Documentary debates – Page 2 – Documentary Field Notes and Flashpoints

Sexy concrete – documentary theatre

SexyBeton2011 — France Roland and Maude Laurendeau-Mondoux in 'Sexy béton'.

Last week I went to see a terrific documentary play called SEXY BÉTON, or “sexy concrete”. It was created by Annabel Soutar of the Porte Parole theatre company in Montreal – only the last in a series of documentary theatre performances.

And this truly is a documentary ‘démarche’ – to use this excellent French word which means a way of proceeding, an approach which involves a particular method. It’s an investigation of the cave-in of a concrete overpass that killed five people and seriously injured six others in Laval, just north of Montreal in 2006.

Annabel and her colleagues create a performance which is a hybrid of a documentary film shoot, a journalistic investigation and participatory research. They have a big advantage in that they don’t represent a media organization and they don’t have to bring a camera when they go to meet people. They record audio, and then use excerpts of people’s statements or dialogue to construct their play. People don’t have their guards up the way they would with a more elaborate or more journalistic setup.

What we learn from the play is revealing, shocking and thought-provoking. To sum it all up, this is a tragedy for which no one takes responsibility. The engineers, the construction companies, the sub-contractors, the civil servants working for the Department of Transport – no one wants to fess up to any wrongdoing or negligence.

To Annabel and her co-conspirators this case is a metaphor for the general state of affairs in our society. A lot is going wrong, catastrophically wrong, but no one is responsible. This is an important point.

And, in addition, the play seems incredibly timely in the present Québec context. The action takes place in Laval – Quebec’s second largest city – where municipal corruption is just now the subject of frequent scandals. And it deals with the construction industry, at a moment where a majority of Quebecers would like to see an official inquiry into corruption and wrongdoings in this sector. (Radio-Canada’s excellent investigative show Enquête should be credited with most of the revelations on these subjects.)

In creating this play, Annabel and her colleagues decided to do more than investigate. They attempted to convince the surviving victims to go for a lawsuit. Ignoring the advice from high-profile lawyer Julius Grey not to push the victims, they try hard but fail, and (though one might disagree with what they are doing) this is an important and interesting part of the story.

In watching the excellent crew of actors perform the interaction between the victims and with the documentarians, I felt like I was completely reliving my experience with the innocent victims of organized crime who were the subject of my film Hellbent for Justice (‘Pendant que court l’Assassin’.)

In both cases, the victims were completely unprepared for the complex physical, psychological and legal realities they suddenly had to deal with. And in both cases they have to confront bureaucratic machineries which don’t take their real-life situation into account.

The mise en scène (designed by Sophie Vajda and André Perrier) is great, the actors are fantastic, and completely bilingual. Watching this play is a truly Montreal experience of the best kind.

The play is still on until Feb 26. I am asking Annabel Soutar a few questions and will publish them in the coming weeks.

Thanks to Tobi Elliott for her help with this blog.

HD for Dummies

Philippe Lavallette - les réfugiés de la planète bleue — DOP Philippe Lavallette at work with an HD camera on Les réfugiés de la planète bleue.

These days, most documentaries are shot in HD, high definition. Seems to make sense, doesn’t it, since you can buy a high definition camera for just a thousand dollars! But does this mean that all HD is one and the same thing, and that you get as good an image with a thousand-dollar camera as with one that costs 50 times more? You guessed it, you don’t.

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of taking a course in HD workflow at PRIM, in Montreal, a resource centre for artists and filmmakers. (I am a member, we did the post-production for my most recent films there.) It was an opportunity to get an answer to my most pressing question: what does HD really mean, how do you know what quality you are really getting, and can you combine different kinds of HD formats without noticeable quality differences ?

So, in case you were asking the same question, here’s a short summary answer. The quality of a digital image is partly, but only partly, defined by the resolution, measured in lines of pixels. Standard Definition (SD) has 480 horizontal lines. The most common HD resolution is 1080 (horizontal) x 1920 (vertical) lines for a 16:9 image, but can be lower (720 for the vertical count is common) or higher (up to 4000 for a camera like the RED).

However, the actual quality of the image doesn’t depend only on the resolution. It also is a direct function of the compression, the size and nature of the image sensor, and the quality of the lens.

Compression is a way to encode the information to save space on whatever support the image is recorded on. It is expressed in three-part a formula as in 4:4:4 (uncompressed) or 4:2:2 (a $5,000 prosumer camera like the EX-1 which I use.) The inevitable cost of compression is a loss of definition and detail, and reduced margins for colour correction and visual effects in post production.

And the sensor. The smaller the sensor, the less detail you will get, and– counter-intuitively– the more depth of field you will get. More depth of field might sound like a good thing to the neophyte, but actually film makers tend to want the opposite, to achieve more of a ‘film look.’ (Main subject in focus, background out of focus, for ex.) Both Sony and Panasonic are just coming out with cameras that will make it possible to shoot video with a very limited depth of field, that will be another small revolution in video production.

With the help of PRIM’s excellent staff, we did some tests with the different cameras I use. To summarize the conclusion: the small and cheap HD cameras give a surprisingly good result, but you don’t get the same quality image as with a more expensive one. If you want to combine to two, the smaller/cheaper cameras should be used in good lighting conditions.

Thanks to Tobi Elliott for help with this post.

Premières vues et ‘Chercher le courant’

Si vous lisez mon bloque régulièrement, vous avez probablement remarqué que je ne critique que très rarement le travail d’autres documentaristes. Mais j’ai été invité récemment à participer à une discussion à l’émission Premières Vues, diffusé sur Canal Vox, la télévision communautaire de Vidéotron/Québecor.

Après avoir parlé de ma propre démarche, j’ai discuté du film ‘Chercher le Courant’ avec les deux réalisateurs Nicolas Boisclair et Alexis de Gheldère. Le film est construit autour de leur descente de la rivière La Romaine en 2008, l’année avant que commençait le harnachement de celle-ci par Hydro-Québec.

Le voyage est entrecoupé de scènes d’une enquête systématique sur les alternatives énergétiques plus vertes qui ne détruisent pas des rivières et qui ne créent pas ou peu de gaz à effet de serre – menée d’ailleurs par le comédien Roy Dupuis. Et comme le but de l’exercice était de discuter du film, j’ai du exprimer mon point de vue.

D’abord, j’ai tenu à féliciter les deux cinéastes pour leur sens de l’initiative et leur courage. Non seulement ils ont entrepris une expédition de 700 km en canot sur une rivière difficile – de sa source au Labrador jusqu’à l’embouchure dans le St. Laurent. Ils ont en plus réussi à réaliser un film très ambitieux et substantiel malgré un contexte très difficile et un financement nettement insuffisant. Étant moi-même kayakiste de rivières et documentariste, je suis en mesure d’apprécier l’ampleur des défis qu’ils ont relevé. Comme premier film, c’est impressionnant.

Alors chapeau! – au producteur Denis McCready et les Films du Rapide Blanc aussi.

Premières vues - Chercher le courant — MI, Nicolas Boisclair, Frédéric Corbet et Alexis de Gheldère.

Par contre, dans l’émission – qui sera diffusée cette semaine – j’exprime aussi des critiques par rapport au film. Pour moi, l’histoire dramatique qui aurait pu être bien plus développée était justement la descente de la rivière, avec ses multiples embûches et rebondissements. Il fallait juste le dire pour que les deux cinéastes se mettent à raconter plein de dimensions de cette aventure qui ne sont pas dans le film. Ils ont voulu faire un film plus didactique, parce que leur mission en était une d’éducation populaire sur les choix énergétiques. A mon sens la qualité du film en tant que film se trouve à en souffrir.

C’est un choix très différent de celui que j’avais fait en réalisant Power (Tension) sur la campagne des Cris pour sauver la Rivière Grande Baleine au début des années 1990. Pour moi, il faut avant tout raconter une histoire captivante de manière cinématographique, plutôt que d’inclure toutes les informations et analyses dans le film. Ceci dit, j’ai déjà fait des films plus didactiques et dénonciateurs moi-même.

Et…. ‘Chercher le Courant’ est un excellent outil d’éducation, certainement un film à voir pour mieux comprendre nos options énergétiques.

L’émission Premières vues est animé de façon très dynamique par Fréderic Corbet. Elle sera diffusée jeudi à 19.30 avec de multiples reprises au cours des jours suivants.

Merci a Tobi Elliott pour l’aide avec le blog.

‘Inside Disaster’: the Interactive Experience

Last week I wrote about the terrific Inside Disaster series. And here, as promised, is my colleague Tobi Elliott’s assessment of the interactive game on the Inside Disaster web site, where you can choose to be a survivor, a relief worker, or a journalist. (Tobi, as you may have noticed, regularly helps with this blog.)

Greeted by a grim, ashy looking scene of destruction, I begin the “Inside the Haiti Earthquake” experience with a small amount of dread. The disclaimer reads: “Please note that this simulation contains graphic and disturbing imagery.”

Many of the images ARE disturbing. Graphic and heartwrenching. Bodies lying in heaps on the ground. Rioting for food, people getting trampled. Fires and tears and brokenness. Some clips are more vivid than others, but the grainy film texture sometimes adds to the chaos the experience is supposed to replicate. Music underscores many of the clips.

I chose to enter the experience as a journalist, of course, and my job was to create a two-minute feature story on the earthquake for a major network. After arriving in Haiti and travelling to Port-au-Prince, I was given the choice to go out into the streets and film, or stay in the safety of the Canadian Embassy. I chose to go out and get a story.

Following most segments, the player is presented with options to select from, choices that affect the outcome of your story. Some of the introductions/transitions to the next segment are almost hilarious, like a vibrating Blackberry cellphone with a text message from your producer after you file your first story.

Your choices can lead to harsh, seemingly realistic outcomes, as I discovered when I lost my job after making a poor choice as a journalist! (I decided on a story angle too soon and couldn’t deliver… hmm…)

Generally, I found the experience quite moving because it brought me right into the reality of chaotic post-earthquake Haiti. I forgot sometimes that I was playing “a game.” What was onscreen could believably become what you might see with your own eyes. It became real. Your choices do seem to matter, even if just for a split second, “inside disaster.”

This simulation would probably appeal to almost any age, except for young children, and seems more designed to rouse empathy than to educate. The choices you make can lead to good and bad consequences, but that doesn’t seem to be the point of the experience. Instead, it’s about experiencing the chaos and trauma in a situation like the aftermath of Haiti’s earthquake… where every decision isn’t necessarily a good one, just the best one that could be made at the time.

Check it out here and see for yourself: www.insidedisaster.com/experience.

Thanks to Tobi Elliott for her help with this blog. You can find her at her new website here.

‘Inside Disaster’ really delivers

It is a year since the devastating earthquake in Haiti, and just about every generalist television network has been broadcasting special programming. I found most of it to be competently done and well-meaning, but extremely predictable and pretty superficial.

This is the curse of television. Just wait till the 10th anniversary of September 11th later this year. Millions of dollars will be spent on reporters and television crews lining up to broadcast from Ground Zero, and I could tell you already what they will say. Meanwhile, how much coverage is there of the millions of people who have perished in Congo over the last five years?

Fortunately, for this earthquake anniversary, there were a few exceptions from the run-of-the-mill. Radio-Canada’s news channel RDI broadcast a documentary by Réal Barnabé and Dominique Morisette who had gone back to meet the people and places featured in Radio-Canada’s first ever reportage from Haiti (done by the grand dame of Quebec télévision journalism, Judith Jasmin). Pourquoi Haiti? became Pourquoi pas Haiti? (Why Not Haiti?) and it was interesting to see that some of today’s key players on the country’s political scene were already active back then.

Frontline (PBS) showed an interesting look at the policing situation in Port-au-Prince, where the criminals who escaped the crumbling prisons in the aftermath of the quake have taken refuge in the emergency tent camps where they are rebuilding their gangs and taking control.

But the best programs are broadcast on TVO: the series Inside Disaster, directed by Nadine Pequenza and produced by Andrea Nemtin and Ian Dunbar at PTV productions in Toronto. I already congratulated them on their sense of initiative a year ago and I am very happy to see that they have really delivered. The authors of the series have also wisely decided to look beyond the disaster towards the long-term challenges of reconstruction – we haven’t seen that part yet.

Paul Adlaf - sound — Shooting 'Inside Disaster'

Nadine's ear phone — Dir. Nadine Pequenza

This is terrific documentary work, not just news reporting. We are truly inside the biggest humanitarian relief effort ever, focusing on the Red Cross and some really great characters – Jean-Pierre Taschereau who leads the huge team is just one of them – as they struggle against overwhelming odds to get water, food and medical help to the victims of the quake. You are really there with them, experiencing their challenges, difficulties and emotions.

The shooting and editing are excellent, and the website that accompanies the project is exemplary, giving you information about the earthquake, about ‘humanitarianism’ and emergency relief efforts, and about the film. The companion blog Haiti-today goes in depth into the reconstruction effort, and there is also an interactive component to the site, where you can play the role of a victim, a journalist or a relief worker. I asked Tobi Elliott who helps me with this blog to try it out. Her comments in a few days.

Watch TVO’s Inside Disaster Haiti online here.

Broadcast times:

The last two episodes of the three-part series continue until this Friday, with re-broadcasts listed below:

Part II: Relief
Thursday, January 13 at 12:01 AM ET

Part III: Recovery
Thursday, January 13 at 9:01 PM ET
& Friday, January 14 at 12:01 AM ET

TVO will then repeat the series in Prime Time on
three consecutive Wednesdays at 9 pm:

Wednesday, January 26 (ep 1)
Wednesday, February 2 (ep 2)
Wednesday, February 9 (ep 3)

SCN will be airing the series in Saskatchewan Sunday, Jan 16, 23 and 30 at 8:00pm & again at 10:00pm

Thanks to Tobi Elliott for her help with this blog.

Happy (stress-free) holidays!

Bigger presents from Haiti — Items from my present cupboard

I just wrote a very serious blog post, but I decided to save it til after the holiday season. I can see that people are in a party mood, which is a good thing. Even though Christmas and New Year’s come in well after Halloween and Valentine’s in my own Holiday ratings, it is a good time to see family and friends.

What’s not so good is the shopping Frenzy out there. With Canadian’s personal indebtedness at an all-time high, do we need to spend a lot more money on a lot more stuff? And do we need the stress of near-impossible parking and shopping mall line-ups?

In my Swedish family, present-giving has always been important. My mother, for one, always made beautiful packages for carefully chosen books or home-made textiles, a tradition now kept up by my sister Eva.

I like giving presents too, but I can’t stand Christmas shopping, and I have a system to avoid it. It’s the Present Cupboard. (Comes in handy for birthdays too.) All year, as I travel – or even just walk around town – I keep my eyes open for good presents. Although I won’t turn down a good sale with reduced prices, I have a big preference for buying things directly from people who make them, so I know where the money is going.

Small presents from Haiti — Inexpensive presents: the wrecked-car key rings on the right are from ATSA - the subject of my film Art en Action. You can find other presents on their website.

It seems to me this is more important than ever these days when arts and crafts are under attack from governments. If you buy something from a local artist or artisan, you are helping them stay alive and keep doing what they do best. There are also the special stores which sell fair trade presents, a great way to support cooperatives in poor countries. Many NGOs also sell fair-trade presents on-line.

And then there are great ways to contribute to good causes around the world, and ear-marking your donation as a present for a friend. This is mostly what I’ll do this year, because this has been such a terrible year for the people of Haiti.

So I will buy most of my ‘presents’ from Doctors Without Borders – you can buy cholera medicine, or pay for a day’s salary for a nurse or doctor. And I’ll make a contribution to Democracy Now!, for its great alternative news coverage totally independent of the multinational corporations who own most of the other media. ATSA is another excellent (and local!) group of engaged artists and citizens.

Boring, too ‘politically correct,’ moralistic? Some commentators in the mainstream media think so. If you asked the doctors on the frontlines in areas stricken by disaster, I think there perspective would be different.

Joyeuses fêtes!

God Jul och Gott Nytt År!

Feliz Navidad!

Happy holidays to all!

Thanks to Tobi Elliott for her help with this blog.

Kim Longinotto and the Pink Saris

Last week, at the Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal, I had a chance to see the latest film by one of the world’s best documentarians, Kim Longinotto. In Pink Saris, she tells the story of the ‘Pink Gang’ of women in Uttar Pradesh, one of India’s poorest states. Led by a tough lady named Sampat Dal Devi, these “untouchables” (lowest caste) women take on violent or abusive husbands and corrupt officials.

The film has all the characteristics of a Longinotto documentary: it has amazing access to intimate situations, it deals with the rights of women, it’s tough and uncompromising, and doesn’t stay away from contradictions and difficulties. In this case, the main character is admirable, but Longinotto doesn’t idealize her, and at one point the film clearly shows her making a selfish and morally questionable choice which has serious consequences for a young woman who she has taken under her wing. The film is beautifully shot by the director herself.

Kim Longinotto @ Hot Docs — Photo: Paul Galipeau

I went to hear Longinotto speak at a workshop at Hot Docs last spring. I was very impressed by her modest and unassuming presentation. What struck me the most was her combination of caring for her subjects but her incredible tough-mindedness. She is so close to the characters that they will, it seems, let her film just about anything, no matter how hard it is.

And she does – even when the scenes are almost unbearable to watch, as in a famous scene from a female genital mutilation in Africa. Life is often unbelievably hard for women in ‘Third world’ countries, and Longinotto is determined to show it – but always from the perspective of people who are working to change the situation. It’s an attitude which seems to be rooted in her own harsh childhood experience as a homeless orphan, and her feeling that filmmaking “saved her life.”

Here is a list of some of Longinotto’s films:

Rough Aunties (2008)

Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go (2007)

Sisters in Law (2005)

The Day I Will Never Forget (2002)

Runaway (2001)

Gaea Girls (2000)

Divorce Iranian Style (1998)

Shinjuku Boys (1995)

Dream Girls (1994)

The Good Wife of Tokyo (1992)

Eat the Kimono (1989)

Underage (1982)

Thanks to Tobi Elliott for her help with this blog.

Documentary and globalization: favouring understanding

Age of Stupid - Sydney — A still from the documentary "The Age of Stupid", directed by Franny Armstrong

I have just spent two weeks teaching at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington State. More on my course another day, but I also had the opportunity to speak to the students and faculty about Documentary in the Context of Globalization.

I talked about how the new digital technologies have democratized access to audio-visual production and how the web has made it possible to instantaneously distribute videos worldwide. This has opened up a two-way street, making local stories available to the world, and bringing the world (or stories from elsewhere in the world) to audiences just about everywhere.

To illustrate my points, I showed excerpts from three films. Burma VJ is one I wrote about on my blog earlier. The film documents the use of small digital cameras by courageous video journalists – VJ’s – to reveal what goes on inside the Burmese dictatorship. With digital cameras and satellite uploads they distribute images worldwide within hours. Their work made all the difference during the 2007 uprising led by Buddhist monks across the country.

Another example I used was the video of the killing of a young Iranian woman during the 2009 protests in that country. It graphically showed her dying moments, and really touched people emotionally. Thanks to the web and cell phone – Twitter was particularly instrumental – it spread like wildfire, and actually helped change the relationship of forces between the regime and the opposition.

As an example of how the new production and distribution context has allowed people who did not traditionally have access to the resources to express themselves audiovisually, I used the amazing Wapikoni mobile experience, which has been running for six years in Quebec. Young aboriginal people have been given training and access to production facilities, and the result is impressive. Many of their films have been presented at festivals and won awards.

For some filmmakers, the starting point is not local but global. That was the case with the 2009 film The Age of Stupid by Franny Armstrong. The premise, established with much aesthetic panache, is that while the world has gone to ruin, one man (played by Pete Postlethwaite) remains in the Global archive in 2055. His archives reveal the stupidity of the people of our era who knew the world was on the road to perdition but didn’t act – stories set, naturally, in our own time.

Finally, I spoke about the phenomenon of immigrant directors (or children of immigrant families) making films about their home countries in the ‘developing countries’. Having access to the funding mechanisms of the richer countries as well as an intimate knowledge – or at least personal connection – to their country of origin, these talented directors have made some great films. Ali Kazimi’s Narmada – A Valley Rises, Rithy Panh’s films about Cambodia are good examples, but I chose to show an excerpt of Up The Yangtze by Yung Chang (NFB & EyeSteel Films).

There are increasing numbers of excellent films coming out of the countries in the South. As a member of the board of the Alter-Cine Foundation, I am able to see the incredible diversity of projects from Asia, Africa and Latin America looking for funding every year. Just reading the proposals, one gets a sense of the many aspects of reality which are not adequately covered by our television networks.

Conclusion – it sound a little simplistic when summarized, but it’s true: by offering a more in-depth treatment of other realities, documentaries contribute to understanding and awareness between peoples.

Thanks to Tobi Elliott for her help with this blog.

Kevin Mcmahon looks to the future

MEADS: Medium — Concept shot of MEADS (Medium Extended Air Defense System), a program that aims to replace Patriot missiles in the United States, the older Hawk system in Germany, and Italy’s Nike Hercules missiles. From www.defenseindustrydaily.com.

You are probably familiar with the series 7 and Up by British filmmaker Michael Apted, who has been following fourteen individuals since 1964, filming them every seven years. Well, my colleagues Robbie Hart and Luc Côté have done a variation on that idea, with their film Turning 32. Sixteen years ago they released a series of portraits of 16-year-olds in third world countries. Now, their 16-years-later feature-length movie will play at the AMC Cinema in Montreal Starting Sept. 17th. Going to see docs on the big screen is the best way to ensure they continue to be shown!

On the heels of Waterlife flows from one medium to the next, about the relationship between Kevin McMahon’s Waterlife online project and his film, here is another installment of the interview with Kevin, written by my young colleague Tobi Elliott.

Looking forward… as a filmmaker trying to grapple with new forms of storytelling, what excites you or – possibly – depresses you about the possibilities offered by interactive and online documentaries?

Well nothing depresses me about it. In a way, I’ve been waiting for this my whole career. What interests me are environmental questions, questions about the way society works, questions that deal with larger systems. And it’s always been a challenge to deal with those questions in linear format without falling back on really conventional tropes that I don’t think are particularly successful anymore. **

In interactive media, there are still enormous limitations of all kinds, but I think we’re seeing the beginning of something incredibly interesting and exciting. What excites is the possibility of two things: one, creating realistic, virtual environments. The other thing, which Waterlife doesn’t do but which we’ll see more and more in the future, is the possibility of beehive environments that are essentially constructed by the users. Talk to Katerina Cizek about that.

There are two ways you can go: you can construct a large, aesthetic experience, sort of like you do with feature film, or you can construct a beautiful aesthetic experience that is more like a building that users or contributors can come to and build or decorate. Like the NFB’s Highrise, where they’ve built all the ‘girders’ in the building and said, ‘This is what this building can do, but you, the user, are going to contribute this wall, and that user will contribute a window.’ It’s a fascinating experiment. Both those possibilities excite me.

They’re different approaches to basically the same thing, which is to create not just a two-dimensional thing that the viewer passes and looks at, but rather to create an aesthetic the user can move around in. I find that totally fascinating.

What are you working on right now?

We’re working on a big project right now that’s only going to be online, called Planet Zero. The subject is nuclear weapons.

I’ve been working on the subject for thirty years, and have written a book and done two films about it, none of which were satisfactory. I’m hoping that as we’re approaching it again as an online project, that maybe we’ll be able to solve some of the deficiencies of its earlier forms.

As you’re looking at something like nuclear weapons, that’s an enormously complex, physical problem. You’ve got these bombs sitting all over the world. It’s one of those things that are so big and complicated and hidden, that linear media does a really shitty job of being able to penetrate and convey it. Books, which are non-linear, do try, but they aren’t able to bring any emotional content to the subject. Novels do, but technical books have a real struggle…. You’re always tossing and turning, trying to find a voice that can express something that’s complicated and realistic, and do it with passion.

With non-linear media, we’re attempting to create this website – well first of all we’re trying to put the money together to do it – but the idea is to recreate an environment as best as we can, with the resources we’ll have, of a nuclear world. In the first iteration, it’ll be like Waterlife the website, and a construction, like a documentary.

So that’s exciting to me, it’s a new way to approach an old subject in the context where old approaches have not worked very well. Nuclear weapons are something that average folks don’t have much information about, and specialists do. We are trying to think of ways to make it extensible.

** To read more on this perspective, see Kevin’s article, ‘AERIAL PERSPECTIVE: A Window on Reality for the 21st Century’ printed in POV magazine, Spring/Summer 2007 issue, No. 66.

Waterlife flows from one medium to the next

This blog post was written by my young colleague Tobi Elliott, who is helping me with several projects right now.

One of Canada’s recent successes in the interactive documentary universe is waterlife.nfb.ca, a site based on director Kevin McMahon’s documentary film of the same name. Waterlife the film (Special Jury Prize for a Canadian Feature at Hot Docs 2009) is a moving epic about the Great Lakes and the story of water itself: how it affects every part of our lives, and how it – and we with it – are under assault.

Its own creative endeavor, Waterlife the website is a co-production between Primitive Entertainment and the NFB. It picked up a coveted Webby award last April for Online Film and Video/Documentary, as well as the 2010 SXSW Interactive Activism Award, the BaKaFORUM City of Karlsruhe Prize for Multimedia, and a Canadian New Media Award for Best Cross Platform project in 2009.

Waterlife the website is considered a success, but how do you measure success in the online universe? Is it in page views, critical response, viewer comments, or what?

That is a very difficult question and I don’t really know what the answer is. Waterlife is considered a success probably for two reasons. One, there is a lot of public interest in it, and a lot of visits – about 600,000 visits – since it first went online a year ago.

Back when people like Magnus [Isacsson] and I started in documentary about 20 years ago, a CBC documentary would typically get 500 – 600,000 viewers, no problem. But that’s not true anymore. Although the film Waterlife has also been quite a success – it still screens almost weekly – it will not have reached a cumulative audience anywhere near 600,000. So that’s one measure: how many people come see it.

Another measure is how long they stay. In the case of Waterlife the website, when it first launched the average stay was seven minutes, but many users apparently stay around twenty minutes. To the web folks, this is a mark of success, but it does make you wonder about the quality of the experience vis a vis film.

It’s always difficult to measure, and it’s the same for a film: do you measure by critical success, by the fact that it really moves people and a lot of people go see it? By commercial success? All of these measures are relative and valid.

You write about Marshall McLuhen and his view that “the media’s touch is physical, and the feelings they provoke are real.” ** How do you think each medium – interactive media and feature film – feels to the audience? How do they perceive or react emotionally to them?

Broadly speaking, the film is really an entirely emotional experience. Some would say it’s more arty, or more of an intellectual film in some ways, but having been in many audiences, I’ve seen that the way they react to the film is really emotional. It’s a movie – it’s got music and pictures and people, and [the audience] reacts to the emotions it evokes in them.

I would say the website has an emotional component but also an intellectual one. The interesting thing about the web is that it’s engaging both sides of the brain all the time. It’s got pictures and sound, but it also has text. One of the advances in the Waterlife website is it relies much less on text than other websites do, but it still has text. That keeps that linear part of your brain engaged all the time.

Do you think each type of media appeals to different people?

I think they probably appeal to different people, because of the generational aspect, but they also appeal to people in different ways.

How did you combine the different platforms in terms of design, information-sharing, content? How did that work out?

The way they work together is that people who see the film and appreciate it, particularly anyone in an educational context such as teachers, students, are driven to the website by the film. There are two websites, and Ourwaterlife.com was set up to link people with activist organizations in their community, like Great Lakes United, Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, where they can go to take action. Waterlife.nfb.ca has that, but it’s kind of buried.

The film sends people to the website but I don’t think the website sends people to the film. It’s counterintuitive, the opposite of what we think websites are about. Websites were initially set up and used for film and television as advertising. Like flyers for your film.

But I don’t think that’s how they work, and in Waterlife’s case that’s not how it works at all… partly because the website is accessible to everyone in the world and the film’s available for screenings only in Canada and the U.S. It’s not as available as films in your living room that you can dial up via a website. We also know this because a lot of the feedback on Waterlife.nfb.ca comes from around the world and from places where the film is not showing.

What they share is their aesthetic, and they share a lot in their content. There’s no way of tracking the traffic between them but my sense of it is, there’s not a lot.

We went into this project thinking the website should be an adjunct and that it should drive people to the film. But Rob McLaughlin (Director of digital content and strategy for the NFB English Program), the driving force behind the website, said, “They are two different things. They share assets, there will be some back and forth traffic, but you have to approach it as two different things.” He was completely right and has proven to be over time.

** Refers to Kevin’s article “AERIAL PERSPECTIVE: A Window on Reality for the 21st Century,” printed in POV magazine, Spring/Summer 2007 issue, No. 66.)

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Part Two of the interview to come: Kevin McMahon looks to the future.