Ask the Documentary Doctor

Social Media and Storytelling

Dear Doc Doctor: All this new social media takes time. Lots of time. In the end, will my Facebook posts, tweets or blog entries help me with the story I’m trying to tell? Or is it just more promotional work I have to do to keep the film going? I want to be a filmmaker not an Internet nerd.

topics: activism, authors, diy, documentary, women filmmakers

Critic's Notebook

'Village' Offers New Look at New Orleans

S. Leo Chiang, born and raised in Taiwan, knew what it was like to be an outsider in the United States, so the seemingly inexplicable rebellion of previously docile Vietnamese residents in New Orleans was an ideal subject for this documentary director.

It took him more than a year to track down bits and pieces of film from unclassified archives at the University of New Orleans that could reconstruct the untold story of what happened to the 5,000 residents of the largest Vietnamese community outside of Vietnam after the 2005 Katrina hurricane wreaked havoc on that Louisiana city.

topics: activism, asian american cinema, bay area, directors, diy, documentary

Fear-Free Fundraising

Do ask, do tell

I’ve been raising money for 20 years. During my career, I have asked people for all kinds of money for all kinds of reasons. However, whether I’m asking for $1,000 or $100,000, I have found that there are some key concepts that rule.

These are my Hella Hot Tips for how to ask people for money. The good news is that this isn’t brain surgery. It’s common sense. If you take these key concepts and use them as your guide for individual donor fundraising, you, too, will raise money.

topics: authors, bay area, diy, funding

Experience

Reed Redeems Promise of ‘Prodigal Sons’

If Kimberly Reed took a not particularly unique path into filmmaking, she certainly took an interesting road out of it. A native of Helena, Montana, she came to U.C. Berkeley in the late ’80s, discovered film and went on to earn a master’s degree at S.F. State while working in the seminars department at Film Arts Foundation. After transitioning from male to female, the challenge of adjusting to a new identity impelled her to trade her location (San Francisco for New York) and career (digital editing for magazine publishing). Call it necessity, call it a detour, but it’s in the rear-view mirror now. She makes a triumphant return to both filmmaking and the Bay Area with her first-person documentary Prodigal Sons, a raw and altogether remarkable debut that opens this month around the country.

topics: activism, authors, bay area, diy, documentary, documentary film, film arts foundation, frameline, independent film, sf international lgbt film festival

In Production

Tourists Show, Tell For Murray’s Laotian ‘Camera’

When Laos revised its visa structure to allow visitors to stay for more than one week, Westerners with digital cameras surged over the border. Sensing that the pervasive pocket technology affected their travel experience, Malcolm Murray embarked on an unusual documentary that sees the country through tourists’ eyes. “I wanted to talk to people about what kind of picture they were taking, and look through the lens of amateur travel photography,” he says. “Using a macro lens, we shot the screen of people’s cameras. We have a mic on them, and they feel anonymous because we don’t see their face. But we see their photographs, in a sense. People opened up really quickly and revealed things they didn’t even mean to reveal.”

topics: digital filmmaking, directors, diy, documentary, documentary film

Fear-Free Fundraising

Do ask, do tell

I’ve been raising money for 20 years. During my career, I have asked people for all kinds of money for all kinds of reasons. However, whether I’m asking for $1,000 or $100,000, I have found that there are some key concepts that rule.

topics: authors, bay area, diy, funding

Experience

Getting Behind the Music at Noise Pop Film Festival

Jimi Hendrix is not playing San Francisco’s 18th annual Noise Pop festival this year, but—along with Drive-By Truckers, George Clinton, Lou Barlow and Tool—he is making an appearance in the event’s Film Festival component, which runs February 24-28 at a variety of S.F. venues. It’s a disparate program ranging from portraits-of-an-artist to historical flashbacks, philosophical musings on music itself—and a couple items only tangentially about the auditory art form.

topics: cult cinema, digital filmmaking, directors, diy, documentary, music