PMA: the conclusion

My last week at PMA was rather hectic. There was a lot to finish on Thursday, as Terri (the researcher I’ve been working with) came in to look at the archiving I’ve done, and figure out if there’s anything else that she needed to get from me before I left.

I had meetings with Kenneth and Agata during which time they told me about the documentary industry from their different standpoints — Kenneth very much working within the broadcasting, bigger budget realm, and Agata coming from the independent film side. The best part of all of this is that I do think that I have a future in documentary, even if it isn’t going to be what I’m doing all of the time.

This is where I leave off and pick up in my paper. Is being a documentary filmmaker a viable profession for someone in my current position?

We’ll see…

(I’ll post my paper on here in a few days… don’t worry!)

An Outline of my Film

I am going on Birthright to a homeland I have never considered home. My father is Jewish, but we were never raised with religion. I have been to a synagogue three times. Two weddings and a Bar Mizvah. I always felt as though I was on the outside of a special clique with my Jewish friends at high school in Toronto. They went to Jewish camp, had huge parties for their Bar and Bat Mizvahs and had a family and social dynamic that I could never relate to. I don’t look Jewish. My dad certainly doesn’t act Jewish. It was only as I became older and started exploring my family history and spending time with my Jewish relatives in Australia that I have really connected with this part of myself.

When I was in my second year of university at McGill in Montreal, I met a Lebanese-born Canadian girl of Palestinian heritage. Dina is bright and driven and passionate. She is currently working in Ramallah in the West Bank for the Negotiations Affairs Office of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. She co-edited an Arab-Israeli Journal focusing on peace in Israel and Palestine. She is one of my best friends. It was her suggestion that I go on Birthright. She wants me to visit her.

The conflict in Israel is something I have always skirted around. As much as I read about the topic, I can never decide how I really feel. I don’t believe in violence. Yet when a people have been oppressed, discriminated against, exterminated, because of ignorance and prejudice, I can understand when violent measures are taken. But then, driving people out of their land, and discriminating against them in the very same senseless way, seems counterintuitive to me. I just don’t know.

So there it is. I am a not-very-Jewish girl going on a programme for Jewish youth, a trip that I have been told before is unapologetically pro-Zionist (and borderline emotionally manipulative). After the trip, I will be staying with my impassioned Palestinian friend in the West Bank, and travelling around with her and her equally active boyfriend. Will I be able to stay where I am, sitting on the fence? Or will this trip prompt something to change in me? Can I possibly get a clearer idea of how to feel about an inherently incomprehensible and complex situation?

***

My trip to Israel begins here, in Montreal, with the preparations. I will film myself while I am packing, as I speak to a friend about my thoughts on what the trip will be like.

When I arrive in Israel, I will be travelling all over with Birthright. I will be filming every step of the way, and I intend to interview my fellow travellers, as well as the people we meet along the way. I’m sure I will be able to get some great interviews with people from the Israeli side promoting the actions of the country/government. (And I know that I will need to be careful not to be labelled a shit-disturber and get kicked off the programme!)

I also want to speak to Israeli locals about how they feel about the violence, the possibility of peace, and what sort of threat they are under from the Arab world. I’m going to try to be as impartial as possible. I am a humanist and I don’t believe that the violence that has been used and continues to be used is the only way. I really don’t have issue with Israel per se. I just can’t align myself with policies that wilfully ignore logic in favour of violence.

After ten days of whirlwind travelling around Israel with the trip, I will be starting on the second leg of my journey. I will take a bus to Ramallah in the West Bank to stay with Dina. She and her boyfriend, Hazem, who lives and works in Bethlehem, are going to show me Palestine and introduce me to many people in the communities of activists with whom they interact. Dina volunteers at a refugee camp where she teaches English and French. Hazem is making a documentary himself, and has promised to organize interviews with various interesting people with whom he interacts. I have no idea what will really happen. I just want to go into this with an open mind.

I’d like to tie in history and current affairs as much as possible, although this is more about me learning first-hand about a place and situation, than about informing the world about what I think is going on. I want to get a wide range of people’s opinions. It will be interesting to see how accurately the reality of the region is actually portrayed in the media. What do we, in the West, really know?

I am going to include myself in the footage (i.e. speaking to the camera as I shoot, turning the camera on myself to discuss what I am seeing/learning/feeling.) I’m not going to try to make a film that’s out of my reach. What I want to make is a film that enables the viewer to see a situation through the eyes of someone who is learning, and trying to figure out how she feels about an incredibly complex situation, rather than someone whose mind is already made up.

Week 6: PMA

Talk about whirlwind. I haven’t even had a chance to think this week, never mind write about what I’ve been doing!

Last weekend we filmed for our film and video class, which means that this week we’ve been editing. Kenneth was extremely kind and lent me a really great camera to film with, in addition to the one we were provided with at school, which meant that we could get a whole lot more footage than we could have just with the one (as we were filming on the mountain on Sunday and it was time sensitive).

This week I have continued with archiving photographs and images for Plague, as well as finding more images for the Emily Carr show, which I sent to be digitized so that they can be included in the episode. There was a bit of a mix up with the rights and cost of the images. Emily Carr’s paintings are in the public domain, but the Vancouver Art Museum, which possesses the majority of her works, charges an obscene amount of money for high res. digital images. So apparently we’re just going to scan pictures ourselves and put them in the film. That said, the museum has the most incredible website which contains pretty much every extant image by Carr, which can be searched in various ways, and made all of my work a lot easier!

Archiving images from the BANQ was also facilitated by a shortcut I discovered. The image number (which I already had) could just be copied and pasted into the URL. After doing a hundred or so images manually, searching through the website, waiting for various pages to load, I discovered this. It definitely made a drawn-out task a little less tiresome!

I have had a couple of meetings with Kenneth this week. The first involved our talking about my trip to Israel and how I’m going to approach the film I want to make. He asked me to write up and outline of the film (which I will post here), emphasising how important it is that I make a film about myself, as that’s something that I can do that no one else could, and it will therefore be more fresh and exciting. That said, this is a first film, so I need to do something within my reach. I’m so excited!

The meeting we had yesterday was highly informative. We discussed different options for funding in the documentary film industry and he told me about the various ways in which the projects at PMA are being funded. But I’ll get into that more in my paper on the industry…

Next week will be my last. I really can’t believe it. This has been an incredible experience so far. I will be very sad to leave!

Week 5: PMA

This week has simply disappeared. I actually came in yesterday when I had an extra hour to spare to get some extra work done.

I have been learning so much about the business just by being here. The work that I’ve been doing this week has involved the Emily Carr biography that’s being made for the Extraordinary Canadians series (the same one with Nellie McClung that I was researching for). What I’ve been doing is going through the Carr paintings in the show, figuring out what they are and when they were painted, and compiling a document of these. A rather time-consuming process, but Kenneth seemed really pleased when I sent him my work.

I’ve also been working on more archiving of photographs for Plague, as well as going through Jefferson (the director)’s shooting notes and finding other images and documents that we wants to include in the film.

The shooting last week was really great. I got to see a small film crew in action — from filming in a studio with a dolly to filming on location with and without a tripod. Watching the DOP and her assistant in action is incredible. They don’t even need to speak to one another to communicate. They clearly work together so much that all communication is physical. It’s like watching a well-oiled machine. They are also really nice people, which is a great bonus when working non-stop for 5 days with the same little group.

I only have two more weeks left here. I can’t really believe it!

Kenneth wants to meet next week to talk about the Nellie McClung research I did, and also to discuss what I’m planning for my documentary in Israel. We’re also going to have an informational meeting in which he and Agata are going to debrief me on the industry, on funding and broadcasting in Canada — all information I’m desperate to get.

As I’ve said before, I’m extremely pleased to be working in a smaller production company. I’m really getting a good idea of how things work, and most definitely think that I’ve chosen an industry very well-suited to my interests!

PMA Shooting

Assisting on a shoot — a documentary shoot at that — is something that I had very little knowledge of before Wednesday.

My job, of course, was to do whatever I was asked. Yes, I did get everyone coffees. Running errands is the best part of being an intern. Isn’t it?

Actually, I have been doing some pretty cool things. I have been in charge of release forms and make-up. The release forms are good because I get to chat with the interviewees, and all of the people we have spoken to are extremely interesting. The shooting is for The Year of the Plague and consequently, doctors and other experts have been our subjects. While we started out with interviews at the McGill studio (black backdrop, great lighting, focusing on what is said rather than what’s going on), we moved on to the Children’s Hospital to shoot the microbiology labs and then up to the General to interview another doctor and nurse in the ER. The PR woman for the hospital was also really interesting and I got to chat with her about what she does — another interesting job in the field of communications. It’s incredible how many possibilities there are in this field!

Today I’m not at the shoot because Kenneth needs me to work on the Emily Carr show. I am going through itand taking note of the names and dates of each painting that was used. This is labour intensive. I also have to find a chronological list of all of Carr’s paintings which is proving easier said than done. However, I do get to look at Carr’s pictures and read about her in the process. I’m very pleased that I chose this industry. And that I managed to land an internship at PMA. There is nothing better than enjoying one’s work.

Two hours later, I did end up going to the shoot this morning because I was needed for make-up. Michael Bliss had some extremely interesting things to say. I’m really excited to see this film take shape!

Week 4: PMA

This week is going to be really exciting. We are scheduled to shoot interviews tomorrow through Saturday, and I’m really keen to be involved with the actual process of making the film, as I’ve never been present for the filming of a professional calibre documentary. I met Jefferson, the director, this morning and asked him what I’ll be doing. His response: “All the fun stuff.” I think that means everything that anyone else doesn’t have time to do.

This past Thursday I had another good day. I finished archiving the pictures for Plague from the McCord Museum archives, and then made a trip up to the Montreal General Hospital to look for pictures of the hospital during the time of the smallpox epidemic. I like doing research.

I will be posting a second time this week. I am certain that the days of shooting will be an incredible learning experience!

Week 3: PMA

I feel extremely lucky to be working here at PMA. As a learning environment, I couldn’t have found my way into a warmer, more positive place. Everyone is incredibly helpful and I have been amassing information every day.

At the moment I am mostly getting up to speed on the projects that I will be working on. Having read the notes for the Year of the Plague, one of the tasks I have been asked to perform is archiving the photographs and still visual materials for this project. A rather large and potentially tedious task, this has actually been intriguing as despite the clerical mundanity of filing photographs and labelling files, I get to see what Montreal was like in the late 1800s, and have already learned a lot about the city and the way in which people lived, interacted and thought a hundred years ago. Further, I have been researching smallpox, and by doing shot lists of various documentaries and AV materials from the BBC and ABC, I am getting a good idea of what would happen in Montreal (and Canada and the world) if there was an outbreak of smallpox or some sort of biological warfare with the aim of an epidemic. Plus I’ve learned a whole lot about a disease that I knew hardly anything about.

The other project that I will be working on, and have hence been reading up on is the Extraordinaty Canadians biography that we’ll be doing on Nellie McClung. I knew so very little about her but it turns out that she is a most exceptional woman who is arguably the most influential woman in Canada and most certainly had an incredible effect on the way that women are viewed in Canada. If it hadn’t been for Nellie’s gift for public speaking, sense on humour and absolutely relentless sense of morality and equality, Canada would very likely be a different place from the country it now is.

What’s so inspiring about Nellie is that she lived her life in the way that many women now see their roles. She believed in women and saw no reason why women shouldn’t be able to run the world just as well (she often argued, better) than men. Her style of feminism was not anti-male, but rather pro-female, and pro-family and Christian values. She drove to raise the standards of living for women, and avidly sought to improve the standard of living and rights of women immigrants and those unprotected by the law or family. Her avid prohibition stance was a result of the alcoholism and dissolution of families and morality that she saw in her native Manitoba, and then later Alberta and BC, and looking at the statistics and changes that took place in these parts of Canada when liquor was outlawed, seems to have done a great deal of good for the region, and especially for the quality of life of the women living the in prairies.

As she grew older, she became a more and more prominent public figure, and she rallied behind other causes. Whenever she witnesses social injustice, she made a fuss, and the simple presence of her voice alerted many Canadians to another side of the story — a side that might have been easy to ignore but would not remain unheard because of this firebrand of a woman.

Now that I have read about her, I will be working with the director on the film. I don’t know what I’m going to be doing yet — and of couse I will have to meet her first — but I’m super-excited to work on this film and learn more about this woman.

PMA Productions Internship

Today is day two of an internship which I will be doing for the next seven weeks at an independent documentary film production company in Montreal.

While initially I thought that my work would be centred around the day-to-day running of the office, I have in fact lucked out. I’ll be working in conjunction with a researcher on their film The Year of the Plague, which is currently in development, as well as Production Assisting in the shooting of interviews that will take place at the end of May. This means that I will actually have real work to do, rather than just filing and helping whoever I can with the menial tasks that interns often have to put up with.

So far I have been familiarizing myself with the research for this film, which is based on the book Plague by Michael Bliss, and has been adapted into a documentary by Jefferson Lewis, who will also be directing the film. As the film was bought by Discovery, and yet is very historical, PMA is currently going through the process of figuring out how to bring in more of the present angle of bioterrorism and what would happen in Montreal if there were an epidemic of smallpox. A lot of the work I am going to be doing will involve research on this very subject, as well as creating some sort of coherent archival system of the research and images that have already been acquired.

This afternoon, I am watching footage from the BBC and ABC and making shot lists which will be used by the editors. This I haven’t done before, but which is similar to taking notes on audio interviews, something I have plenty of experience doing. No huge challenges so far, but I am extremely optimistic about working here. All of the staff are incredibly friendly and everyone seems very enthusiastic about the work they are doing.

I will also be meeting later on with Tom and Terri, two of the researchers on the film, with whom I will discuss my role as a researcher, and also figure out a filing system for the images that are currently in a troublesome state.