Real subjects, given the time and the frame they are owed.
Overview
Documentary work built on access and patience. We spend longer in pre-production than most, because the difference between a portrait and a press release is usually how well you knew the room before walking into it.
Challenge
The subject had been interviewed enough times to have an answer ready for everything. Every previous attempt had produced a spokesperson, not a person, and no amount of lighting was going to fix that.
Our Approach
Weeks in the room without a camera. We structured late and overshot deliberately, because a documentary that knows its ending on day one is usually an advert wearing a coat. The edit protected the subject's meaning even where it complicated ours.
Outcome
A feature cut that a festival programmer took on the strength of one scene, and that the subject could watch without asking for a change. Both of those were the same decision made early.
- Naomi Blake
- (Direction)
- Felix Hart
- (Field Producer)
- Iris Coleman
- (Edit)
“They were around for a month before anything was filmed. By the time it was, I had forgotten to perform.”
Amare Tesfaye,Subject
