Reel Time

I was reading an interview with a filmmaker yesterday who said documentaries differ from fiction in that, not only do you have no script, you have to wait for the story to happen in real time.

Real time is exactly what I was wrestling with, the other day.

Early video artists once made a point of rejecting the constant cutting, montage, the manipulation of a viewer's experience that has come to characterize television and Hollywood narratives. Andy Warhol's six hour meditation on the face of a sleeping lover is the film of that sort that comes to mind. As you might guess, these films were easily forgettable, exercises in boredom. Real time still inspires artists, but, mostly as a place to start from.

We like our time collapsed, like a telescope. It's one of the pleasures of film, to view experience from afar, see more of it in a glance, than when we were immersed in it.

So a documentary, these days is all about cutting up time and reorganizing it, putting events and statements in an own order, the logic of which follows the heart, or sets up an argument, or makes sense to you in some way you can't explain.

Dirty Work, unlike previous documentaries I've edited, has a clear sequence of events to be followed. It's amazing to me how much time I spend cutting up real time to create the illusion of it, instead.

if the film works, all this intricate puzzle piecing to maintain continuity will embed the viewer in the story, so that we are swept up by the lives and challenges happening before our eyes, and see them in a larger context.

Is this organic editing? Or merely the illusion of it? Only time will tell.

Woof!

I learned a new word yesterday. I was listening to a radio interview taped a few years ago, the show Local Hero. Don Roberts, the co-owner of Elsie's Farm, and his son Alexander, the chef at Alma, were on air to discussing organic food, their relationship as grower and purveyor, health and healing, finding one's bliss, community supported agriculture and the cooperative movement, amongst other topics.

Don gave a rapid fire list of all the people it took to run Elsie's Farm, and mentioned wwoofers, a word the host, Brett Olson, quickly seized on. Having been involved with Elsie's Farm for five years, I didn't know the term either.

A wwoofer, it turns out, does not mean the bass resound in your audio speaker, but is an acronym for "world wide opportunities on organic farms." The WWOOF website puts people in touch with organic farms that could use their labor in exchange for housing and meals. Like couch sitting, only for those with a green thumb and a yen, not just to wander the earth, but love it, and get your hands dirty with it.

Elsie's Farm, the place, and Dirty Work, the movie, were enlivened by many young people that happened to be around at the time we were shooting; Jeff, Kristen, and William, in particular. I'm glad to learn about wwoofers because I have the feeling, after seeing this, others like them will want to get involved.

WWoof! Wwoof!

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

When you play old-time fiddle, you have a lot of friends who are dancers. People ask me the difference between a fiddle and a violin and the best answer is a fiddle is a violin with ATTITUDE. But the next best is; you know it's a fiddle, if it makes you jump up and dance.

All this because yesterday, I spent all day building a little scene of my movie, then tore it all apart and, not happy with the results, built it back up again.

This is a scene familiar to many artists, casual knitters, and pretty much anyone who does anything creative, but yes, it's frustrating to end the day having worked eight hours to reap less than one minute.

O.K. it was more like 25 seconds.

Two steps forward, one step back. What comes to mind is a diagram of footprints with x's and arrows, usually set out on a floor for someone to follow.

So maybe I could consider my peripatetic progress on this film as-- not a set back-- but a dance.

Making Room for What Happens

One of the ways in which joining a CSA changes your life, is that you are confronted each week with things you hadn't anticipated. Normally one goes to a produce section with a list, or your eyes jump to certain familiar vegetables: carrots, celery, tomatoes. You may not even see other choices, because our brains are highly developed to screen out everything but what we deem relevant.

In a CSA box, you find chard or turnips or raddichio, and then you must work these into your life, in some way, and your palate widens.

This is true also of documentary. I've been thinking about fiction and reality. Over the last several decades, the fiction of reality has fascinated and rattled documentary films' claims to truth, in the circles I travel. The hand of the cameraperson and editor may well be invisible, but that doesn't mean it's inconsequential. A film is constructed, whether it is narrative or documentary. Those interviewed do perform, in many ways, for the camera, the persona that they want the camera to see.

But there is a difference, and while it's hard to define, exactly, it's like finding radishes in your CSA box. Things happen, things you didn't anticipate, and you are challenged to change your ideas of your subject and your film to accommodate them.

That is very true in this film, Dirty Work. I wanted to say one thing and ended up with another.

Field of Dreams

When we first became CSA members, began picking up our boxes of vegetables, and following events at Elsie's farm, I was not aware how deeply invested I would become in the dream, the story, the vision of our friends Don Roberts and Joni Cash, and the interesting cast of characters who had put down stakes in this piece of ground.

No one who starts an organic farm does so with only the dream of making a living. There are easier ways of doing that. A farm like Elsie's is a philosophical venture. It's making a statement about what can exist, what ought to exist, and what kind of life is worth living.

These are the seeds that began to sprout in this particular story.

This blog is for anyone who is interested in organic farming, or documentary filmmaking, anyone who has been a friend of Elsie's farm, or of it's off shoot, Otter Creek Growers, or wants to be. It's about making a film, about telling stories.

And hopefully about contradictions and paradoxes we all face, the simple beauty of hand made food, the politics of green living, with recipes, editing quandaries, poems and anecdotes, and hopefully, your comments.

Seeds and Wings

Here in this blog, is a kind of launching pad, a leafpile of stickies, an etch-a-sketch where I can work out some ideas about a film I am making, called "Dirty Work", the story of Elsie's Farm in Richland, WI.

One of the owners, Don Roberts, was an old friend of my faithful companion and fellow filmmaker, Mike Hazard. He and his wife, Joni Cash, traded a comfortable life in the city for a piece of land in the country where they could garden full time and make beautiful love with vegetables for their family and friends.

We started filming because a community supported agriculture farm, or CSA, like Elsie's, usually expects and depends on their members to pitch in with the work in some way. And, given our backgrounds, we preferred pixels to pitchforks.

It's not enough to nurture seedlings, aerate compost, and pick beets, your 21st century farm needs to have a virtual presence as well. And so does the film, which is an act of imagination as well.