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| Stacy Peralta on 'Made in America' |
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By Joy Zaccaria, February 20, 2008
Stacy Peralta is a resident of Los Angeles--born and raised there. Premiering at Sundance this year, his documentary on gang culture and history in South Los Angeles was a personal mission. Made in America is a look at the kids in the current generation of L.A.'s gangs. Peralta also uses archived footage spanning the past 50 years in order to present more of an examination of the African American community in Los Angeles as a whole.
Peralta typically likes to shoot with 16mm, but the 10-minute film loads would not have been feasible for this production. "I knew we were going to be in very dicey situations, so I decided to shoot on HD video," he said.
Working with Peralta, Tony Hardmon was the DP and the project's single camera operator. His original material is the primary footage that was intercut with archival footage, home movies and mixed media to make a pastiche. "I knew it wasn't going to just be a straightforward documentary," said Hardmon. "It looks more like a music video."
In the Field
Shooting on the streets of gang-run neighborhoods, Hardmon used the 24p HD Panasonic AG-DVX100. "We wanted a smaller camera so we could be less recognizable and create less of a stir," said Peralta. In the field, the crew consisted of Hardmon as DP, a production sound person, and a swing person to run gear and tapes back and forth.
"We shot on HD so that we could roll endless amounts of tape," said Peralta. "We considered using hard drives, but we decided against that because it would require another person in our crew to change out the drive."
In the neighborhoods, Peralta was the director and his own AD. "I did all the questioning," he said. "I set up the shot with the DP. I like doing it that way, very fluid." Peralta was impressed with the Panasonic DVX100. "I couldn't believe how good a shot that camera could get when the sun is directly overhead midday," he said. "That was really surprising."
The goal for the field work was to shoot in the vérité style: no lighting, hand-held, and using the 100A lens. There was an A12 warming filter on the 100A to bring out the warmth in the complexions of the interview subjects. "At most we used bounced light, Flexos or Flexo silks," said Hardmon.
Adding to the pressure of shooting on street corners for Hardmon, he had to contend with subjects looking over his shoulder at every passing vehicle behind him. "We had to ignore that, concentrate on the interview and know that we would see in the subject's face if something was about to happen," said Hardmon.
The neutral zone for interviews
In contrast to the field shooting, there was a set location, an undisclosed place that was secure for gang members. For these interviews Hardmon still shot handheld on a Panasonic VariCam HD. This was where Peralta would hold longer interviews, usually with older gangsters, that are the through-lines of the piece. Here there was the luxury of a grip, gaffer and lighting. Using a tight and a wide lens, Hardmon used the A12 on the VariCam as well along with a quarter-black Pro-Mist filter.
These interviews were set in a wooden structure in Santa Monica which was essentially a carport with a roof and walls on three sides. With trash around and pigeons in the eaves, the location lent itself to the gritty, urban feel the filmmakers were pursuing. "For the background, we put graffiti on three walls," said Hardmon. "So that's 180 degrees to rotate the subjects, change the background and keep the background out of focus."
Hardmon shot all the formal interviews on the shoulder since Peralta's style is for the interviewees to still have action even if they are sitting and speaking. "Stacy likes the natural movement that happens when you're doing handheld, as opposed to being on the tripod," said Hardmon. "He likes to keep the motion and energy in there." At about an hour and a half to two hours per interviewee, it was tiring work for Hardmon.
Peralta found that what the subjects responded to the most was the sincerity of the questions he was asking. "They know how tragic their situation is," said Peralta. "They want their story told. I was not asking them 'how many people have you shot?' I asked them more about their personal feelings about themselves being caught up in this situation and what they dream about."
Neighborhood Territory
Because the documentary is about gangs--known to be territorial--the crew had to get permission to venture into each territory. "Every neighborhood typically has a 'Tony Soprano' type of character who is in charge," explains Peralta. "It was a process of building relationships and building trust with people." From there, the crew would be escorted by the local representative and introduced around.
It was a priority for Peralta to compensate anyone who helped him along the way in the neighborhoods. "We never asked people to do things for free," he said. "If we expect them to give us something of their life, we have to give them something back."
The Editor
The film's editor, T.J. Mahar, is co-owner of the Hit Squad in Santa Monica; he worked on Made in America on an Avid Media Composer Adrenaline. The editing team down-converted the HD footage in the Adrenaline and cut in standard definition. They used the Avid Unity for a lot of the work and also had about 14 Seagate shuttle drives donated by one of the film's financiers, Steven Luczo, former chairman of Seagate Technology. (The documentary was also financed by Baron Davis, current NBA all-star, who plays for the Golden State Warriors.)
Production and editing occurred simultaneously. "I did a 'radio cut' on my laptop," notes Peralta. "I assembled the sound bites in an order that tells the story and handed over the EDL to Mahar. So we were working on top of each other."
Stock Footage
The film's scope covers about 50 years. "Part of the film goes back to the turn of the previous century, so there's a tremendous amount of stock footage and photos to accompany the storytelling," says Peralta. Adobe After Effects was used to give a three-dimensional look to many of the photographs.
The team had many different formats of archived footage to contend with in order to tell a cohesive story. "We have probably the most extensive look at the Watts Rebellion of 1965 in terms of photos and footage," notes Mahar. Documentaries from KTLA in 1965 arrived on Beta or even on a VHS screener that was imported.
Working from the masters, it was hard to anticipate the condition of the footage. "Even if it's on a usable source, we cut the masters in and saw what we might not have noticed in terms of what is working correctly from the screeners," said Mahar. "Something might be more visible in the background or the footage may have been more damaged than we thought."
After that process, the Post Group in Hollywood did the frame rate conversions from 30 to 24. And then footage was recut in again. They got into online reasonably quickly in order to have plenty of leeway for the Sundance delivery. "We didn't necessarily get a chance to cut all the converted footage in the offline," said Mahar. "Consequently, we did some converting and overcutting in the online process, which was probably more expensive than it needed to be. The money is really rolling when you're working on the Symphony Nitris at the Post Group--much more than offline process."
Frame rate conversions of the early film material occasionally resulted in some ghosting of images. "That ghosting didn't show up in the offline, but when it showed up in the converted footage, we had to make some decisions in the online," explains Mahar. One of those decisions was to find the good frames--about every fourth frame--that was not ghosted. Then it would be step frame jump-cut all together. "We could never have known in the offline that that was going to happen until we got to the online and converted that stuff to 24 frames."
Mahar made use of Sapphire plug-ins in the Adrenaline. "We wanted to give a consistent sepia look to some of the old photographs," he said. It was important that the film not look glossy. "Using certain types of film effects in the Avid palette and Sapphire allowed us to grunge up the film," said Mahar. "Make it look more street."
Peralta holds legendary status as a skateboarder in his youth. As a filmmaker his directorial and writing credits include Lords of Dogtown, Riding Giants and Dogtown and Z-Boys.
"Stacy was my favorite director to work," said Hardmon. "I'd say, 'I'm going to dutch this a little to the left.' And he'd say, 'Oh, dutch it more.'" Peralta gave the DP plenty of room to work. "Because I want to express my artistic side, I'm always trying to show the content in an artistic way," said Hardmon. "If it's an abandoned building with a little bit of light, I still want to make it beautiful--even if it's an ugly kind of beauty. Stacy allows you to take the time to make it look good while maintaining the content as most important."
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| COMMENTS (1) | | 10/22/2009 | | Much of the gripping LA Bloods and Crips gang violence, gang shooting scenes and LAPD crime scene stock footage was provided by the FootageWorks archive in Los Angeles. The FootageWorks.com archive has over 15,000 L.A. gang shootings captured on tape from 1980 to present. This is a real treasure for any documentary video film maker in need of such historic reality footage. |
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