I've been in this indie filmmaking community for over a decade, and I’ve been directing since 2013, yet it always amazes me how there is always something more to learn in this industry as a director with each project.
This year I fell into directing my first documentary, Cats of Malta, and man did I learn a lot as I researched the topic and subjects that make up the Maltese cat community. Right now as we edit the project I'm becoming even more knowledgeable on how producing and directing a doco works, thanks to Google.
I have watched a few docos this year too, standouts being Tiger King, which showed me a lot about how to interview subjects and that true to life characters exist, you just have to find the interesting and sometimes kooky parts of their story. Another Netflix doco, High Score, was entertaining from start to finish. Even though I am not a gamer, High Score was so well put together as a series, each episode explaining a different shift in the industry, that even I as a novice on the subject was hooked.
One of the first things I learnt from the process of directing a doco is that I had to know what I could legally film. People in the background, peoples faces as they interacted with our interviewees on the street, etc. and I will confess that I was reading about the legalities as we were filming.
This is because we started walking around filming cats during the Covid lockdown, due to buying a new camera which we had to test it on something, and cats were Covid safe. Then we had the idea to expand this footage into a film, so I started to think about who would be interesting to interview.
The most important element for me to focus on as a director was how I was going to frame my questions in a way that would feed the overall story arch. In the beginning, I had little idea of what this story we were searching for was, so throughout the filming process I had to keep asking myself, “is there some kind of story I could find in all these little interviews? What is the connecting thread?” As a director, once I had a vague idea what it was, I had to push for the answers from my human subjects.
A feline subject at Animal Guardians Cat Cafe Luqa, Malta.
We never planned to produce a documentary, the idea took on a life of its own and we got caught up in its momentum. So it was an unexpected project I found myself directing, and I quickly saw the many differences between shooting a fictional narrative film to shooting a doco.
The one thing that I can say helped me a lot as an indie director was the fact that I have directed four improvised films prior. Improvised filmmaking from the POV of a director means thinking on your feet, seeing the big picture and also learning what is vital footage and if you should keep the camera rolling in a particular moment or just cut.
In conventional filmmaking practices, once a scene ends in the script, you cut. It's not that way with the improvised films as you follow your instincts instead; you let the scene run until you feel the actor has become static or has given their all to that moment. With doco filmmaking, you have to move where the story takes you and engage with your interviewee wherever they may go to maintain rapport and to find the gold in their story. I used that experience of thinking on my feet as an advantage I had, an important tool already in my repertoire.
Now that the doco is 'wrapped' learning the deeper legal aspects is still an ongoing process, as every image I add to one of the interviews as overlay has to be sourced for licensing. As the post-production rolls on I continue to research, think about how to build the story through the edit, while also continuing to do the paperwork such as collect consent forms, plus build a newsletter list and awareness on the film – all the fun marketing stuff.
The biggest challenge was a personal one, and this is something I took away from watching Tiger King – the moral question of exploiting your interviewees. If you have seen Tiger King you know what I mean as one of the subjects, Carol Baskin, is no longer on good terms with the filmmakers after watching the doco as it paints her as a murderer and in a bad light overall.
As a first time director and a sensitive person who thinks she has a pretty straight moral compass, I had a somewhat uneasy time taking advantage of the situations some of our human subjects found themselves in. Without giving too much of the major story away, one of our interviewees was having a hard time due to one of her stray cats, and I wanted to capture that on camera, all the heartache and the worry. However, I had to always check myself and make sure I was not crossing the line and pushing her to get the story at a time when she was stressed and concerned. I managed to monitor the situation at a distance thanks to social media and I gently implied that I would like to get this on camera when she was ready.
Listening to the audio of the guests speaking and looking over my questions at Animal Guardians Cat Cafe, Luqa Malta while surrounded by cats.
I did get my story in the end, or rather I got her talking about the conclusion of the situation. Same but different. But I guess I could have been more nosey and totally followed her around while she was coping with the drama at hand, and that would have made for more powerful footage. I guess this is something I too still have to learn – how to push for the story as it unfolds. Maybe that means I am not cut out to direct documentaries?
I hope not, because I have enjoyed the process, I have learnt from making Cats of Malta, and I want to do it again. In the meantime, I look forward to watching more docos and continuing to experience the many different styles of the documentary genre. And I am very much curious to see what the end result of Cats of Malta will be. I hope we have a compelling documentary on our hands and I hope, as a first-time documentary filmmaker, I have done the subject justice.
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