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Jacob Bricca, "How Documentaries Work" (Oxford UP, 2023)
01:05:43
An interview with Jacob Bricca
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- [00:01]
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Joel Czerny
This episode is brought to you by Casamigos Tequila.
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Jacob Bricka
What do you bring to a holiday party?
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Joel Czerny
Simple.
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Jacob Bricka
A bottle of Casamigos. Because nothing gets the party started like a Casamigos Margarita. Which isn't just for summer.
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Joel Czerny
In fact, it's the perfect pour all year round. Casamigos is the gift that always feels right because anything goes with my Casamigos.
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Jacob Bricka
Please drink responsibly.
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Joel Czerny
Imported by Casamigos Spirits Company, White Plains, New York. Casamigos Tequila 40% alcohol by volume. Limu Emu and Doug Here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us. Cut the camera. They see us.
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Jacob Bricka
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings vary Underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts welcome to the New Books.
- [01:33]
Joel Czerny
Network welcome to New Books and Film, a podcast series on the New Books Network. I'm your host, Joel Czerny. My guest today is Jacob Bricka, author of the book How Documentaries work, published in 2023 by Oxford University Press. I previously interviewed Jacob for New Books and film in 2018 for his first book, Documentary Editing Principles and Practice. In addition to being an Associate professor at the University of Arizona, Jacob is also an award winning documentary editor, director and producer. In his new book, he reviews the secrets behind documentaries, including feature films, documentary series, and even reality shows. In addition to its value as a source for film classes, the book is a readable overview of documentaries for the fan of the genre. In our talk, we discuss the book in detail and also talk about the documentary field and review various filmmakers and their works. I hope you find Jacob's professional views to be helpful in understanding documentaries. Welcome Jacob Bricka Hey Jacob, Hello. We were talking very briefly before I started recording and was totally shocked to discover that even though you and I have talked before, it's been five years since your first book came out, Documentary Editing Principles and Practice. And I did put A link to that earlier interview in the show notes so that people, if they want to go back and listen to that interview with you. But I know they've got a lot of background information from that one. But let's get a little bit started and get some background just so folks who may not necessarily have heard your name or don't know enough about you and we can actually say that you're a Peabody Award winning documentary filmmaker. I was reading your website and I always said, wow, that was after Missing in Brooks county documentary, which people can see on PBS still.
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Jacob Bricka
But anyway, yeah, that's shocking to me as well. Five years pass and a pandemic passed rather quickly.
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Joel Czerny
And I want to talk a little bit about that since it looks like a lot of your interviews were being done for this book. This new book, which is of course called How Documentaries Work, were done during that period. I was looking at the list of interviews and they're almost all in that general period of March of 2020 and going a little later. So anyway, your background is actually started or where did you start first? In education or actually as an editor?
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Jacob Bricka
I started as a filmmaker, as a documentary filmmaker, making short documentaries and working, doing editing for other people's films and a bit of a jack of all trades. And then I kind of specialized into editing. I went to graduate school for that and found myself working almost exclusively in documentaries. And. And then in my late 20s, I had an opportunity to start teaching and that started my, my teaching career and first at Wesleyan University and now in the last decade at University of Arizona. And so I've been, I've basically been doing both of those things in these last 20 years.
- [05:06]
Joel Czerny
So the good thing is, is that your teaching obviously still allows you to do professional editing and directing, producing. That's where if you look at your credits, it's. Some of them are ones that I didn't, I've seen and I said, oh, I didn't know that. And you know, it just goes to show the amount of documentaries you've been involved with. So obviously your first book, Documentary Principles and Practice, published by Focal Press in 2018, as the name implies, is meant to more feature the editing process when it comes to documentaries. While your new books, how documentaries Work is meant to, as you say in the very beginning, give away a lot of the secrets. What led you to decide? I mean, I know it sounds like you were asked, you were approached from Oxford University Press to do it, but was this something that seemed logical to you right from the beginning to continue on from what you did with the first book?
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Jacob Bricka
Yeah. I was pitched to write this book, in fact, with the title already intact, after I gave a conference presentation about. I was. I was talking about the use of pauses in documentary films. And I sort of took this very small little detail, you know, seemingly insignificant, but actually rather important detail of how documentaries are put together and kind of pushed through it to talk about exactly what kind of meaning and effects that those things have. And so Norm Hershey at Oxford saw that and he thought it was really interesting. And he thought that there was maybe a book where I sort of do that for dozens of different little tropes and sections and details of documentary. And that sounded very interesting to me, and it did. Let me. The other book is essentially a textbook. It does sort of take the reader from beginning to end of the process of documentary editing and uses interviews with. With great documentary editors to kind of give a summation of what the best practices are and all of the stages and the processes. And this book was a little bit more of a reflective thing. It wasn't trying to teach the reader how to do something in terms of how to accomplish the making of a film or the editing of a film, but rather in a way, teaching them how to accomplish the digesting of a film and the understanding when one watches something, a lot of the things that probably went on behind the scenes behind that. So in any documentary, there are zillions of decisions that are made in every scene. And those. I think to most viewers it seems relatively transparent what's happening, but there's actually a lot going on behind the scenes that sort of made that what it is. So I tried to sort of dissect it in various ways.
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Joel Czerny
Yeah, I mean, like I say, even five years ago, but it's even more so with the number of places for streaming and for content, the amount of documentaries that are out there. I don't remember if I mentioned it in the previous interview. Doesn't really matter. I've been watching documentaries since the 80s. I'd have to say the one that pushed me back into watching them a lot was Roger and Me, Michael Moore's Roger. Partly because when it first came out, it really hit the. It got publicity far above the average documentary. And so that was one that was interesting to me. And then since then, I have to admit I probably watch more documentaries and feature films, partly because it's easy to get to them sometimes there's so many. But also because the more you watch, and they're the kind of film that when you read good documentaries, are worth re watching or even bad ones just to see some of these things. So when I was reading the book, it was so great to see. Hey, wait a minute. So that's what that is called or that's what that means. You sort of understand it in your mind. But being able to use the book as a way to sort of get some of the terminology and some of the ideas down was, Was so great. Have you found. I mean, obviously the other one was meant as a textbook, but I'm gonna guess this one's gonna have some ability for purposes of people who either teach documentary film as part of a film stud or other kinds of things. But have you seen in your career, is there a book. I know it's hard to say this, but is there another book like this or do you think you were able to actually break new ground with it?
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Jacob Bricka
I do think this is. I think this is really a new book. It does not engage at. On a. It's not really a theory book, so it's not dense inside of, of of, you know, film theory. It is written from a, from a practitioner's point of view, but with an academics mindset in a way where I'm. I'm trying to, to explain in relatively, you know, relatively transparent terms a lot of again, sort of what, what goes on behind the scenes and how documentaries are structured and all of the things that, that happen to that point. So I would like to think that this is sort of a, a new approach. It's funny you mentioned Roger and me. I actually showed that in a, in a class recently. And that film is now, you know, it's, it. It came out well before these students were born and, and they see it as a. They're like, oh, he's, he's trolling, he's. They've got a whole new language to talk about. It's actually super familiar to them what, what, what Michael Moore is doing in that entertaining. But they sort of have a different language to talk about it these days. So. Yeah, I, I'm, I'm sort of forgetting where your, where your question was.
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Joel Czerny
No, no, it was just. You hit it. I mean it. This is, that's why I looked at it. I said, you're always, I mean, as somebody who's interested so much in documentary and learning more about documentaries, I do a lot of looking around at books and looking for books and you, you know, we get. There's a lot of historical studies of documentary and there are some specific concepts that get studied in books. But I think the idea of a book like this where you get down into the. Into the nitty gritty, so to speak. And as I say, the terminologies you use, they're obvious once you read the way you explain them. I can. Every time, you know, as I would read something, I'd say, oh yeah, I remember that from this documentary. Or yes, I can remember this. And just some of the concepts I thought were so interesting. Interesting.
- [12:11]
Jacob Bricka
And I think. I think to. Now I remember what you were asking to follow up on that. You were saying, how might this be used in a class? And I think depending on what an educator is teaching, I think there are certain chapters that they might just sort of slot into a discussion about something that they're talking about. So, for instance, the chapter on narrative tries to get at how this form, which is. Which is called is non fiction, is how that relates to storytelling. Because storytelling is something that inevitably requires a reshuffling of information and a sort of putting into standard arcs the way that information is presented and how characters seem to travel through the world and getting at all the manipulation that is necessary to do this, to take things which are sort of inert facts. There are tons of fact around us all day long. But. But in order to put those into a form that seems to make narrative sense to an audience, that requires work. What kind of work specifically does that require? Or there's another chapter on what I call presence framing, which is. Is. Is addressed. I. It's a. It's a term that. That I'm. I'm sort of coining, but has a lot to do with what Bill Nichols talks about. He's probably the most influential writer in documentary. He's got a book called Introduction to Documentary. That. That is the. That is kind of the definitive word on. For. For any. It's. It's a book you're likely to encounter in any kind of a. Of a documentary class. And he talks about documentary modes. And this is a close concept. It's a. It's a close cousin to the concept of. Of some of the stuff that he's talking about with documentary modes. But for instance, what presence framing talks about is simply that any documentary is going to have a framing that it gives you in terms of what theoretically the relationship is between the filmmaker and the people who are on screen. And some films just don't address it at all. Some documentaries, you never hear from the filmmaker. It's as if the. It's as if even the camera wasn't there. Nobody addresses the camera. It's as if things Just sort of played out, you know, where it was totally observational. Right where there. Whereas there are other films where the camera is totally acknowledged and in fact sometimes sort of, you know, part of the game almost. And that those are, those are not random choices, those are deliberate choices. And that, that in order for a film to make sense to an audience, a filmmaker at some point sort of has to decide which presence, framing that they are going to engage with and, and sort of live by those rules to some degree and then they're going to have to break them here and there. But so that chapter sort of talks about that and that work that has to occur in order for a film that seems to make sense to an audience to, to get to you, it had to make. Make these choices.
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Joel Czerny
Yeah, it's one of those things where I remember, like I say, going back to when Roger Meek came out, there was a hue and cry at the time about the quote, unquote, they call it, your students called it trolling, but it was the same. We didn't have that term back in the 80s. But the idea that he had a point of view, he didn't care that he was going to present that point of view. And for some reason, even though documentaries for all, all times long time have always had points of view, for some reason that particular one hit people, hit the public, some members of the public and critics differently because for some reason they thought he was doing something new. And I'm not taking anything away from the film, but it really. He just did it a different way. And his way of doing it just brought out certain complaints and commentaries. And nowadays, I would think, as your students pointed out, they watched it and they immediately saw what, what he was doing.
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Jacob Bricka
Well, he's. Yeah, yeah, he, he's. He's playing a character in that film. And that's not to say that that his character isn't authentic, it's simply. But, but it is, it is showing him playing a character and, and the part, you know, what they referred to as trolling was these scenes in which, you know, for instance, he's clearly not going to get up, you know, as a stranger, just going up to the offices of General Motors and going to get a meeting with the CEO. Right. And there he is, you know, sort of putting on a little bit of an act to make a point. Right. I mean, he has a, I think a quite legitimate point in doing that. That's sort of the trolling aspect. I think some of the. He also, you know, I think you could say that Michael Moore did have a different, you know, a somewhat different approach to the use of archival material, too. He had sort of a more playful approach. And not that it was entirely new, but he did have a new spin on it. And that became something that really got integrated into the sort of comm. Lexicon of documentaries as well. And, you know, we shouldn't ignore the fact that he did make. Take some pretty. Pretty heavy liberties with the juxtaposition and arrangement of the scenes. And some, you know, there were some journalists and authors at the time who were able to figure out exactly when certain things did occur and what one was led to believe as an audience member. And I think that those are legitimate critiques of that film, even as that kind of. That. That sort of juxtaposition and arrangement has only become more common. And, you know, and so I think in some ways my book is a. Is a call for the audience to be aware in every possible way of exactly how they're being manipulated in a. And again, not to take anything away from the form and not to take anything away really from its claims to truth, but exactly what kind of truth that is is worth talking about.
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Joel Czerny
Well, and he's never shied away from that, no matter what they said back at Roger and me, because virtually every one of his documentaries do the same thing, and it's nothing new. And he continues to get critiqued about it, but that's the way he makes them. And that's. That's his right as a filmmaker. So. Yeah, but you're right. Understanding that back in, you know, in 89 was different from where we are today, where maybe people don't always know all the terminologies, but over time, if you watch enough, and these days you can watch a ton of. You can start to figure out some of these things. I don't want to call them common sense, because that's not completely true, but it's the concept that it seems obvious sometimes when you watch something. And the more people learn about that, I think that the enjoyment or in the understanding of documentaries, just how people like to learn how the films are made, regular narrative films. To do that with documentaries is an interesting process. I wanted to ask quickly, because as you got started, and I wanted to ask about this because it is related to the book, you clearly decided not to ignore television documentary and what the average person might consider to be reality programming. Even things as simple as shows like on different cable channels that are meant to show people performing tasks, whether it be buying houses or cooking or anything like that. So you felt that it was important to include those in your book as far as examples of documentary creation. Was that something that seemed obvious to you right from the beginning that they should be included?
- [20:05]
Jacob Bricka
I think it sort of makes an author's job to take that choice. In some ways it makes it easier because it gives you more range. It doesn't exclude as many things. In some ways it makes it harder because you are, you have a bigger canvas. You have to, you have to make sense of things, but with a lot more variables in a way, but I found it useful. I'll give you a very specific. For instance, in order to make, in order to make comparisons. So for instance, in, in the setup of a. Just talking about the setup that almost all documentaries and I do in most chapters have this little, you know, little sections that talk about more experimental films or things that are sort of on the art cinema end of documentary in which they sometimes don't ascribe to these rules at all. But most, you know, by and large, you know, most, most things that people watch on a daily basis will have a setup somewhere very soon, early in the, in the film or the show, you will basically be told here's, here are the stakes. Here's the problem that, that this film seeks to solve. And so to make a comparison between a show like, like Pool Kings, which is on HGTV, which is a very, you know, like they have 101 different variations on the home improvement show. And this one is specifically about renovations of pools, renovations of residential pools. And on this show you get these incredibly detailed explanations of exactly what they're going to, you know, what the problem is and what the solution's going to be. Or on, you know, on a different food show in the, you know, I make a point where I think it may be Gordon Ramsay, who, I mean you're, you're not 30 seconds in and you've already been given. Here's the task, here's how long you have to achieve it. Here's what you get if you, if you get there and if not, then this is what happens, right? And it's just all incredibly, it's like, it's, it's so plainly, you know, laid out and because in those sorts of shows the idea is that you basically have to grab the audience by the collar very quickly because they're just going to tune away if, if, if they're not, not sort of given that promise. And then as a comparison with feature length documentaries that, that promise, it tends to, there, you know, the, the convention is that is that the filmmakers have a little bit more leeway. Maybe you need to get that done in the first 10 minutes. Right. But you actually have a scene that tends to precede any sort of explanation of stakes that will be sort of an idiosyncratic scene that, that may be deliberately out of context but is simply an interesting teaser and yet doesn't. Doesn't have these sort of. So that was a way in which sort of giving opposite ends of the spectrum and saying, well, here's a real. An end which is operating within television, which operates within these kinds of commercial constraints versus this other end of the spectrum and then even further on that spectrum. Again, these films which deliberately kind of ignore standard narrative demands, right. They are, they are going to really operate on a sort of a different kind of premise and a different kind of level. So that was part of the reason why I made that choice. Also I think people are. The reason why to include that stuff is that most people are, you know, I find that a lot of people are pretty omnivorous these days and there is maybe a little less, you know, people are not quite so ashamed to admit they're guilty pleasures these days, even though I think they are still considered guilty pleasures, but that it's useful for, you know, anyone reading this book to be able to deconstruct that as well. Sure, it may not be an exalted art form, but to think about it in the same critical way, I think is really key. And I think students, young people appreciate that because, you know, the things are, the distinction between these things, because we're in the streaming land is, is more blurry than ever. Like you're just clicking on stuff, right? And so you can be within a streamer and get on a feature doc that, you know, basically has its credentials from the, the, you know, the festival world right next to another show which is, you know, just made by a production company and is one of 23 in that season. And, and they're just right next to each other, right? So are everybody's daily experience of these things. I mean, I think understanding those distinctions is crucial. But, but that's, that's the reason why to include it, right? So that you can, you can say, well, these are actually kind of different forms and yet they do operate on a continuum and there are certain commonalities between them. And people making more art oriented documentaries may not want to admit that, but really they're just on a continuum that does include stuff that goes more towards the reality TV spectrum. So.
- [24:52]
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- [25:15]
Jacob Bricka
Welcome to our ugly home.
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Joel Czerny
Reddit is back for a historically hideous season.
- [25:21]
Jacob Bricka
It's a our 100th ugly house.
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Joel Czerny
This place is mayhem. That is impressive. And if these walls could talk.
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Jacob Bricka
Do you cry a lot?
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Joel Czerny
I do. They'd have a lot to say. What in God's name is this pit? Don't get too close.
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Jacob Bricka
You see the show I'm scared of Cat.
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Joel Czerny
Ugliest house in America. Season premiere Wednesday, January 7th at 8 on HGTV well, and to me, as somebody who does watch some of those, I mean, they tend to be okay, there's nothing else on tv, so let's throw this on for an hour. You start to get into the habit. The more you see them and depending on which one you're watching, you start to see similarities. But then you also start to. I personally then wanted to find out, okay, well how did they really do that? You start to find out things like on a lot of the home documentaries, they actually start with the completed home and then they work backwards or it's shown backward, you know, the way they put them together and you start to learn. And these are, it's probably a lot less. I don't know when to say truthful because that's not a fair word. But you know what I mean, people, they're not playing fair, so to speak, in that you're given the impression that this is what's going on now. Food ones, who knows? I mean it's so funny. And I think the other thing that comes out of it, it also depends on whether it's a half hour show or an hour show. Our shows, you know, just like anything, if you don't have a time constraint the same way you can present it differently. But they still show the. And of course nowadays it's become the norm to have multi episode documentaries. And to me watching those and I'm interested in you, in whether you see this or not or your ideas. I sometimes see that that's where we run into some of the timing aspects where it seems like you're being told a story that that's all that anybody knew at that time. And then in the next episode you suddenly discover, well, they did know a little bit more, but they, you know, the doc, the documentary filmmaker just didn't tell us in that first episode because he's, he or she is setting them up. Do you, I mean, do you agree with me that that's something that, that I don't know if it's new, but it's certainly now with multi episodes, it's become a much more normal process.
- [27:37]
Jacob Bricka
Yeah, the, the, the multi episode series, you know, docu series as opposed to simply a documentary. It, it's, you know, it, it, it, you know, to someone who, to someone like me where I've, you know, I'm 52. I've. This, this is a somewhat new thing. You do see the aspect where they are there. It's just sort of padded out. It does allow the inclusion of, of interesting side things and details. I mean I think a really great early example of a, of a really strong, you know, true CR part documentary series is the Keepers, which was a really popular show about a abuse scandal within the church that, that becomes uncovered and was really early in the, it was one of the first popular true crime docs out there. And that, that show really allowed, you know, the, the, the, the long. I don't know how many episodes, I can't remember, it was probably six or eight episodes of an hour or each. It really allowed lots of fascinating, you know, details to come out and I thought was, was really earned. I think there are other series that you see where you really feel like they're, they're, they're just, you know, they're, they're just kind of stretching and that, that I think does become that that's just a commercial imperative where they're, they're, they've, they've got an obligation to meet in terms of the episodes or I don't know, there's a lot of things that can lead to that. And so yeah, there are there things to discuss with that. I mean I think you talked about sort of revealing secrets and I, I think I do like to do that because I did, you know, I, I've been involved with enough editing and I am, you know, in contact with enough people who work on this that I, I think that's, that's definitely a part of the book. I think down to the details of how archival documents are manipulated in small and you know, possibly justifiable ways but to know that, that, that that is happening. But I think the, like, I like to think of it as more than just sort of a, a. It's not just a like titillating, you know, we're going to reveal secrets. But I try to get into Kind of the, the way that. That matters. So for instance, you know, I have an extended interview where I. That I did and that I include some sections of with Dan Partland, who's a veteran documentary producer who's done work both on sort of indie, indie, indie produced documentaries as well as things for cnn. And at a certain point in his career he was. Was working on this show Intervention, which still exists out of there in their 20 something season. Every episode features an addict who is going to be confronted by their family and friends with an intervention to get them to finally go to treatment. It is a very distressing show to watch and, and it is, you know, you know, it's, it's exploitative in some ways and yet it is undeniably compelling. And I think you could argue that it's actually. Actually maybe has a little more of a claim to. To actually to. To. To strong ethics than some other shows because of some of the ways that it's. Because it's actually doing things. An intervention is a, it is an accepted mode of, of, you know, of. Of trying to intervene in an addict's life. Anyways to get into that, you know, the, the details of that. He talks about how their process, you know, he, he was working on three or four seasons like over 100 episodes and they, they found that they needed to be very careful about their process because they. In preparing for showing up to shoot the person who is an addict as well as their family to comment on what's going on, etc, they have to do tons and tons of pre interviews, long, long phone interviews with everybody involved. And they came to realize that they're interviewing the fact that they're talking with people, people are giving in great detail of their lives, their relationships with. With these people, that family dynamics, etc, that they were essentially performing a form of talk therapy that without sort of meaning to. Or trying to. They were. You know, they were having. They were. They were put. Planting the seeds of. Of these people coming to realizations, you know, through this talking and through this interviewing about their own lives and perhaps about the roots of the problem and, and, and all of these things which, which the show of course wants to capture on came to modulate the way that they did their schedule so that they would not talk to them too much and have them come to these revelations and sort of have this, you know, these, these turns, these narrative turns as they call them. They can't have them happen too soon because then they're not there to record them. So you know, this getting into like wow, there's actually like these, this kind of thing where the intervention of the filmmaker actually affects the. It affects the outcome as. As you might understand would be almost if you think about it enough but in a show, a show like this which requires a certain, you know, a pretty heavily, heavily scheduled and you know, very detail oriented production that, that they need to kind of shoehorn that those sorts of things into the production schedule so that they can then capture them so that they can then tell the story within the very, very proscribed format. He talks in another section about, about the, the very precise, you know, modules that exist in every single. And you don't really notice that when you're watching one or two episodes but if you watch enough of them and you read the book, you're like, wow, yeah, these actually do correspond to a formula. Before the first commercial break this is going to happen. After that these two other things are going to happen. The intervention is always going to happen in the fourth segment, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So kind of. So anyways, those are, that's the level on which I wanted to try to explain sort of behind the scenes stuff both to just, you know, these you know, interesting sort of revealing secrets. But I would like to think that it's a little more profound than that and it has to do with these fundamentals of, of how documentary works well.
- [33:47]
Joel Czerny
And that this is where documentary film and fiction film or whatever we want to call the other type of film, they share the same thing which is they're going to, they use a specific language and or formats no matter what. You can see any feature film, especially if it's. And you're going to see the same things, the same concepts and for example the simplest thing and is in a narrative film if somebody early on mentions a specific tool, idea or knowledge, you know, at some point later on in the film it's going to come to use. It's just a given. Well, documentaries aren't going to necessarily be different with that. They're going to. Occasionally, you know, they will bring up something that will eventually come back. Whether the filmmakers knew about it at the time they were recorded or if it comes out later they chose to include it. And that's the editing part where what people include what a documentarian includes in a film makes all the difference in the world and where learning about documentary to me personally has been. One of the things I've found interesting is when I've been able to find background about a particular documentary. For example, some of Ken Burns full interviews that he did for Civil War are actually available where you can watch the whole interview that he took. And some other documentarians have put out their full interviews. So you get a chance to, you know, get a better sense just from watching the interviews where there may have been where edits were made and changes were. So that's the kind of thing that I think your book does a good job of sort of giving you a chance, you know, like, how does editing and other kinds of things done to try to tell the story.
- [35:33]
Jacob Bricka
Sure, sure, yeah, yeah. I also try to get into the details of how these, for instance, I, I was, this is something that I felt like I had only a, a dim grasp on when I started in terms of how is music used in documentaries. Of course, I've been the editor of many documentaries. I've been the one, you know, using music. I, I, There is a lot I know about it, but thinking about it from a sort of a, taking a step back, like, well, in, in what kinds of scenes is music does the music tend to be used in, you know, more than others? And so, for instance, you know, it does sort of make sense if you think about it, that on camera interviews are more difficult to, you will tend to have less, you know, music will not play it as a high, at a higher volume or have quite as much of a presence as in reenactments, for instance, just because of what the visual information is and how that can be supported or would be difficult to be supported by various kinds of music or details about, about sound. I go into a detailed comparison between two films that, that were both filmed in the civil war in Syria at around the same times in remarkably similar, different locations but remarkably similar circumstances. These underground hospital. Underground hospitals. Literally underground in one case. But they're, they're very different approaches to sound and how that relates to the, the conceit of the film to begin with. So in one film, film it is told from a more omniscient perspective where the, the camera isn't really referred to and that leads to a certain kind of logic in the way that sound is presented versus the other one which, where the, the filmmaker is very much present you, she is a character in the film. We, I see, you know, we, a lot of the, we see the camera jostling around. We see her in the shot as she points it up to herself etc, and that the sound, the, the conceit of the sound is really different in that film. And we hear the more, with more constraints, right? We hear the sound that is really constrained to what could have been captured on the top of her camera. Right. And so making that kind of comparison and then seeing. Well, it's not just that one is. It might seem that one is a little more authentic this one that where the sound comes from the camera versus this other one where it's actually being done in post. A lot of these sounds are being created through foley and extra and yet there's actually some sort of semi fictional conceits that even the one that is about that it's called for Sama where the. In theory all the sound is coming from the. The on camera mic. There are, you know, even within those constraints they're doing things which are, you know, they just support the narrative at various points in time that allow them to modulate the emotions, et cetera. So getting into those kinds of details and examples.
- [38:29]
Joel Czerny
Yeah, and I think that's where you. You mentioned it on. On the. On the issue of sound. But it's also the case with visuals where filmmakers will use what we call B roll film. You know, just general scenes of people walking or you know, water or different kinds of things trying. And you mentioned it before with something with. With another issue with another film where it sort of gives you the. The almost wants to say well this is where these two people walking are the two people who are talking on the. On the voiceover right now or this is. Or not just that kind of thing. You see it regularly in any kind of kind of film where they have to include additional video that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the characters like you were. You give the example of the Bronx Zoo tiger, right. In your introduction about. It turns out the picture they used was from a Getty image from years before. And yet it's led you. It leads you to believe at least in. In theory that what you're seeing is a picture of the actual tiger that tested positive for coronavirus virus.
- [39:40]
Jacob Bricka
Right. That's an example I use which is actually not from a documentary. It's from a. It's a newspaper article news story. Right. It's an online news story. But I use it to try to. To try to explain that in. In almost all situations documentary is a. The. The. It's an amalgam. There are various flows of information that come to. To you as. As an audience member. And it's the, it's the alchemy of those various flows. What it is that you're looking at, what you're hear come to know from a previous scene what might come to you with a title card, et cetera, that on a moment to moment, second by second basis is there to generate a certain alchemy and a certain set of meanings in the audience's mind. And so a way to explain that was to talk about this news story where it says, Bronx Zoo tiger test positive for coronavirus. It was in the early days of the pandemic. And there you see an image of a tiger and it says a tiger at the Bronx Zoo. And but if you do a tiny bit of digging and you see what the photo credit is, it's actually a Getty Images photo, which means that it came from a stock, stock library. And if you go look that up, you see that it was taken, it's remarkable. It was taken at the Bronx Zoo in the winter. So it's, it's, it's, you know, like season appropriate because it was, the story came out in the winter and you see snow on the ground, and yet it was taken a little over two years prior to the story coming out. And so there's this actually much more complicated set of facts behind your first impression, which is there's the tiger that, you know, that's one of the ones that tested positive. And in fact, well, that may or may not be true. It's not necessarily untrue. That could be one of the tigers. It says it's, you know, in that it, that it refers to it being four years old. Well, is it four years old when the picture was taken? Is it four years old now? And again, there's, and the point I make in that part is that there's nothing actually deceitful in any single one of these elements, right? The, the headline is, is, is, is, is truth line underneath it, you know, the sort of one with more words that is also truthful. The picture is a real picture. The photo credit tells you where it came from. The byline under the mean, all of it individually are things are facts, right? And there's nothing. And yet it's the, it's the impression generated by the amalgam that leads you to believe things which you have to dig into a little bit to see exactly where that impression came from. So that is something that has happened, happening pretty much all the time in documentary. And it's actually the, it's the productive ambiguity of the, of the sources, of the, of, of the flows of information that leads to most of the, the, you know, the meaning that is created in any given documentary. And so in a way like that is the, that's in the introduction and that is the simplest Overview that I could give of. All right. Well, most of the chapters here are in one form or another, going to break down how that meaning creation happens along all these different, you know, sound. I go into archival material. I go into the, you know, theoretically boring, but actually quite interesting topic of titles, little lower third titles that are telling you who people are and, you know, where they came from, the use of time, something I call flow. We already talked about presence, framing, and then also sort of breaking down what are the raw materials that are the sources of all these pieces of information so that you can think of them as discrete, separate elements.
- [43:16]
Joel Czerny
Right. And I mean, that's where I. The one question that I always have when. When I'm looking at a documentary, just like in a feature film, but it's sort of different. With a documentary which is supposed to be based on reality, where did it all start? I mean, what was the first thing the filmmaker did when planning out. And how has. How did things change over time based on interviews? I mean, does a documentarian start with the interviews? Do they start. Start with basic ideas? Do they do research? I mean, this is where reading a book like yours can be so useful because it can jog ideas as to how there is no one way to create a documentary. And every filmmaker has a different format, such as. And I've seen stories about documentaries that started one way that turned out to be completely different. I'm thinking of the Armstrong Lie, which was one of Alex Gibney on Lance Armstrong. He even says it right in the documentary, how he started to make a documentary about how great Lance Armstrong was until. And then it changes completely once the rest of the Armstrong story comes out.
- [44:26]
Jacob Bricka
Yeah, and that conceit of. I mean, that's a good example. I talked briefly about Alex Gibney films because he sort of has a style of his own that. Where he does tend to put himself in one degree, to one degree or another in the films. And he tends to narrate them himself. And he's narrating as himself, not an omniscient sort of Voice of God narrator, but rather I, Alex Gibney, the filmmaker. And he tends to provide a little bit of context of exactly that. Why he wanted to make the film, what the questions were, when he started, how his. Perhaps how his understanding came to change, et cetera. And that is one very specific, specific, particular way of. Of framing the information where. Whereas a different filmmaker might just choose a. A different frame, a different. A different format almost, and where you might have to come to those revelations in A. In a different way or they're actually going to be kind of excluded from you. You're. You're not really going to learn anything about, at least from watching the film itself, about what, How. How things came to be. So, yeah, I mean, that's a great question to ask is. Is how did this film come about? And it's one that is often asked when, you know, at film festivals or whatever of filmmakers. And it's something that filmmakers tend to like to answer because you get to sort of. You get to finally explain some of the backstory about how this thing came to be.
- [45:58]
Joel Czerny
Yeah. Because of course, another person who's the. Tend to narrate his own is of course, Michael Moore. And it's not exactly the same way because a lot of Gibney's. And you're right, I mean, he's hasn't done all of his films. Obviously Peter Coyote did Enron, the Smartest Guys in the Room. But you're right in more recent, including the TV series that he did for Netflix, the two seasons. I don't know if that's it, just two seasons or there's going to be more. But anyway, that there's been, you know, he does do that where he's become now his own narrator to a large extent. I want to talk a little bit about the film. Two examples that actually shows the lack of narration, films without narration, and those that depend on archival footage. The one I want to mention specifically, and yes, it's one of my other favorites is the Atomic Cafe, which is nothing but archival footage. And yet there's still a narrative, there's still a story. It's a largely chronological narrative. But there's an example to me of a great documentary that doesn't have a single voice other or, you know, and there is music in it, though, although the music is all reasonably straightforward. But it's just one. That's an example to me of a great documentary that does not. At first glance, it looks like all they did was put a bunch of old newsreels and footage together.
- [47:29]
Jacob Bricka
Yeah, yeah. I don't believe I cover that film in the book, but it is.
- [47:33]
Joel Czerny
It's on your list.
- [47:34]
Jacob Bricka
That's why I. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't cover it in detail, but it is. It's a terrific example of exactly what you're talking about. And there's a. There's a more recent film called Mike Wallace is Here, which is about. It's also an all archival film. It's a. It's about Mike Wallace, the 60 Minutes reporter for many, many years and his, his very colorful career. That film is fascinating because he's a, a. He is an interesting and sometimes prickly character and all that. You know, they, They've just got archival interviews of him, so they, that's what they've got to work with. And, and so they don't get to formulate their own questions. They're limited to what people have tended to ask him in the past and the fact that he was, he was a relatively private person who, I mean, he was kind of volatile and, and voluble on camera. But in terms of his private life, he, he never really revealed very much and he was sort of loath to talk. They do these really interesting juxtapositions in the film where you get all of this, this sort of psychological insight into him as a person and his motivations just by how they insinuate things. And they kind of, they kind of insinuate in many scenes that there is sort of a. There's another layer of meaning. There's a subtext to what he's talking about. And so it's not about the words that he's saying in interview, it's about the things that he's not saying. And, and you get these things, these very. Actually quite clear insinuations about his, you know, sort of his inner psychological life just from the way that these things are arranged and, and presented that I thought was, was quite masterful. Of course, it's a point of view, right? This is someone. What someone from the outside has, based on their extensive research, the conclusions that they have come to. It's one point of view. It, it, you know, I mean, his. I would be curious to know what his family members, you know, thought of that film, for instance. But that's a, That's a great ex. Of how juxtaposition and, and actually certain, you know, those films like that, I think tend to benefit from the constraints that they either impose on themselves or that impose. Are imposed on them for one reason or another, where it, you know, having something play out like that with a limited number of these elements leads to, in the best case scenario at least, really, really interesting experiences for the audience because they're. They're having to get very creative within a smaller space, you know.
- [50:06]
Joel Czerny
Then the other one I wanted to mention, and this is one that I didn't even know of the story until I actually watched the documentary. And I purposely didn't reach out to try to find what was going on. It's a series. It's called the Staircase, which was on Netflix. I don't know if it still is, but it's an incredibly fascinating documentary about the death of someone and whether it was a murder. And it literally is done as it's happening. I mean, the filmmakers had what seemed to be total access, at least to the person who ends up being accused. And it's actually in multiple parts in the sense that it comes to an ending and then continues when there's a change later on. So even though it came out in 2018, it was something that took a long time to put together. And I think Staircase, I found it to be fascinating. Fascinating just as the story, but also as a documentary because there's no narration. I mean, there's a lot of. A lot of titles, but it's just one of those things that you learn the story as it goes just pretty much the same time as everybody that it's happening to.
- [51:20]
Jacob Bricka
Yeah. And that's a film that went in in reverse of how some of these go, because they. I don't remember what the fictional version of it was, but there was a. There was a scripted. A recent scripted show that was. Was made based on. On.
- [51:34]
Joel Czerny
Right. Hbo. HBO did the. Did the series, but I think the documentary came first. But you're right, it was just. It was just. I found it to be just so fascinating as a documentary.
- [51:44]
Jacob Bricka
Yeah, yeah. And it was done in two parts. There was a. It was a French documentary filmmaker who made the first series. And then when Netflix got involved, they presented the original. However many episodes, plus they did, I think five more. They. They continued the story on. And yes, that was a case of clearly the. The Michael Peterson who is the accused, as well as his family, decided to 100% allow the filmmakers to be there for all their discussions about it, for all their, you know, you have it. It does feel like there is. Is quite total access. And yes, you. You. You see the. This bombshell play out within their family over the course of a period of time. That is a. It's. It is a fascinating film. The more recent episodes, I thought was. It was a bit of a case of padding the. There. There were. There were. There were shows where that felt like they were a lot longer than they needed to be. But especially that first. The first set of original episodes was. Was totally fascinating.
- [52:51]
Joel Czerny
Yeah, it's. It's. You're right. You can usually tell that kind of thing. I mean, it's just like I say, the. The as a documentary, these are the kind of films and I hope I got it right. That there was no narration. I'm pretty sure there isn't, but I think you're right. Yeah, I. I do know that they used a lot of. Of titles and things to try to explain what was going on at times and, and that was good. But even just the background there is bits and pieces of the background of how the film is film crew got involved in the first place. So it was just. That's included. But so I know we've just been talking about various ones. I wanted to ask you. Obviously when you put the book together, you did it with interviews and you list who you actually interviewed. And as we mentioned early on it looked like almost all the interviews were done you said via zoom. And it was right there at the beginnings and in the middle of the.
- [53:43]
Jacob Bricka
COVID.
- [53:45]
Joel Czerny
Where did you decide? I mean it seems to me these are people who you felt were obvious people to interview or was there anybody in particular that you felt you were really particularly glad to speak to or that helped you with. With putting this all together or did they all have their obvious purposes?
- [54:05]
Jacob Bricka
So it's kind of a. Different people were interviewed for different reasons. Some of them them were because I thought that a film that they had worked on in some direct capacity I wanted to talk about and therefore I wanted to know as much detail as possible about. About the background of it and how they thought of what they were doing etc. In some cases it was just people who I've. You know, Steve James for instance, you know, the Chicago filmmaker who was first made famous by his. His series Hoop Dreams and then has gone on to make lots and lots of other films and series. He was someone where. And I use him primarily to talk about the choices of. Of sort of observational filmmaking versus filmmaking in which you overtly engage with the. With the participants on camera. In you know, in that case the. Again the I. He's quoted in two or three different places. But the one that I'm thinking of right now, he really interesting point about. Because I personally as a filmmaker I've always been attracted to sort of observational films that kind of are very seemingly restrained and where you don't feel the presence of the filmmaker. But he made a great point which is that that by doing that you kind of take out the ability of showing the audience that the participants, the people who are the, you know, characters so called in the film that they really often have a great capacity for self reflection and for. For explaining and understanding their own circumstances in really detailed and observant and complex ways that you. You really Exclude if all you do is you, if you never ask them any questions, right? If you just show them interacting with each other and if the only time they're going to reflect in that is if it comes up, you know, separate from the, the production and that, that he, I think, has been really successful at showing the, really, the deep intelligence and nuance of his subjects, participants. And so anyways, that was the reason why he was involved. And then some other people are just folks that I know, and I knew that because of my past relationship with them that they would feel comfortable talking with me about just what they do and such. So. Helen Kearns, for instance, is a documentary editor. She worked, if I, if memory serves, on, on that show, the Keepers that I mentioned earlier. But she also talked, she's quoted talking about archival documents and for instance, like a legal document that you might see in a, in a film. And she doesn't mention which one it was, but that it actually was altered. And the facts are not altered, right? They're not making you believe something that didn't, that wasn't true. And yet the arrangement of the, of the, of the elements on screen, like, were slightly rearranged so that you could get an instant recognition of exactly what that document meant. So there's another great example of you, you're seeing one thing and you may be thinking that, that you've, okay, there it was, there is the flat fact of the document. And in fact, it's a slightly altered version of the flat fact of the document. And it's, it's been altered in ways that are, I think, justifiable from a storytelling point point of view, because there are demands to have an audience in most kinds of films to make a relatively quick and instant recognition of meaning, right? You, you were shown an image, and it's on the screen for maybe five or six seconds or maybe less. And it, it is there to prove a particular point or to make a particular point, and then the film is going to go on to the next beat. And you, you know, if you're going to show the original document, there's too much information in it, right? You can't instantly recognize what the point, the part that they want to point out is. And so you can do this by blurring certain areas. But sometimes filmmakers feel the need to slightly rearrange things there. And again, their justification is that we're just helping the audience get to the meaning that was already there. And they haven't changed anything from a, you know, all the impression that you're going to be left with is. Is true to the document, and yet you couldn't have gotten there in that small amount of time. So she was someone who I talked to for that reason, I did talk to a fair number of music composers, users again, because as I said earlier, that was something where I felt that I had a lot to learn and I wanted to hear about how people who work in documentary. The question that occupied me there was how is it different working in documentary from working in scripted fiction films? How does that. As a composer, as a music composer, how do you approach it differently? Do you approach it differently? And one of the insights was that, yes, people feel like there's not as much room to be quite as bombastic, basically that you're. Because you're tethered to reality, theoretically, you are going to kind of use a softer, more feathery touch. You're going to, you're not going to have. And that is true. Also with a, with a sound designer I talked to who compared the work that he's done on scripted films versus documentaries. You're doing foley in both of them, meaning that you're adding footsteps, you're actually adding sounds so that, so that the images can have more resonance, but you're doing it in a way that basically draws less attention to itself. In a way it's like a little more tricky. It's a little more, it's more subtle perhaps, and in some cases it's incredibly subtle. Where they're recording sound in intentionally kind of quote, unquote, bad ways, where they're intentionally doing fully that in a regular film would sound bad, but it needs to fit the stylistic parameters of the film, which in a documentary is often kind of rough and, and you know, like, like they're, you know, things don't play out perfectly. So it's got a rough, you know, exterior for some of the sound design. So if you were to put in a super clean sound within that, it would sound really weird. It would draw attention to itself. So you have to actually sort of dirty it up and get it to fit and, and yet it still is, you know, if you come down to it as performing the same function of kind of directing your attention in a scene of making, making your connection to a character, to a participant feel more direct and more, more quote, unquote, real emotional connection. So these are some examples of people I talked to and, and I got there. Really. It's, it's for many different reasons for, for why I interviewed the, the folks.
- [60:44]
Joel Czerny
That I did well and we haven't even we haven't even gotten to talking about. We're not going to because we're running out of time. But the whole idea of reenacting reenactments in documentaries, how when Thin Blue Line came out, how. It was probably the biggest criticism of the, that film. And yet, as you've pointed out, and you point out, is that it, it's become more and more normal. Now the question is exactly how involved the reenacting is. Is it just something trying to create a point or whatever? But overall, it's just no question that that is. The book does go into detail about that, which I think is important because those are the kind of issues that we as the viewer needs to consider this, that the whole point of view thing. And what is the meaning behind what a documentarian is trying to do.
- [61:33]
Jacob Bricka
Yeah. And that's something that I would, in a future book or some sort of. I would love to get further into that. I really love what I was able to put in there, but I think there's a lot more territory to explore there to really talk with people who specialize in reenactment, for instance, and who think about. About it on a, on a really detailed level. I would love to hear more about what, how, how people think about that.
- [62:03]
Joel Czerny
Well, and it sounds to me, at least from what you're saying in the book is that documentaries are doing quite well as a, as a, as a genre of film. And it's great that we have the ability these days to see so many of these. And I was looking at your local list of the ones you cited, and I know not all of them were cited for purposes of. You weren't trying to say this one's particularly bad or good or anything. In fact, some of them are regular narrative films. But still, it's a good list. And I. Looking at it just if you look at the list of shows cited in film, how many of them I've seen, and I'm saying, oh, good, I'm glad I, you know, it's helpful, but.
- [62:40]
Jacob Bricka
Well, you're a very, you're an excellent documentary viewer then.
- [62:45]
Joel Czerny
Well, and the names, too. Picking out the names of some of the people who directed or edited, and those are the kind of things that I find because that's the way it is with any film. You find a film that featured a certain person was written by somebody, directed by somebody, and the next thing you know you want to see more of that person. And so the same way going on with documentaries. Well, anyway, like I say, I hope people reach out and See the film or read the book. Get it. Those of you who teach, I think you're going to want to have this as a book because, I mean, it's. It's not a huge book. It's, you know, it's, it's. But it's concise. It's got lots of photos and images to make your points. So it's not just all text, which is great. So, yeah, it's.
- [63:29]
Jacob Bricka
It's.
- [63:29]
Joel Czerny
It's a.
- [63:29]
Jacob Bricka
It's about 200 pages in a. In a. In a pretty slim volume. And that was what. What? Oxford. That was their. In fact, they actually, their initial brief to me was to actually make it only about half the length that it currently is. They wanted something, or maybe two thirds. And then once I started writing, they said, oh, no, I think this needs. You know, you've got. There's too much good stuff going on here. You need to make it a little longer. But it's still. The format that they chose is, I think, an approachable one. It doesn't feel. It feels like you could pick it up and, And. And get through it without. Without it feeling like an impossible task or, Or a burden. And they also decided to price it at a pretty, you know, it's. They price it at under 20 bucks, so that's, That's. I think it's making it also more accessible. So.
- [64:17]
Joel Czerny
Thank you for your time. I know that.
- [64:19]
Jacob Bricka
Thank you, Joel.
- [64:21]
Joel Czerny
The book's been out since March at least, so you had its first periods. But I'm glad we were able to talk finally. We got delayed a few times, and it's a great book. It's a great introduction for anybody that wants to learn more about documentaries and their importance. And it's also useful for those of us who may have been watching documentaries for a long time. Long time. So it's great that it's coming from somebody who not only teaches documentary, but also works in the field, so to speak. Mostly that's your main work has been in documentary, so I think that that gives it a extra usefulness.
- [65:01]
Jacob Bricka
Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate your interest and for the opportunity to come chat about it.
- [65:07]
Joel Czerny
Okay. Thanks for all your time.
- [65:10]
Jacob Bricka
Okay.
- [65:23]
Joel Czerny
If reading the Bible has ever felt confusing, you're not alone.
- [65:27]
Jacob Bricka
Hey, I'm Zach Windall, and I wrote.
- [65:29]
Joel Czerny
The Bible Simplified just for you. And now the audiobook is on Spotify. Let's make this the year that scripture finally clicks.