Side by side was a documentary I made with Keanu Reeves and probably we first started
discussing it in the summer and fall of 2010.
We were working on a movie called Henry's Crime.
Keanu was in the movie, he was the producer on it, he helped develop the script and I
was the post-production supervisor.
One day Keanu says to me, hey, we should make a documentary about where the film business
is right now, so I said of course I'll make a documentary with Keanu.
We interviewed 140 people for side by side, 70 people ended up making it into the final
film.
Keanu did a lot of the interviews, I did a lot of the interviews as well and we would
have questions that we would prepare and Keanu and I would kind of go over those before
we went into the interview with people.
When I was doing the interviews I kind of stuck to the questions and Keanu also did
but he was more conversational so the conversation could drift, you know, one question could
lead to something else that was eventually we would cover all the questions but it was
kind of in a roundabout way which I think was excellent and it put a lot of the interviewees
in a very relaxed attitude.
You see people who are Scorsese, James Cameron, David Fincher and they've seemed really relaxed
like you're sitting in their living room with them and they're having a conversation
with Keanu because pretty much that's what was happening.
A lot of the people we're interviewing are very busy, they're working directors, DPs
and to find even, you know, a small amount of time for them to sit down and give an interview
is difficult.
Most people we reached out to were interested in doing the project but it was just a matter
of matching up schedules.
For instance Christopher Nolan was very difficult to get and we knew he was an important person
to have in this documentary so he has such strong feelings about film.
At first when we reached out he was not available, we said we can meet with you anytime, anywhere
on planet Earth, we need a half an hour, they said he doesn't have a half an hour.
Keanu actually sent him a typewritten letter telling him about the project we're doing,
asking can he please spare some time which he did which was very generous of him.
We went to the set he was working on, went in his trailer, set our cameras up really
quickly and got a great interview.
The Wachowskis hadn't given an interview I think in ten years or something like that
and they were in Berlin, they were working on Cloud Atlas and they said sure, you know
they love Keanu, he loves them, it's a true, you know, friendship and respect so we flew
out there, set up the cameras in their apartment and shot an interview so it was a lot of,
you know, moving fast, setting up quickly, never knowing when someone was going to be
available, you just have to, you know, leave the edit room and hey this weekend we're going
to Los Angeles, we're going to London.
Our set up was very light, very low cost and pretty easy to operate and use, we used
little Panasonic HP X170s, we'd have two of those for the interview, one would be locked
off on the subject, the DP Chris Cassidy would have hand held and he would, you know, shoot
the subject in different angles and also turn to Keanu for the questions and things like
that so we were able to cut back and forth in editorial between those two cameras.
Lighting depended on the situation, we interviewed people in all different types of rooms, interiors,
exteriors, back rooms in a theater in Poland, basement in England, literally all different
locations and as I said these people are very busy so when they showed up or if they were
available we needed to be able to travel there quickly, we also needed to be able to set
up and break down in locations very quickly.
For editing, you know, we had shot a number of interviews but we hadn't cut anything together
yet.
The guy we chose was a great editor named Mike Long, he came in and started cutting
things so we didn't have a script necessarily but we did have a kind of a rough outline.
Okay for me I wanted the documentary to be tight, I didn't want it to just be educational,
I wanted it to be also engaging and entertaining.
There was a lot of humor in the interviews, David Fincher telling a little funny story
or someone else swearing or, you know, some Wally Fister, someone being really passionate
about something.
Anytime there was that kind of sort of juicy human bit to it I would try to include that
so it wasn't again this very dry encyclopedic type of documentary, it had some, you know,
human feeling and emotion which I thought would be pretty hard to find in a doc like
this but I think we tried to squeeze out everything we could.
Robert Downey actually came up to me and he said, I can't work like this, I never
get to go to my trailer, I never get to get my shit together, I'm on my feet 14 hours
a day, I'm shooting all the time.
He actually left mason jars of urine on the set, just like over in the corner and stuff,
just he would go off and pee and bring it back and it was like a form of protest.
We do have some animations and graphics in the movie, I felt for a general audience who
I wanted this to appeal to, they needed to have even just a most basic understanding
of what was being discussed, I think sometimes I would think of my parents, you know, do
they know what a cinematographer is, do they know how a piece of film works, do they know
how digital chip works, you know, things like that, there are certain moments where something
needed to be explained, just I wanted it to be brief and I didn't want it to be too technical
and I wanted it to be simple so people could, oh that's what this is, that's what that
means and then they could move on and enjoy the rest of the movie.
Music naturally has emotion to it and when music has emotion to it it makes you feel
a certain way when you're watching an image.
Digital color correction began replacing traditional photochemical methods of color timing.
A lot of times the tricky part of this was kind of taking the emotion out of the music
for the majority of the clips, we wanted something that was just sort of driving it or giving
a rhythm or a beat or but nothing that was, you know, sad or triumphant or all those things
that score normally does in a movie, we wanted kind of the facts to speak for themselves.
So we hired the Ryan brothers, Billy Ryan and Brendan Ryan.
They would send me music, stuff they had in their library or we would sometimes edit
in a piece of music and then oh we want something like this or something that illustrates this
same thing.
There's so many different types of documentaries too, you know, there's documentaries that
follow a character, a story, there's documentaries that are about just a subject or a scientific
thing.
I think you want to make, if it's a subject or a scientific, someone that was interviewing
me once said they judge it or critic whether it's three E's, entertaining, engaging and
educational.
So if you can hit those three things with a documentary that's trying to inform someone
of something, I think it will probably be successful.
I think when you're a young documentary filmmaker, if I had advice for them, don't be afraid
if you have a good idea that you feel like it's a story that you want to tell and you
feel like you do a good job at telling it, you should go out there and do it.
I mean, the technology is around today where you can do it very inexpensively, you can
do it all on your own, you can shoot it, you can edit it, you can post it, you can market
it.
You can, if you have the time and I think young people do have the time and they have
the energy, and don't be afraid to reach out as far as you can.
If you think who would the best person be to ask this question of, say that to yourself
and then go out and try to get that person.
If you don't, you don't, but you've tried, who would be the best person to do the music
for this?
Reach out to that person.
There's other like-minded young people, I'm sure, who are just dying for the opportunity
to edit something, to shoot something, to help you out.
The harder you work, the luckier you get.
Once you get something in motion as well, once you're like, hey, this guy's got a camera,
he's shooting, he's starting to interview, things start to snowball.
You have a few interviews in the can or you have some footage together, it starts to become
real and other people then notice that it's real and are attracted to it and want to be
involved.
So it's getting out there and doing it and not being afraid.
Thank you.
