The New (Left) Documentarians

I was fascinated last night watching this YouTube clip that was produced and edited by Chase Whiteside (he also is the on-camera interviewer) and filmed by Erick Stoll.  It's their take on the recent 9-12 protest in Washington D.C. that was promoted by Fox News' host Glenn Beck and attended by tens of thousands of folks (or millions if you believe the organizers instead of your own lying eyes).

It's not so much the right-wing politics of the event or the editorial slant taken by the filmmakers (they call themselves NewLeftMedia after all), but rather the professional nature of the interviews, the editing and the quick 3-day turnaround time.  Whiteside has a natural presence on camera, it's easy to believe that the protesters took him for a journalist, rather than a more activist filmmaker - and he's clearly working in the Michael Moore-realm here.  If there's an interview with a truly intelligent person who's opposed to the Democrat's various health care proposals, he or she did not make the cut.

But that's not their point, obviously.  They want to show that the folks who are protesting lack the basic understanding of the issues they are protesting against.  This is not a new idea - the cameras outside of McCain/Palin rallys last falls captured enough random interviews to give a sense that some folks out there aren't playing with a full deck (you could say the same of Obama/Biden rallys as well, I am sure) - but Whiteside and Stoll seem to know that it's not enough to grab the random stupid comment from one or two folks.  They interview enough people to build a case for their theory, and Whiteside's interviews are probing enough (without being sarcastic or rude) that he gets to the bottom of his subjects' ignorance without making them feel attacked.

And while viral video often has a quick turnaround time, most of the stuff that comes out really fast isn't of very high quality.

This kind of thing is sure to be seen through partisan glasses, but on sheer filmmaking talent, I'd be really curious to see Whiteside and Skoll take on a feature-length subject.  And I'd be especially curious to see them do it in the same kind of turnaround time - let's see, 3 days for 9:31, so let's give them 30 days for 90 minutes.

That might be the new documentary challenge - "the immediate feature film", shot, edited and online in a month.  How many of my colleagues would want to take that up?

Comments

[Mike Ambs]

Loved this piece - I've watched it several times the last few days (showing it to other people). It gets better every time... and by "better", I mean "scarier" :P

[Louis Cabeza]

OMG. That is hilarious.

John Waters must be laughing himself silly about the teabaggers

[Freaky Born Wings]

I was in DC that day shooting for German TV. Our host asked a lot of questions along the same lines. The responses were all quite similar to the video above.

Just something to keep in mind - we sometimes tend to assume filmmakers have an agenda, assume they cherry pick the interviews that underscore their point. But it's important to recognize the possibility that the sampling of people IS representative. My own experience that day suggests that the ignorance on display here was par for the course with this crowd, including similar errors for example confusing communism, socialism and fascism.