In a wide-ranging conversation between filmmaker Ross Kauffman and IDA Board member Marjan Safinia, attendees at the IDA's second 2009 Doc U session at the Eastman Kodak screening room in Hollywood Thursday night were treated to a cook’s tour of a filmmaking career, from the artistic side to the business side.
Kauffman, who won an Academy Award with co-director Zana Briski for the 2004 film Born into Brothels, fell into filmmaking via the written word—namely, The Elements of Screenwriting by Irwin R. Blacker, which he read as a diversion from his marketing major at University of Rhode Island—a diversion that led to more and more books, and by the time he graduated he had an idea of where he wanted to start looking, and he eventually landed jobs in the editing room. “I love the process of editing, and I learned from some really great people,” he recalled.” I learned how to put a story together.”
But after nine years of editing, and some attempts at cinematography, however, Kauffman admitted that he had been ready to quit filmmaking altogether. Then one day, photographer Zana Briski, who had been shooting in Calcutta, India, asked him to make a film about her efforts to teach impoverished children who had been born into brothels. He was reluctant at first—even after she gave him a camera for his birthday. He agreed to check out her footage. “I put the tape in my Sony PD100, and within 20 minutes I was—it sounds dramatic, but the truth is, when you know you’re going to do a film, you know you’re going to do a film. About a month later I was in Calcutta shooting.”
After a total of four years of filming and editing, as well as pitching and developing the film at the IFP Market and the Sundance Producers and Composers Lab, he and Briski had secured a deal with HBO. “I had edited a couple of films at HBO, so I knew the structure of it,” Kauffman reflected. “I had had a relationship with Lisa Heller based on our time at the Sundance Composers Lab and the Producers Conference.” About two years before the film came out, he showed some footage at the IFP Market to another HBO rep. “Get to these people early,” he advised the Doc U audience. “Show them a trailer, show them a couple of scenes, get them to know about the project. It’s almost like you’re having them become part of the process. If you have a three-minute trailer, they’ll invest that time. Once I had an hour-and-45-minute rough cut, [HBO] had known about it for a long time.”
But, he advised “You can’t just show anyone a rough cut; they have to know what they’re watching.” He admitted that he had refrained from showing Heller his two-and-a-half hour rough cut, despite her wanting to see it. “The materials has to speak for itself,” he explained, “and you have to be intelligent about how to present that material. I wasn’t going to show her a two-and-a-half hour rough cut, but I did show her an hour and 45 minute cut. I think it’s really smart to position yourself in terms of trailers and scenes that you’re going to show people. You need to know your buyers.”
But Kauffman also stressed the importance of timing and luck. He related the fact that a project that he’s working now, about war photographers, that he’s had difficulty selling. “People have war fatigue right now,” he admitted, “and it’s really difficult to sell a project like that.”
With Born into Brothels, he had the fortune of securing HBO’s support prior to getting into Sundance—and convincing HBO to let them take the film to festivals and, through THINK Film, to theaters. Starting with Sundance, he and Brinski also produced a travelling exhibit of the photos of the children in the film, with the proceeds from the sale going to Kids with Cameras, the nonprofit they had set up. “We didn’t know that that was going to be a great marketing tool that was going to get people into the theater, but we did know this was a two-way street-- not only was the audience able to do something after the movie, but the kids got something out of it and the film got something out of it. The film kept on growing because of the photo exhibition.”
“What documentary filmmakers can do is come at it from really wanting to help, or really wanting to do it for the right reasons,” Kauffman advised. “I’m not saying that you have to be altruistic, but the best way to serve your film and serve the people in your film is really concentrate on how to actually achieve those goals in terms of helping people other than the film.”
Born into Brothels, like Senain Kheshgi and Geeta Patel’s Project Kashmir, which Kauffman shot, was co-directing effort—which has advantages and disadvantages. “This is an overwhelming task for just one person,” Kauffman pointed out. “It’s a conscious thing of dividing up the responsibilities, then it switches and goes back and forth in a semi-seamless and not too destructive way.”
But, he admitted, “Having a co-director is a bitch.” Both Kauffman and Marjan Safinia advised to know one another’s different skill sets and figure out how you complement one another. Also, have a strong editor and producer who can function as a mediator whom you can trust, leave your egos outside the working room, and keep your eyes focused on what’s best for the film.”
Kauffman relishes the collaborative process in all his work—including his role as executive producer on Jeremiah Zagar’s In a Dream, and as co-producer and co-director with Zagar, Kheshgi, Geralyn Dreyfous and others on a three-minute piece called Wait for Me.
And although his early work as an editor served as a springboard for branching out into directing and cinematography, he tries to keep those sensibilities separate. “As a cinematographer, one of the most important things is to just be in the moment and point your camera towards what you feel is interesting,” he explained. “As an editor it’s always about choices. With cinematography, I learned this by listening to Al Maysles in his commentary for Gimme Shelter: He said he didn’t edit because he has ADD, and the only time he didn’t have that sense of craziness was when he looked behind the camera; all he had to do was reveal. When I’m behind the camera, I’m really in deep; when I’m in the editing room, my brain is flying around. I try not to let my editing inform my camerawork.”
Kauffman has a plethora of projects on his plate that has taken him to everywhere from Africa to Northern Calfornia. And he’ll return to India to shoot a film for Kheshgi on surrogate mothers. And Born into Brothels remains a persistent part of his life, as Kids with Cameras, the aforementioned nonprofit, is looking to raise $400,000 to build a house for children from Calcutta’s Red Light District.For more information, click here: http://kids-with-cameras.org/home/.
See a video of our May 14 Doc U Seminar: An Evening With Robert Greenwal here.