Greetings from the sound mix, arguably the best part of the entire filmmaking process — or at least 2nd-best, after that initial wild dreaming period before choices are made and therefore all possibilities exist. I’m working (again) with Tom Paul, who is phenomenally good at helping us solve those final, hardest problems of tone and pacing. Work with Tom if you ever get the chance!
Sitting here watching the movie play over and over, I am reflecting on the experience of making Wild Inside. This documentary was a real beast to make, pun intended (it’s about an owl). Luckily, I have the most incredible team of producers who work with me at my tiny but mighty production company Spinning Nancy (company motto: We choose to LOL). Together, we did this massive task.
From the jump, I knew the film would be heavily crowdsourced from birders, tourists and New Yorkers of all stripes who photographed Flaco. Flaco was the most documented owl in human history!!! The archival producing alone on this film was insane.
We filmed all over Central Park; in bodegas, barbershops, and preschools; at Wild Bird Fund, tattoo parlors and halal carts; inside the American Museum of Natural History, NY Historical, and The Met. Inside several wildlife hospitals. We made creative use of a jib and a drone, and we traveled to Europe to learn about Flaco’s species in its native range.
We built an outreach website and appeared on local radio stations like WNYC and 1010 WINS to ask for footage and stories. We walked all over Manhattan, making friends, learning stuff, seeing stuff, and interviewing people.
We commissioned a stunning original score, and insanely beautiful animations. We edited for a year. In the end, the film will have taken just about 3 full years from idea to finished film. It’s been an awesome experience, and an equally awesome undertaking. I’m feeling grateful and proud!!!
But the reason I am getting into all of that is to say:
If all that sounds kinda expensive… yeah, it kinda was. We had to hire a lot of people to do all that work! The ideal version of this film — according to me, my producers and of course my funders — demanded a bigger scale than some of my other films.
My promise to explain “how I made a feature-length documentary for less than $10k”… is absolutely NOT a story about Wild Inside. 🦉
It’s a story about a different film, one few have seen, and fewer have “enjoyed.” My only foray into low-budget horror, actually, now that I think of it. Found-footage horror, even! But it’s all real…
Unless you are Rodney Ascher, nonfiction horror is notoriously tough to pull off — well, except in its most popular form: which is, obviously, true crime. This is not true crime. It is horror. Specifically: body horror.
The thing that tends to stops documentaries from truly achieving horror is our allegiance to legibility. We are so tirelessly legible that we foreclose mystery, we neglect the uncanny and the weird.
And it makes sense that we do this, because if we want to call our films documentaries, a certain set of ethics exist in the community. and many of them are about being truthful and factual, or to try our best to accurately represent reality — as in: this material reality. Sometimes, to be anything but legible and thus crystal clear on important matters of our shared material reality feels, as an artistic proposition in a doc, ethically fraught. This could have easily been a “Documentary Ethics in Real Life” column. (Actually, it sort of was.1)
The Pain of Others did well in some traditional ways: it played Rotterdam, Sheffield and BAMCinemafest. It got a few strong reviews. It definitely angered some people, and/or grossed them out. But playing by the “success for the rest of us” rules: an incredible artist made a whole film in response to my film (and it’s remarkable). Jane Schoenbrun and I put together a touring program, pairing The Pain of Others with A Self-Induced Hallucination for a truly harrowing evening on the internet / at the movies. Some people absolutely love this film; I know because they tell me!
That is the film I made for less than $10K.2
The Pain of Others was born of my experience on a jury at RIDM (a documentary festival in Montreal that leans more experimental). The films at RIDM were idiosyncratic, uncompromising, and clearly human-authored. They were wildly different from one another. None of them seemed to cost much, or require permission to make, or to have been made by committee. I loved many of them deeply, and the ones I didn’t love? I saw they were loved by my fellow jurors. I saw love in their eyes, and then I, too, loved the films I didn’t love.
I came home, incandescent with inspiration. I was reminded that no matter what weird-ass, low-budget thing you make: someone out there is going to love it. I promise!!! It probably won’t be a zillion someones, but honestly that’s true of the bigger-budget, not-weird things, too.
Someone out there could have their life changed by your weird, low-budget thing. When you think of it that way, what do you have to lose? When you compare it to the gains — to you and to the world?
So it is in that spirit that I share The Pain of Others, my weirdest, most low-budget feature. It’s short: 71 mins.
A few words of caution: I wouldn’t watch it alone, in the dead of night. (Or while eating.) On the other hand: feel free to watch it on your phone… I’ve heard it’s pretty scary that way.