watch my doc: alive and well and kicking

this is a documentary about Phyllis Galde, the publisher and owner of FATE Magazine, a paranormal themed magazine that has been around since the 1940s. She runs the magazine out of her basement in Lakeville, Minnesota. It follows Phyllis and her two housemates trying to keep the magazine afloat while they tell the story of what brought them together working on FATE. Here is the first part, the documentary as a whole is 70 minutes long.


Part 1 of 7



I made this documentary as a student at Ithaca College. It started as a 10min group project when I was a sophomore and I continued to work on it with one other member of that group as my senior thesis. Between 2006 and 2008 we visited Phyllis 5 times for a week to several weeks at a time, over our winter and spring breaks to capture this footage. We shot it on a Panasonic AG-dvx100b with an external mics/mixpre setup.

The rest is available at http://vimeo.com/album/213469

Is that George Lucas in the top picture?

haha that is hilarious. unfortunately its not. Its Devil Godwin, the managing editor of Fate, and one of our characters.

I watched and really enjoyed the 70 min version you have posted.
It's hard to come away from it without being a fan of Phyllis'.

I think you guys did a great job.

-Thanks-

thank you! I'm very impressed and happy that you watched the full cut. do you have any other comments that would help us going forward?

I don't know if this is forum faux pas but the film has been divided into short parts to make it easier for people to view (not having to all in one sitting) and I wanted some opinions so I edited the original post.

Sorry I missed your reply post. (You are welcome)

I coincidentally was just mentioning Alive and Well and Kicking earlier today to a friend in Tokyo that was familiar with FATE.

I’m sure some of the seasoned members here can offer their advice on how to keep going.
For what it’s worth, I say keep at it with however you found Phyllis and company.

-Thanks-

Dreadylocks said:

Is that George Lucas in the top picture?

Click to expand...

I don't get it!!! Is there something wrong with me?

ROC--
no that's my fault, when I re-edited the post I lost the images I posted. One of the characters looks sort of like George Lucas.

thanks again, Buddy, I hope your friend gets a chance to see the movie. Phyllis herself hasn't watched it yet, she doesn't want to see herself onscreen.

Our biggest problem has just been getting the film out there. There is a lot of interest but then when we give someone a copy they never actually sit down to watch it. We submitted to a few festivals (small time, nothing like sundance or even silverdocs, but we realize it is an awkward length to program so that might be why)

We've tried to arrange screenings in our area but our contacts never follow through. We put it online just to get it out there because we are not really trying to make money; we spent very little in actually making the documentary. But its still hard to get people to watch and when they do its hard to get feedback although people generally seem to like it. Does anyone have any advice?

Hi,

I have a more technical question, but maybe the answer is part artistic value.

Is there a reason to not use a steadicam device, especially since I've seen half decent results out of $20 do it yourself devices? Sure they wont give the same results as the real things. But it seems like if youre going through all the effort of making a production like this, it must be a conscious choice.

Is there a decision to go with a shaky cam style for a more personal feel? And can a steadicam device be used a certain way to give similar 'lively' results but still be smoother overall?

thanks for the question, are you referring to particular shots or just overall? We shot the whole documentary in this verite style so I hope you don't think it is too distracting. The footage was also shot sporadically, and we learned a lot about shooting between each time we visited Phyllis in Minnesota. The project also started as something else and changed as we got to know them so the direction of the film was defined in the editting process.

Our goal was to use the footage that carried the story we decided to create, even if it wasn't the best, it was a part of how we experienced the information our characters revealed to us.

But in terms of why we chose not to shoot the whole thing with a steadycam from the beginning, it was mostly a matter of practicality and movement. We do actually have a handmade steadycam (made with two pipes, perpendicular (one holds the camera, one the operator holds onto, and a weight at the bottom) but its difficult to work with in the verite style. Our actual setup was the camera operator using a Panasonic AG-dvx100 with myself attached via xlr cables holding a shotgun mic fed into a mixpre handheld mixer, feeding back into the camera. So adding a steady cam would have made a tangled mess an even worse one. We wanted as personal a feel as we could get with these people, because they were so friendly with us, so willing to give us information and tell us stories about themselves that often times we would just roll while we talked to them in normal conversation.

I hope that answered the question, I'm not totally sure it did. But basically, we were being practical, and this was not a highly planned production from start to finish. We were organized, but it all evolved pretty organically over a span of time. The editting was the more meticulous part of the filmmaking process in this case.

Yup it did answer my question, especially since you had access to a stabilizer. I hadn't thought about the size and potential intimidation of it.

another drawback, at least to the one we used is that it screwed right into the screw on the camera where normally you would put your tripod mount, making it really easy to break it if you were in a rush to get it on the steadycam. And actually we did break it the morning before we went to the UFO conference (if you saw that part). Maybe if we hadn't we would have chosen to use it but it really is a bit unwieldy for a two person production!