not going to put them on uh ChatGPT right now. But I can talk about things in general, you know. Um, anyway, there's a lot I teach many classes in that. Um the other area is again where it's a little bit of a no-brainer is in documentaries, we you know, you have visualizations. So there's the talking head, especially in interview-based like documentaries, let's say, right? Like we were talking about. So you've got the talking head interviews, and then what else are you going to show? And so, as anyone who makes documentaries knows, we kind of have three about three um tools in your toolkit. You've got B-roll, so you go shoot B-roll, um, often in an abstract way, so it can kind of have a storytelling flavor too, not just like generic, like here's a shot of the outside of the prison, right? You might close up on the barbed wire and have a nice long, so anyway, um, b-roll. Then there's uh archival footage, so old footage of that prison, let's say, or something like that. Um, and then you've got animation or illustration. So you can create different things. And um especially if you have a story that somebody tells that's really vivid and you don't want to do a reenactment, might be a fourth thing, you know, that uh depending on the channel you're on or your style, would be that kind of thing. Um, so how do you could reenact it using uh illustration or whatever? Interestingly, with AI, you could do reenactments, you know, because the the unique thing about AI animation is that it's can be photorealistic, right? It can be indistinguishable from reality, interestingly, um and controversially, but also pretty amazing. Um, so you could create reenactments in that in that way. So um, yeah, that that's those are the main tools. And I would encourage everyone, what no matter what your feelings are about it, I still would encourage you to go try it. You know, it's you all of them, you all the AI sites you can try for free for a little bit, uh, if not a lot, and uh get to know it just so at least you know what it is. And as real storytellers are now starting to use AI, we're starting to see some AI short films uh and documentary style films that are like, wow, pretty amazing. So I think the next year is gonna be pretty incredible in that. But there's a lot of legal issues too and ethical issues to deal with.

SPEAKER_02 43:18

So have you generated any um footage in AI that just really blew your mind that you were just super surprised by? And and I'm also curious how you're using it in your own films right now.

SPEAKER_01 43:31

Yeah, interestingly, I'm not using it in a film right now. Um, one of the films, and I'm making another film right now, in fact, a Sesame Street-oriented film with uh Connie Marks. It's a a portrait of um the amazing Muppeteer. Uh her her name is Leslie Carrera Rudolph, and she Muppeteers, as they say, uh Abby Kadabi on Sesame Street. And um, but this story just AI doesn't feel right for this story, especially for many, many reasons. But one of the reasons is that everything about the Henson and Leslie's work is all handcrafted, and like that's really the thing, you know. So, um, and fortunately, we, you know, the the film we have a budget that's enough to accommodate a professional animator, which is amazing. So I'm glad we can do that. Um, that being said, uh, he had our animator hasn't done it. Uh, but what's gonna happen is I think professional animators are still gonna stay employed, uh, many of them anyway, and they're gonna use AI, you know, just like they use Photoshop and other things, because they're gonna have a skill with it that the normal person doesn't have. It's just gonna become the latest tool. Um, anyway, that being said, I've because I I teach it a lot and I am fascinated by with it, uh, I've experimented a ton and I've made all kinds of things um with it. And um one thing that blew me away most re there's a lot of things that blew me away. One of the things that I did most recently was so Mid Journey, uh, which is a site that makes uh illustrations, it's uh or stills, let's say, um it didn't make video up until like a few weeks ago and suddenly now they're making video as well. Um but uh I wanted to I thought you know what as for my classes I wanted to show examples of documentaries right like you said so I thought well what's a documentary I could do where I don't have any issues with rights and things like that. I was like okay well suppose I was making a documentary about my childhood or something. Okay now now I own everything. And so when I was a kid I used to this is when I probably knew I was going to end up as an editor I had a tape recorder when I was eight years old I asked for a tape recorder. Anyway I used to make radio shows and then later I I burned that thing I blew it up I discovered that uh I had a model train set and the model train set has a transformer where you can turn a dial and it makes the train go faster. So I thought wow I could hook that up to my tape recorder. And I did and it made the tape go faster which meant it slowed down my voice. And this is amazing. So I made all kinds of stories using these all kinds of different voices. And then I realized that model train set I can also turn the dial to the left and make the train go backwards. So I can make the tape go backwards now we're really talking right so I did that and the tape smoke came out of the tape recorder. And that was the end of that. So uh eventually I got a little older and I managed to buy from a friend a used reel to reel tape recorder that had four tracks. Anyway I thought let me use AI to kind of recreate the scene of me as a little kid with a reel to reel tape and um I tried to find a picture of me as a kid and I didn't have one nearly as young as the age I was doing that but I found one it was an old ID card. I gave it to mid I uploaded that picture of me to Midjourney and then I like let's say in the picture I'm like 13 um and then I said create an image of an eight year use this as a reference create an image of this boy as at eight years old with a reel to reel tape recorder and I thought well it's gonna be okay it's gonna do something weird you know and it was kind of eerie like it came out right away I was like whoa that totally looks like me you know if you saw pictures of me at that age that is what I look like and it took me a little while to get the tape recorder looking right but you could do that. And then now because there's video uh with mid-journey you just hit a button animate and suddenly the reels on the tape recorder start turning and then I said just this morning I was typing things I was like musical notes come out of the tape recorder as the boy listens intently and sure enough they do so the distance from the the vision in your head to getting the vision on the screen is obscenely short. I mean it's not easy it takes some skill and it takes a lot of like do it again do it again do it again because each time you re-roll it as they say you get a new version you're closer to getting the one you want but yeah there's a lot of um a lot of amazing stuff going on. I would just say lastly the the one thing that's absolutely astounding the the most astounding thing is Google released um their uh video AI which the most recent version is called VO VEO3 and that generates uh not only little animations or photorealistic scenes with people in them but they it has sound and so I actually uh so I have a well I'll give a shout out to uh I have a weekly um zoom gathering for documentary filmmakers or any filmmakers who are interested in AI um you can go to my uh website philipshane.com and click contact if you want to find out more to apply for that but um so I thought uh we have about a hundred over a hundred people in that group which is great anyway I thought I'll make a little promo for that I'll make a little video that uh so I I typed in you know my prompt was like uh a barista in a coffee shop um making coffee as they look to the camera and invite people to come to AI Cafe. Now I didn't give it the exact dialogue I didn't say say these words I just said and it generated over and over and over again just one thing after another a barista every time it was a different looking barista one it's a guy with tattoos it's a woman with a huge button in her hair or whatever it's a it's a Sasquatch you know and different things and it makes up dialogue each time and it's perfectly in sync and it sounds right and there's sound effects the sound of the you know it's just a fully full audio thing and then it'll also include music if you want so uh vo3 is just like immediately changed it it was already a revolution now it's that's a revolution on the revolution so yeah well great so for anyone who wants to learn more about AI and film they could obviously join this group that you have is there anything else you'd suggest I mean I know that you've taught some uh workshops and things yeah if you go to desktop-documentaries.com um I teach uh classes uh in-depth classes so I have a class there um a four session class that's about eight hours total um that is an overview of all the different AI that's available for uh filmmakers um I am currently teaching uh I'm sorry and all these classes are recorded so if you happen to be if you happen to sign up while at the beginning of those classes you can come join live but we have an enormous number of people who actually just you know get the class as a recording uh you get a transcript you get up uh some extra bonus materials and things like that you also get uh we hand out some ethics guides from different sources just for some thoughts about that um but uh I'm currently teaching a course uh a three session course on um mid journey just on mid journey so covering all the different every every aspect of that um I I'm not sure when this podcast goes up but um we uh have uh two sessions left but anyway again if you go to desktop documentary desktop dash documentaries you can get the recording if this is if if the class is already passed and um yeah and if you search for me I've done a lot of talks uh on the D word the D word if you don't know about the D word by the way and you're a documentary filmmaker D-word.com it's kind of a community website for documentary filmmakers I've done some YouTube some talks there that are up on YouTube that are actually the most popular YouTube things I think they've ever posted.

SPEAKER_02 52:14

I don't take credit for that that's just the the robots people want to know about robots so they sign up for that uh but yeah and if you go to my website you can contact me and find out uh about anything else that's coming up so well for anyone who wants to follow your career could you please share your social media handles and also just remind us of your website again.

SPEAKER_01 52:35

Sure the website is Philip Shane that's Philip with one L because that's all my parents could afford I've carried that joke around for 40 years. Philipshane S H A N E dot com and yeah you can find all kinds of stuff there and you can contact me through that um I am also on um on LinkedIn uh Philip Shane or Philip A Shane if you don't find me that way um and uh I'm on Facebook I guess um I am on yeah I'm on all the various things mostly as Philip A Shane about Instagram and all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 53:15

Well great and um for anyone who would like to see the Jade um Dasco film who hasn't seen it yet or being Elmo could you uh I know you've made a ton of films but those are the ones could you tell us where where are those um streaming are playing right now?

SPEAKER_01 53:32

Yeah being Elmo I'm not sure exactly but I believe it's on most if not all the streaming services it it was on Netflix for years and years and years but interestingly Netflix after a certain time actually like sort of changes up their roster of what's available but I'm quite sure it's on Apple and um Amazon and and all the other things um the Jade Dosco film by the way I I had not had it I'd always intended to put it on YouTube. Oh did you lose me oh I can hear you now go ahead okay good um the Jade Dosco film I had uh always intended to put it on YouTube but hadn't yet I really this is a whole nother saga or a story of trying to get your films out there so we had screenings you know and I tried to see if that could be a financially sustainable thing and yes and no somewhat uh we had a we had a lot of great screenings uh both virtual and in person but um you know eventually it's like I really want people to see it and so you've given me the uh the impetus to say look let me just get it out there so it's up on YouTube um my uh again uh Philip Shane Philip A Shane let me check that um what am I called um but yes so it's on YouTube and Philip A. Shane yeah on YouTube at Philip A Shane you can find my my channel there and there's some other stuff there too some short comedies I've done and things and also you will find there um I maintain a bunch of playlists because I'm I'm just devouring news about AI left and right for filmmakers. So I've created uh a bunch of different playlists so you'll see there for instance AI tutorials AI news AI discussions um so a ton of um curated a curated collection so to speak of um videos uh videos there that you can watch you know what would be so cool is if at all of these world fair sites like the Space Needle and the Eiffel Tower there was like a little um like a video player that the people standing there could could, you know, like when you go into a museum and there's a show button artist there's like a little room where you watch the video about the artist.

SPEAKER_02 55:54

It'd be so cool if there was like a little um I don't know the digital device or something where someone could go watch it.

SPEAKER_01 55:59

But you know I guess um well no it's interesting is that I must mention by the way that that what you just mentioned the little room with the video in it before you see the show that specific thing was the total inspiration for my ultimately making the kind of films I make now. Because as a kid I remember going to the museum and sitting and watching and I always thought the coolest part was the movie ahead of time. You saw the artist in his studio I remember seeing a film about Naguchi sculpting something right and then you went into the gallery and you saw the work and I love those films. And I must say to thank goodness we have actually had a number of gallery shows um and exhibits where they have uh they have shown the Jade film or samples of it in the room.

SPEAKER_02 56:44

And did you grow up in New York where you were going to museums and having that experience?

SPEAKER_01 56:49

Actually I grew up in uh Maryland right outside Washington DC and so I went to the Smithsonian all the time.

SPEAKER_02 56:56

Yeah yeah nice nice well that's a beautiful museum what advice would you give to any first time filmmakers who are listening um watch movies that might seem like a corny old man what one thing to say but like watch movies and get to understand them.

SPEAKER_01 57:16

I um I went to I was fortunate enough to I went to undergrad um at University of Maryland and I took film production there and uh that was cool. And then I went to NYU and because I had already done film production instead I took cinema studies which is where we studied film history and film theory. And I dare say that that film history and film theory were essentially we just watched tons and tons of movies and analyzed them very, very closely sometimes frame by frame was as valuable if not more valuable. I think Martin Scorsese has said that if you want to be a great filmmaker you should get an English degree you should be an English major you know study literature. And actually the other thing he would say is study life you know but um I think that that's part of it. The other thing is uh the amount of tools that people have today is is ridiculous. Adding AI to the mix I mean so um I think there's no need to wait for permission from somebody else there's no need to be hired by somebody else yes you need to work to get and to have a living so do that if as you need but um if you want to be a filmmaker don't wait just start playing with this stuff and I think the last thing I would just add to that is find a community of other people who are doing it. That really makes a difference you know um so and and obviously online you can do that but also in person is really helpful. So um you know find the group in your area as well as find groups online uh who are like-minded people who are also experimenting with stuff yeah and um is there anything else you'd like to add that I haven't already asked you about I know you're working on just you know numerous projects and as mentioned in your bio you're working on a a documentary about the video game missed is there anything else you want to to quickly share with us before we wrap up um no just if you want to find out about the video game MIST go to the Mist this is one word the missed myst documentary dot com and it's a website there um and uh that's an exciting project if if you know the game you're smiling right now so that's great um uh no other than I would say um these are difficult times and uh some people have feared that oh can you hear me now yeah um some people have feared that you know basically in the the politics of today um where the arts are being restricted or not being not getting the support that they used to um that this is the end of things or you know this is a despair about that the first thing I could say is unfortunately this is not the only time that's happened. I remember living through the age of uh Ronald Reagan and some others where the uh new the the council what is it anyway the the grants were drying up um that PBS was being attacked and things like that. The other thing I would say is that um it's in times like these uh where let's say the arts are under attack not to mention human rights are under attack um that the arts and especially documentaries are more important than ever um so you know if you're looking for a way to sort of feel better about the times you might be you know see if you can make a little piece for social media let alone something longer or become a part of some longer uh project there's always I always this is kind of crazy but like I remember learning about World War II and at one point I learned about the um there was a filmmaking group I for are you can hear me yeah I forget what it was called there was some filmmaking group in Hollywood uh where all these famous filmmakers right like uh uh um Frank Capra and uh and all these others uh became a part of this group and they set out to make uh films you know supporting uh the allies and both documentaries and propaganda pieces you know right and I always thought if I was ever in World War II or God forbid world war three that's what I would do I would join the film the filmmaking brigade so uh there's plenty of opportunities for that today. Um but lastly it doesn't mean that the need to simply entertain frankly or to portray simple human truths um hasn't left again I would almost say that's almost more important than ever um to one of the things documentary can do actually and fiction and one thing the arts can do is portray and celebrate nuance. And if anything is under attack these days it's nuance subtlety compassion you know things like that. So um whatever it is that's the subject of your film I think take pride in it and um and keep going.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:38

Well thank you so much for that and thank you for all the wisdom you shared it's really been just fantastic to have you today and we're really grateful. So yeah thank you so much Philip thank you Heather all right thanks thanks everyone for listening