Film Courage: Did you plan to be a filmmaker? Mark Landsman, Filmmaker [SCANDALOUS movie] I always loved movies so I never thought one day
that I was going to make movies until that happened in college. But I was always
obsessed with movies and my brother and I would go like when I was a
kid and suburban Chicago like movies were like 350 so I would go to movies
all the time we would sneak into the r-rated movies often because you could
and we just saw everything under the Sun and it was like a big deal so you know
this is the time that we would wait for hours and hours and hours for Star Wars
to open or the Indiana Jones movies to open and you know I would be in life
like two and a half three hours waiting and the lines would wrap around the
theater and um so I didn't plan to be but it was always a passion and an
obsession of mine since I was a kid when did it become something you had to do
I took an incredible class in college it was called the American documentary
tradition the professor showed us pretty much the entire Canon of classic
American documentary films we started with Nanook of the north we moved into
pennybaker and the Mazal brothers and Barbara Kopple Rob Epstein and Jeffrey
Friedman really all of the major documentarians of the day we watched all
those films and then we would sit around and we would talk about them often
really emotionally or you know some you'd be crying there'd be you know a
lot of debate and I was really my eyes really were open to what film could do
the power of film to generate those kinds of reactions and people really
knocked me out so that's when I got the idea that this is actually something
that people do this is a profession and that's when I started to pursue it
really after that college class what do you get from filmmaking that you don't
get from anything else I think I need to be a filmmaker you have to have any sort
of an innate curiosity about humans you have to want to know about people you
have to want to know about all the different shades they're
inside of them the light the dark everything in between I think you have
to really love people because it's not a solitary pursuit it's a communal effort
it's collaborative so it's a combination of being curious about people and also
really enjoying being around people I mean unless you're making little stop
animation films in your garage which is totally cool and you're by yourself
you're gonna be with people and so filmmaking is this incredible
opportunity to learn about the world through the eyes of other other humans
and also to create these incredible little micro communities who are your
collaborators you know your your writers your cinematographers your producers
your production designers your everybody that you get to work with it's like this
each film is this opportunity to be a little mini mini family it can also be a
mini disaster you know or a big disaster depending on so it's just this
incredible opportunity to learn a lot about yourself by being around other
people you know who are kind of on this sort of common goal you're all on this
ship together trying to get to this place in the
service of a story yeah I think it was at Francis Ford Coppola and I use this
quote a lot but nothing man bites chaos like passion and you know just so-so
yeah like you're saying it could be a wonderful experience or there can be a
lot of things that yeah it can happen because it's it's high-stakes pressure
yeah yeah to make your day if it's you know I'm sure with documentaries it's
different like I think it's not any different with documentaries I mean I
think people like to think that there's documentaries and there's narrative
cinema and that there that there are completely different lanes of filmmaking
but there's so much that's the same it's still story it's still character you
still have to engage people in the most exciting situations they're both for a
big screen so you have to think about how you're capturing the images and what
you're you know the only difference really is that with documentary it's
unpredictable you don't know what people are gonna say you don't know what
they're gonna do in scripted for the most part you are controlling all that
so there's a thrill to it but I think all the same things that
I've learned in narrative filmmaking I apply to documentary filmmaking a lot of
my favorite filmmakers are filmmakers that have their hands deep in
documentary as well Scorsese Spike Lee Bennett Miller people
who go out and make films you know about the world and real people and then go
off and make incredible narratives as well and I think a lot of the tools that
you learn as a documentarian are very similar if not the same that you that
you need as a scripted filmmaker it's story I mean really everything is in
service of the story the only difference is that in documentary its life it's
true it's real and you're in service of sort of doing the best job to bring that
to light but you still at some some point have to craft where it's going and
even if it's showing you you have to sort of paint you know for the audience
perspective within that two-hour absolutely I mean you're still using the
same tools you're still you're still using editing music you're still
deciding about composition and lighting and and you're still using incredible
cameras that we have at our disposal right now graphics and animation all
kinds of stuff I think what's really exciting time to be a documentary
filmmaker because those tool kits are expanding you know people's ideas about
documentaries are like really really expanding now so you're seeing films
that are that you wouldn't have seen back in kind of earlier eras of
documentary documentary used to be more of kind of like frederick wiseman like
you go in you show up in a big hospital or an institution you turn on your
camera you let life unfold I mean now they become a lot different a lot more
cinematic a lot more I'd say engaging in some ways like Sherman's march yes from
years ago and and and maybe just see it today it would seem slow I still love
that film yeah and I love his little like sort of talking to the camera and
and almost like a precursor to some reality TV where you have people doing
these confessionals but a much different feeling from it yeah I don't think you
would have
a Morgan Spurlock if you hadn't had Sherman's march that's true you know
right
you