Hello friends.

To all interested parties, coming soon and from now on I will post the Notebooks on my new blog. I will start with he introduction as seen on The Digital Filmmaker and I will repeat the sections of the Notebooks already posted. This site will be the only place where anyone can find the complete Notebooks. You can download them. You are free to comment. Mainly, enjoy. I will also post what I call Addendum to the Notebooks. These will be in the form of easy to access lists of what I read and how the reading affected me in the years when I compiled the Notebooks. In addition, I will post my notes and lists about jazz, also culled from the Notebooks. These include what I listened to on the radio; the clubs I visited and the jazz greats I saw and enjoyed. Under the umbrella of Notes on a Napkin, I plan to post my thoughts on old and new media, my critiques of the press, an occasional review or two about films, television and even books.

Oh What a Week it Was

Oh What a Week It Was
By
Ron Steinman

The week started simply enough, though it soon became powerfully interesting because the unexpected occurred. Iran threatened to go up in flames and held the world’s attention for days, as it should have. In need of some respite from the massive street demonstration in Teheran, and the hope that the people would prevail over repression, I had an offer to go to the movies with my son and daughter-in-law and I did. We saw “Moon,” a new science fiction or futuristic movie that in some ways astounded me. Mostly understated, the film had a well-designed set that made me feel as if I were on the moon, both inside where a person lived worked, and outside where that same person lived and worked. Sam Rockwell was outstanding as much the only fulltime actor or set of actors. He plays several roles because he is a clone. Yes, he is a clone. After all, it is the future. Should I not have given that away? Anyway, those who have read about the film know that, so I make no excuse for revealing too much before you see the movie. Rockwell dominates the film. Maybe it is because he is just about the only actor in it. His only competition other than the obsequious voice of Kevin Spacey, his know-it-all and do-it-all computer companion is himself. No clone there, but because it is a computer you just know it will go on forever. It is worth seeing this film.
Then it was back to business as usual. Onto the Internet I went. I turned on the TV. Remote in hand, I watched as much of the Iran story as I could. Street demonstrations. The horror of seeing Neda, the young and talented Iranian woman die before my eyes. The emergence of Twitter as an instrument of information, some of which was valid and much probably not. Watching Twitter on the verge of becoming an agent of change was fascinating. You Tube showed every video it could find. Facebook was part of the equation. I viewed the continued and violent repression of the Iranian people by Basij militia and the police as each organization did everything it could to stem the scent of freedom. Those in the street dreamed about the taste of liberty but as the days went on, the chances of that dream becoming a reality faded.
What else? There was a terrible commuter train crash in Washington, D.C where at least 9 died. President Obama worked hard to talk people into accepting legislation on health care, on immigration and he started commenting about Iran n a way that said what the government in Teheran did was evil. There was almost no news about the airliner lost last week near the coast of Brazil. Unemployment figures rose once again. Many people died in Iraq from terrorist’s bombings as American troops distanced themselves increasingly from everyday involvement in that seemingly never-ending war. I have to wonder if those bombings are a last gasp by insurgents or the resumption of an insurgency that had been asleep, waiting for the American forces to leave. Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina admitted he had an affair with a woman in Argentina named Maria. News reports say his wife said something like, enough already. Stop seeing her. But Mr. Sanford obviously in the throes of love, took another trip anyway to break up with his Maria. At least, Mrs. Sanford was not at Mark’s side when he made his public confession. And cheers to Jenny Sanford for not standing by her man. The guy cheated on her. He is yet to suffer the consequences of his raging hormones. That is still to come.
There is always more but then we hit a sad double-header on the same day. Michael Jackson died from apparent cardiac arrest. The Los Angeles coroner is looking into prescription drug abuse, something that does not seem to surprise anyone remotely connected to Jackson. Farrah Fawcett died when she lost her long battle with cancer. Two icons of pop were not longer among us. I was never a fan of Jackson’s. Call it generational. Call it what you will. I never saw him in person. I never went to a concert he gave. I do not own his music. I understand and appreciate the effect he had on pop music and people everywhere because of his music and, oddly, his wasted life. There are those of you who might jump all over me for not properly genuflecting to Michael Jackson’s image and legacy. Call it sacrilege. Call it what you will. But I never had time for him. Other music is more important to me, such as jazz, mainly bop, and much of classical. Genius is never an excuse for what some describe as a life badly lead. He never affected me in any way, except as a curiosity. Parse his dancing, if you have the courage, and you will see that every step he took in every dance he did, was a copy of every step he made earlier in his career. Maybe his huge, immeasurable audience lived for repetition. I do not. He is, aside from Elvis, the best example of what celebrities suffer, partly self-inflicted, partly an inability to handle fame, in our age of celebrity gone wild. TV networks around the world did little to make themselves proud. They emptied their vaults of Michael Jackson material and devoted far too much time at the expense of real reporting in their adulation of the “King of Pop.” Talk of pandering.
Farrah Fawcett as always good to look at but she was really not much of an actress. I did not follow her life, either but it was clear she did try to become something other than how people perceived her. We will remember her for her beauty, her hair and as someone wrote, she at least tried. That is more than what many people in the public eye do and for that we commend her.
Some week. I will see if next week brings more of the same. If it does, as I am sure it will, you can join me here again for another look back in time.

Short Takes Three

Short Takes Three: One Liners More or Less
By
Ron Steinman

According to news reports there is a tough internal battle in the Obama administration between the regulators assigned to oversea banking. One side wants strict controls over all the banks because they were the ones who did so much to create the economic mess we are in. The other side wants almost no control over the biggest banks because it contends that is where the best talent resides and we should not lose the ability and rights of those people to heavy-handed watchdogs. That side seems to forget it was that very same self-styled unscrupulous so-called “talent” and its freewheeling desire to make money and more money, that brought down the economy in the first place. I side with the strict control advocates. Control executive pay. Do not reward failure whatever happens to be in a person’s contract. Eliminate bonuses unless the bonus for the individual executive aids the bank and the economy. I believe there is world of talent that exists outside the banking industry just waiting for a chance to right that sinking ship. The rewards would be great if new bankers can do it, if the government allows them to do it.
***
The world did not collapse as some predicted it would with the change from analog TV to digital TV, mostly a business ploy anyway. I have a decent set but I cannot tell the difference between what I was seeing and what I now see. If there is a difference, it is slight. The sound is not much better than the often-poor quality I usually receive. I watch my cable bill very closely but hardly understand a word of it. It seems to rise so fast every month that it resembles a runaway train. I know others say it, but I don’t need all those channels, most of which I never watch or care to watch. Many of which I never heard of either. There is only so much time in the day for watching TV, or surfing on broadband.
***
It is time to remove the word alleged, meaning supposed, suspected, so-called, assumed, from the vocabulary of TV reporters and anchors, especially when there are witnesses to the crime in question. It was foolish to hear it in regard to the recent shooting of a security guard at The Holocaust Museum. There were so many witnesses to the shooting that there are no doubts who did the shooting. Lawyers protecting the corporation they work for worry that if they do not use allege the criminal will sue for defamation of character or libel or worse. That is weak. Use alleged if there is no eyewitness or other proof clear of the crime. Otherwise, drop it if it does not apply.
***
I know this will read like heresy, but it is time we put the myth of Tim Russert to bed. He has been dead for a year. It is time we stopped idealizing him. Miss him if you want, but please don’t elevate him to god-like status. It is not good for journalism.
***
I am not imagining things when I look at body builders in the gym and wonder why their heads seem so small sitting on such enormous bodies. It must be that steroids shrink the head as much as they shrink some other vital parts of a man. Perhaps the geniuses who run so-called health clubs should come up with a scheme, or if not, a drug that allows the head of weight lifters to grow in proper proportion with the rest of the body.
***
If I were a working journalist in Washington, every chance I got, I would ask Republican senators and representatives who are against health care reform about the 50,000,000 who have no insurance. The cost to the economy of 50,000,000 potentially sick people is impossible to calculate. Republicans of most stripes probably would rather those people disappear down a rabbit hole. That way, out of sight, out of mind, they would be an annoyance instead of a deadly serious problem. The question of the 50,000,000 must be off limits to the press in Washington because it is collectively afraid it will lose it’s insider status and get only hand-out news instead of digging for the real thing. Perhaps we should male real Jonathan Swift’s ideas in his essay, “A Modest Proposal.” That way the problem will surely disappear.

New Stars of Journalism

This column first appeared in the June issue of The Digital Journalist, www.digitaljournalist.org.

The New Stars of Journalism
By
Ron Steinman

A friend sent me the following the other day.
Mr. Thomas Jefferson “on banks”, said in 1802:
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
Were Mr. Jefferson alive today I wonder how he would feel as he reviewed our current economic crisis. Call him prescient. Call him a man with a remarkable nose for the future. Whatever you call him, he certainly defines our current crises dead-on. And he did it 207 years ago.
I live in New York. Growing up, I first turned to the comic pages of the many newspapers that flooded my home. The comic pages are all but dead. Sports, always major in New York, came second. Sports are even bigger today than then. But with most New York teams not doing very well, and with Mr. Jefferson’s words ringing in my ears, I have a confession to make. With the economy more exciting to watch and analyze, there are days I turn to the business section of my newspaper or on many Web sites, first. I know that I will discover something new each morning and that my emotional juices will flow as only a well-played game used to guarantee.
Until the current economic crisis, I rarely read anything in detail in the financial pages. I would check the Dow Jones Averages to see how my investments were doing. Now I usually do that several times a day online because it is easy and the information is fresh. In the past, I sometimes read features about economics. Anecdotal stories in newspapers and magazines were easier to read. Too many facts and hard to understand what I considered financial, well, almost babble, made me run from most business news. The feature articles I now read help explain complicated economic principles through example, personality, biography of people and places, and stories of success or failure. The standout for economic features was, and still is the Wall Street Journal. Other newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, were not, for me always at their best making clear when explaining what economists said in impossible to understand charts, graphs and overly-complicated dissertations about finance. Barron’s, The Economist, Forbes and The Financial Times were even muddier how each explained economics. Today because of the economic mess, they have a very high standing in the pantheon of economic news purveyors.
Until I started copying the following names into my notebook for future reference, they were bylines I glossed over on my way to other parts of my newspaper or other sections of news sites online. Here are a few of them that are now in residence in your household through your newspaper, on your computer screen, sometimes on TV, and on the radio. Some you know, others you may not. There are Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post and Paul Krugman of The New York Times. There are Joe Nocera, Floyd Norris and others who are easy to identify. Then we have Andrew Ward, Bernard Simon, Alan Rappeport, Krishna Goha, Alan Beattie, David Cho, Binnyamnin Applebaum, Eric Dash, David Ip, Daniel Wagner and a host of others writing for newspapers, online sites, magazines and appearing on TV who in a normal world we, meaning I, would not think of listening to or reading.
They all have an important role because we as consumers of news have inherited a new language in which those writers try daily to write. I am thankful for these changes in our language because of our economic woes. So a shout out to the world of business for adding words to how we think everyday, but not necessarily how we use them. Strap yourself in for the ride we are about to take. There are collateral triggers, quants, toxic assets, toxic securities, underwater neighbors, credit default swaps, ratings arbitrage, regulatory arbitrage, the shadow financial system, stress tests for banks, naked short selling, and those formidable twins, the technology stock bubble and the housing bubble. The other day there was a column in The New York Times about “haircuts” as a financial instrument, of sorts. Haircuts? What other common term or theme would economic writers eventually possess as theirs?
Did business journalists fail us by not reporting in detail the hidden or even the overt problems in the economy? Did these men and women, once the orphans of journalism, not take seriously where the economy was headed? If they were vigilant, why did we not heed their cries about the falling sky? Why were they not more forceful about the potential risks the economy faced in the laissez faire attitude of the major moneymakers often aided and abetted by a blind government? Newspaper editors and TV producers were probably complicit in their failure to turn us on about the coming crisis in the economy. After all, business news is often dull and does not usually sell newspapers or get good TV ratings. But so as not to blame the business reporters for everything, we as a public, and I include myself, should have been more vigilant about the cheaters and trimmers in our midst.
From now on we should keep a watchful eye on these “names” because these are the men and women who have the unenviable task of explaining to us our past, the present and what the future holds as we battle our way out of the current economic crisis. Clarity and investigative reporting is in their hands. If not, it should be. Those who report on the economy now have our attention. As the new bold face names, they should not be afraid to take us by the scruff of our necks, and shake us into reality. They are the new celebrities of journalism who will be with us for a long time to come. We should get used to them being around and when things get better, we should not ignore them as we did in the past.

Let Me Count the Ways

This essay first appeared in the June issue of The Digital Journalist, www.digitaljournalist.org.

Let Me Count the Ways, if Possible
By
Ron Steinman

Look at journalism today. Look hard. Though much of what is taking place is apparent, if you blink, you will miss some of what is happening. Newspapers are closing. Others are failing and will also probably close. Reporters, editors and all manner of staff are losing their jobs. Because newspapers and print in general is under siege, everyone has an opinion about the future of journalism and to be more specific, news in print. Some say that there is too much serious thinking in the journalism community. Others say there is not nearly enough and much of it is coming too late. But it is hard thinking and needed. Some is practical. Much is academic. All is about the future of journalism. It is about the failed past and missed opportunities as well as a desire to remake journalism if it is to have a future worth preserving.
Turn in a circle and for every degree, you will find a new or different idea how to save newspapers. It is impossible to list everything everyone says about how best to keep newspapers from falling into the waste heap. It is as if the idea of newspapers, mainstream media, if you will, is slowly moving toward dementia. Living in past glory is not possible. Journalism’s future is all that matters. Survival is what journalism wants, but how is open to question. On some levels, survival in the old way might be a dream. I would be deceiving any readers if I said do not despair. It is apparent, however, that we cannot continue fully with the once hallowed core of journalism, the printed page, the broadsheet and the tabloid.
Many of the ideas how to save the newspaper business come from pundits who are searching for answers they may never find. There are so many voices it is as if the thoughts are bouncing around in an echo chamber. Free from the constraints of reality, they tend to overwhelm us with one theory after another, most of which will not work. I would call it the Babel effect. Along with the many freelance thinkers about journalism’s future is a group of theorists who believe the Internet will save those who embrace its every nuance sooner than later. They say that print will die some day soon and it cannot be soon enough for them. This implies that everyone has a computer, PDA, smart phone, or whatever, and is anxiously clicking and thumbing his or her way to find information they once found in a paper. Not so fast. It is simply not true. Everyone can have an opinion. Importantly, and at times confusing, one opinion is as good as another.
Journalism, though, when it can, is looking to survive by a number of shifting schemes, some possible, others not. One model that is not new has us pay for the newspaper online, the way we subscribe for home delivery. Another is to solicit payments for a news site’s output or its selected portions posted online. This can be limited, as special needs and desires, or full service. Thinkers talk about other pay scales. They refer to tiered charges, similar in a way to what is taking place in sports arenas and new baseball stadiums with the better seats costing more money than the back rows. Each part of the Web site will have a different price and its own set of rules. It may work for some, but I am leery of that because the youth of America, the future consumers of news as we once knew it, do not want to pay for anything, especially when they had been getting everything free online. This sense of entitlement by the young may be the biggest hindrance to journalism surviving in the coming world of 3.0, the next path on the Internet. Some in this generation are so arrogant they believe they can create their own news sites through links they seek and use. But without news coming from somewhere else, all those links are are useless. News and information does not come out of thin air.
That brings us to what everyone who cares about the future of journalism discusses daily. The cost of doing business for a news gathering organization is high. It will continue high and in coming years will be even higher. Without money coming in from advertisers and subscriptions of any kind, there will be a lack of funds to gather daily news and worse, there will be very little money for investigative journalism. Free is a wonderful concept but by its very nature, it fails the news business. As with any organization, it costs money to provide goods and services. If the product is free and there is no money coming in, the product will disappear from the shelf. The business collapses, whether it makes plastics or presents the news. Free must be a word we eliminate for consumers of news. Otherwise the world of news will be Orwellian. Controlled by the few and dispensed to the many, news will become a mirror image of Craig’s List, one classified note after another that people will pore over in search of personal gratification. There will be too much useless information and the overly “informed” will become even less informed than they are now.
Some gurus want print to become non-profits so reporters, editors and managers will not be responsible to owners or shareholders. Other ideas want print online to have firewalls, stonewalls, no walls. There are also those who have no ideas except they pride themselves in repeating the mantra of “I told you newspapers would fail. Why did you not listen to me?” Thanks for the help. Those who publish newspapers and magazines appreciate your crystal ball gazing. If only you had a workable idea or two beyond your doomsday scenario.
Not all newspapers and magazines are dead or even dying. There are some estimates that more than a 100 million people still read newspapers every day. Though a decline from former highs, that number of readers is not insignificant, however you parse it. Some are weekly and local or small town papers. Despite the Internet, recent surveys show that nearly 60 percent of the young, meaning those under 34 years, still read a newspaper, even if not as often as they once did. Pre-Web days, the numbers were probably never very high anyway, unless the reader was looking for what interested him or her most. Do not be fooled by the reach of the Internet. Not everyone locks into a computer or his or her portable device all the time. Along with the decline in newspaper readership, TV viewing has also declined. In this severe economic downturn, advertising is off for everything, including once untouchable television.
Some newspaper Web sites are starting to pull in readers even if they do not draw advertisers in the numbers print formerly did. If print migrates fully to the Internet, which it might someday but not someday soon, will advertisers who believe that not everything sells on the Web support what was formally in print on paper? So far, advertising has not matched this early migration. It costs money to run a news gathering enterprise. What if the money needed never becomes a reality? What then? I have no answer and I think no one else does either. Is there a magic phrase that will unlock the mystery of how readers seek information on the Web and who will pay? Only time will tell. It is my hope that history and culture are on the side of journalism but perhaps that is optimistic and thus in this world where so many expect everything to be free on the Web, it may prove to be a false hope. Yes, the migration to the Internet has started. Where it will end is anyone’s guess.

The Business of Business

The Business of Business
By
Ron Steinman

We are not nearly out of The Great Recession and already the usual entrenched interests in the world of finance are on the verge of putting up roadblocks to stifle changes in how they should run their businesses. It comes as no surprise that some in the Congress and on Wall Street seem to be in cahoots over the new regulations the Obama administration is developing in its effort to oversee the once runaway cowboys in the world of finance.

As usual there are members of Congress who are starting to pull back from what some in that august self-serving body think will be over-regulation. Apparently, these men and women whom we elected in the hope that they will do our bidding prefer a more a benign approach to regulations. They want to allow the markets to eventually settle themselves without anyone getting in the way. This is nonsense.

If one reads the financial pages closely there are new articles every day about how Wall Street firms, their lawyers and lobbyists and too many in both houses of the legislature in Washington are looking for ways to create a new status quo favorable to its needs – making money no matter the consequences. There are also rivalries between government agencies such as the SEC and the CFTC (Commodities Trading Commission). Neither agency seems ready to give up its power. In the past both were weak in the pursuit of their duties. Now someone, probably the White House and Congress, has to decide who will have more, stronger and direct oversight over derivatives or any new instrument of finance yet to develop. Talk on the Street and stories in newspapers discuss how to control derivatives in an effort to keep them, not how to ban them. I am not an economist, but I must ask is there not a better way to make, move and create money than using derivatives? Why don’t I read about someone working on that?

The moneyed interests in our society worry little about the man in the street. These people and the institutions that control much of the wealth in this country never have thought of anyone but themselves. Despite the financial crunch, as long as these “movers and shakers,” at least in his and her own minds, get high pay and can fiddle with new, mysterious “instruments” they create to make to make them rich, they, the Wall Street denizens will be happy. That should be no surprise. These are people are still seeking high paydays and the bonuses that accrue to them in the course of their bleeding the public for its every last cent. And they want do all that without any regulations or regulators looking over their shoulders. The public is damned. Of course.

I know it sounds overly dramatic, but for me these individuals have gold dust in their hearts instead of red blood. Only visions of riches dance in their heads. Not bad in itself if there is more to their lives than just making money and squeezing an already deeply stressed population. Don’t believe for a moment that many on Wall Street, and legislators everywhere care for any barely functioning industry and the hundreds of thousands workers struggling to survive, or on unemployment. If a major investor can make a buck out of failure, bet the house, he or she will.

As citizens, we must watch carefully every move some of our elected officials make. To survive, we have to be aware that many of our elected officials are at heart elitists and blind to the realities of the crisis in the economy. Listen to many Republicans in the House and Senate and it is easy to see how deeply entrenched they are in the old ways of economics and politics. For instance: No government interference. No bailouts. In time markets will settle themselves. Lower taxes. Keep our hands off the economy. The list goes on.

As citizens we need help. Business news editors should be more vigilant and play financial stories higher for everyone to see instead of burying them in dusty and dry business sections of most newspapers or Web sites. Editors in general, should start playing these stories in the front instead of the back so all can see them. They should also write them clearly and explain carefully each proposed move, especially when someone wants to return to yesteryear and the wild west of investing and making money. We need something of a revolt in this country that will allow people to see behind the curtain to help them know what is going on with their money. Who is walking away with what? What new and mysterious financial “instruments” are suddenly in play that was not there yesterday?

However, I remain cynical. Until I see a transformation that benefits everyone, I will remain unchanged.

Old Fashioned Guy

This essay first appeared in the May 2009 issue of The Digital Journalist, www.digitaljournalist.org.

Just an Old Fashioned Guy
By
Ron Steinman

I start shooting a new documentary in May. The subject is mental health, but this essay is not about that film as a film but how I still will make films in what I call “the old fashioned way.” The way I know best. By film I mean any motion picture whether on acetate or video. I use the word film to define story telling that combines words, pictures, ambient sound and music. I care about pacing, tone and narrative coherence. I care about the emotion conveyed in the way that only film can because of its many faceted approach to story telling.

As I begin, we must never lose sight of the adage that as things change, they remain the same. So, this is also about the so-called new reality of creating stories for television, TV news, the Web or independent films and how time and tried methods must still prevail. The story telling code of the ancient Greeks is still the way we tell stories today and the way we will always tell stories. It is how we should always tell stories. It is the way of the bible. Boccacio knew this. Chaucer knew this. Shakespeare knew this. Milton knew this. Some things never change, nor should they.

Video is dominant today only because it is relatively inexpensive when compared with film. Video, even the new forms of digital, is far different from film. It has a distinctive “feel, “ and a different “tone” from that of film. With lighting for film you can create deep contrast, bright tints and shades and you can wander creatively over the full spectrum of color. You can create a mood using film that is often difficult or impossible with video. Video has what I call a patina that appears as thin on the screen and seems to reject depth despite various filters that are available to give video the look of film. It works sometimes but only to a small degree, though that is occasionally enough considering where one projects his or her film, be it on TV, the Web or in a theater. For my new film we will use video because that is what we can afford, a major reality today in the making of any documentary.

However a story appears on paper, or in someone’s mind, unless that person has an unerring ability to tell a story, it will fail. This means that the film must have a beginning, middle and end. That seems simple enough on paper, but the story must rule.

Here, though, is a warning. How I prefer to work fights the economic reality of today’s world of video and film production. Simply put, I do not favor the one-person-does-it-all philosophy that now seems to prevail, whether a person is making an independent work or is on assignment for someone else.

I believe to reach the highest quality possible in a film there must always be another person looking over the shoulder of the person in front of him or her. That way creativity can reach its peak. One person doing everything is counterproductive. If the gatekeeper arrives only at the very end of the process, then it is too late to fix problems and make a better film. Without a gatekeeper, there is no one to keep the filmmaker honest. Meaning more often than not, the filmmaker cannot see the forest for the trees.

As you read this, you can already tell that that I am a dedicated believer in the division of labor, especially in a medium as complex as filmmaking. When too few people do too much it more often than not leads to a weaker creation. For my new film, there will be a strict division of labor. The cameraman, in this case a director of photography, will translate my vision into pictures. My partner who does the interviews will prepare the questions. She and I will go over those questions and refine our approach. I will set the interview shot. The director of photography will light the subject under my supervision. He will have the right to disagree knowing that I never discount that he or someone else on the shoot might have a better or more workable idea. As you can see, making a film is a community affair.

After we complete the shoot, make transcripts of the interviews, and screen all the footage, we do our initial edit on paper. We will allow the interviews to carry the story. We hire an editor. We book an editing suite with an advanced AVID editing system. We then edit the film. Three of us in a room. All of us with strong ideas. My partner. Our editor. And me.

For music that will enhance the piece, but not bury it the way music sometimes does in a documentary film, or as it can in a shorter piece for effect that has nothing to do with making the story better, we either find it in the public domain or we commission a score by a composer who understands the role music plays in a film. Interestingly, as more video stories appear on the Web, I see many articles online and in print about the misuse of music. Usually, these stories are by people who have no idea about the purpose or use of music in a video or a film. Music can and should play an important role in filmmaking. If done right, it can be the backbone of the piece, the structure that holds everything together adding emotion, verve, and power where none seemed to exist before the score had become part of the movie. But when using music, the filmmaker must understand it should not dominate. It must, and this may be difficult to parse, underscore the other elements of the film. Rarely should music cover every sequence. Rarely should the filmmaker use music under every interview, especially in a long piece. There is no need to hum the music after seeing the film. That is not its purpose. But if the music adds emotion to the story without being obtrusive, you will know you have done your job.

After we complete the visual part of the piece, we do a sound mix with an audio engineer using any ambient sound, the dialogue, interviews and the music. If the film is for TV or theaters, we will color correct each frame for balance and mood, again with a special technician. We then add credits and complete the film.

As you can see, this represents a firm division of labor with experts in each step of the way. I know that today in most cases it is no longer economically feasible to produce visual stories the way we once did, and the way I continue to do. When I was with the networks, I never experienced the early, local version of the “one man band concept” now prevalent on all levels of broadcast news and even in filmmaking. Cameras today are smaller and easier to use even if they are HD, the current darling of visual media. With one person doing all the work, sound, however, suffers because it is often impossible for the cameraperson to ride the knobs that control audio. Many filmmakers use Final Cut Pro, an editing system that can fit into a home living room that requires less space than the professional AVID. This one-person operator believes he or she has no need for a professional editor. That, too, is often a serious mistake. I want a seasoned “film” editor whose shoulder I can look over to help make decisions that would be difficult for me if I were alone in the editor’s chair. I know from long experience my method will make for a better film.

Here is what happens when one person does it all. The good is that person has a vision that he or she will guide him or her through the entire process. He or she operates the camera. He or she directs him or herself. The camera operator/director works the sound. The person then prepares the script, even edits the film, finds music, and does the sound design. The bad for me is that I strongly believe critical self-analysis suffers. Without a knowledgeable person looking over one’s shoulder to catch an error, to catch a creative gaff, to make a better suggestion, the film may never be as good as one thinks it is while he or she is making it, and, worse, after one completes it.

My way of making a film may appear to be old fashioned and more expensive. I understand that criticism. But I enjoy sitting behind someone watching them work. I enjoy making decisions with a clear mind. It gives me greater latitude in the making of a documentary because I can concentrate on the art of film and truly judge the value of its content. Ultimately, someone sits behind me and also makes decisions about the film. This does not mean I will always like what I hear or accept the thoughts of another person, though sometimes a different viewpoint opens my eyes to a better way. No matter. This is how I prefer to work. Filmmaking is about collaboration, minds getting together to make a better product. My way is something I will not give up. Nothing will change me. I am too old to change. More importantly, and I hope this does not sound arrogant, I do not want to change.

Wake Up Call

Wake Up Call
By
Ron Steinman

This is about a possible way to save newspapers, or if not old media, newspapers on paper, at least to make news on the Web economically viable. It is also about the idea that just because the Internet is free, or so it seems, it does not mean that it is really free because nothing ever really is. Someone recently said something to the effect that free is not the only price that entices the consumer. Freedom is great but it is time to pay up.
So, this is also about a growing set of theories that it is time that people paid for news, even if a small amount that in the end can work to keep accurate and superior information flowing. Most of these articles are by the few preaching to even fewer. We rarely find these thoughts and theories on the front page. Usually newspapers hide them on the back pages. In other words, they are preaching to the choir and most of what they say, goes unheard.
A major weakness of the Web is that those who use it know they can maneuver over its infinite expanse at will for nothing. It is time that idea died. Don’t get me wrong. I am against carriers charging for how much or how little I might use the Internet. I am a supporter of Net Neutrality. I simply believe that news sites should have the right to charge for the use of what they produce to give those sites the support they need to keep producing at a high level. And people, if they think for a minute, should realize they would be getting a bargain for the low price they will pay. Without sounding high-handed, our democracy deserves this more than ever.
My father did not say much about life or politics but when he said something, he was specific and direct. He contended that a day’s pay for a day’s work was a fair exchange. There is nothing free on the earth he said. Living is costly and takes its toll. If you live in an open society, these truisms are undeniable. You have to earn your way by hard work to get anywhere in this life, he told me. If someone makes something and wants to sell it, you should be willing to pay the asking price. Bargaining is okay as long as the seller and buyer agree to terms and recognize that neither walks away empty-handed. Where am I going with this? It has to do with the Internet, newspapers, and a generation that believes anything and everything on the Web is free and, worse, that they can use that information however they want without any payment or permission to the creator or rights holder. That is arrogant at best that makes me wonder how spoiled is this generation.
Those are concepts I have difficulty understanding. You may know much of what I am talking about, but I thought I would repeat some of it in the hopes it will be a wake up call, even for a few.
Along with a sinking economy and advertising dollars drying up everywhere and especially for print, meaning newspapers and magazines, and, yes, broadcasting also faces the problem of declining advertising dollars, there is a major and additional problem that the old media faces. Many among the young do not want to read, either forgot how to read, and if they do read, only read headlines or junk news. They are lazy when it comes to attaining information that matters more than Brittney Spears or Paris Hilton. TMZ counts for more to them than the state of the economy. I would wager despite the enormous amount of information on the Web, most of which is free, the current generation may be the least or worst informed of any in the last one hundred years. Reading in depth is dying, if it is not already dead.
We have to decide if we want newspapers, even if in a new dimension such as the Internet, to live or die. It is that simple. Newspapers in all their various forms will continue to fail with regularity. Without advertising and with a declining readership because of the Web and young readers who want a quick fix on cell phones, I-pods, and lately Twitter, and who live by headlines alone, I can hear the death rattle as I write. At least in the manner of newspapers we have seen all our lives.
There has been some migration of readers to the Web, but because news Web sites rarely charge for their product, and because advertising has not traveled to the Web equal to what it had been for newspapers, Web based news sites are also in danger of not surviving. To put it another way, there may not be the money to provide the audience with the kind of news it needs to make informed decisions. Web sites have smaller news staffs. Journalists, already overworked, will be even more so because they constantly have to file on multiple platforms. Investigative reporting, the lifeblood of news, will surely suffer as a result. The few new sites devoted to investigative journalism will not suffice. After the current money runs out on even those sites, will there be anyone with deep enough pockets to continue supporting their efforts. Local corruption will go unnoticed. Cheating will become the lifeblood of government. Even hit and run accidents will probably not be reported. Above all else, no sun will shine on the city council and the mayor’s office. And that is only for local news. Imagine the wasteland that Washington, national and international news will experience. I could go on but you get the picture.
In this world of uncertainties, you owe it to yourself to be well informed. It would be too much for me to ask anyone reading this, to read a newspaper as a newspaper. I will keep doing it because it is my habit and I enjoy the feel of the paper between my hands and I welcome the smudges of newsprint on my fingers. But people should pay fealty to a great tradition and the sense of a newspaper whatever the method of delivery. As for working through an arregator as a way to get news, I have my doubts about their real value. Stay in touch, though. That is for a column in the near future.
For now, it is time to pay up people. If you do, it will be good for the soul.
Read Ron Steinman’s Survval Manual blog.

Story and Image Part 2

Story and Image Part 2
By
Ron Steinman

If I were teaching a class in documentary filmmaking for beginners or conducting a seminar for those with experience, I would start by posing one question with two parts, or call it two questions, if you like. I would posit these questions based on the code or conventions, some would call them protocols of film. These come from shared knowledge of the form that we acquired by making our way through the maze of filmmaking. We observe and then we do. If we care, we then can transmit to each other — meaning those of us engaged in trying to make films, whether documentary or narrative — what we gathered on our journey.
Most films fail because they do not tell a good story. Some filmmakers do not know where to begin. Others think by the doing that is by making the film the films essence will emerge as if divinely inspired. I am here to tell whoever is reading this, it does not work that way.
Here is what I expect from any filmmaker. Tell me clearly the subject of the film you plan to make. Answer me in perhaps three lines or twenty-five words or less as they used to say on the backs of cereal boxes in the day of simple contests. Once you have clarified your aim or purpose, for the second part, tell me why you want to make your film. I can hear you scoffing about what I want. I can hear you saying, he is wasting my time. Wait, though, because there is a link between the two parts, if you give them a chance, but they are also independent, as you should be in the world of film.
The answer to the first half of my inquiry that asks you to describe your story will tell me if you have done your homework. It is not enough to have a camera, lights and a microphone. It is not enough to have the will and desire. You had better know where you are heading that first day when you load in your film, videotape or digital disc. Homework means research into your subject. Despite what you may think, knowing the subject of your film will not provide you with enough ammunition to make the film. Describing is not the same as having a deep understanding of your story. That means research. Research means hours in the library going through newspapers and magazines, looking at history, and viewing stills, reviewing old film or any film and today, videotape. A detailed investigation means you should interview as many people as possible before you squeeze the start button on the camera and expose one frame, the first frame of your film. This discovery of facts will help you with proper casting. Picking the people you will interview and knowing something of what they will say, means your film will start to have the beginnings its character, of its personality. I want you to understand that along with the research, the choices you make for the film, and then the editing you do on the film, will determine how the film will or will not resonate with the audience. Make the audience care and you are on the way to winning the battle. Does it sound too simple? Do not be too sure. Ultimately, the film’s significance comes from the foundation created out of your research.
I know you are reading this and probably wondering why is all this necessary. It is simplistic, you say, but more documentary films fail because the story is amorphous. Many of these films are weak and have a soft center. Too often factual errors abound because the filmmaker goes on a journey inside his or her head where the personal argument overtakes good journalism and good sense, and becomes a polemic for the sake of wringing emotion from the audience. I have nothing against polemics but there is a difference between the polemic, often a perceived truth, and truth, something discovered through hard work and old-fashioned digging. Perceived truth may be more shocking, but truth, though often quieter, should last forever. The lazy need not apply.
I am concentrating on the independent documentary, the film with a mission, a purpose or message. I care, too, about a film, if one exists, which I hope it does, that provides enjoyment. As a filmmaker, if you want to change the world or even a few minds, if you want to fight injustice, you had better be on solid ground. Yes, you will attract an audience, albeit small, and often like-minded as yourself, but your work will quickly disappear and affect no one.
In making a polemic with a strong personal point of view, the more people you attract, the better your chance of changing the world, if that is what you are seeking. Whatever you do with a point of view piece, make sure you will not lose the audience with tricks, anger, or too much emotion.
Edge for the sake of edge often has nothing to do with changing how anyone thinks. Part of the problem is that distributors for theatrical films and programmers for television believe edge has a way of capturing the audience. Edge is easy to achieve but it usually has no lasting value. Edge is like a bad horror film. It briefly has an affect, and then it disappears down a gopher hole. Go back and screen a documentary film with edge, often forced, and not applicable to the essence of the film, and your emotions invariably will come up empty. At least mine do. As a note, I plan to write more about this in another essay.
Then there are those filmmakers who want to make money as much as they want to make their point. Some of these filmmakers have an innate understanding of which buttons to push to get their point across. If we know what they are doing and why, what they do is acceptable. Michael More comes to mind with all his films, some of which fit in the moving, emotional category, as does Morgan Spurlock, with his carefully calculated entries into theatrical and television documentaries.
I do not include the made for TV documentary such as found on cable, where there is an occasional meaningful piece, and PBS, including the strong pieces on Frontline, and Nova, both of which abide by a formula as rigid as anything on A&E or Discovery. Those who deviate from the formula doom themselves to failure. Unless they want to keep working, they had better conform. Some production houses make money because they turn out these hybrid documentaries as if they were sausages on a conveyor belt. They have their place as entrainment, of sorts, but they are not art. I plan to get into that part of the pseudo documentary world later.
By the way, this is a call for assistance. I am proposing a contest, if you will, that will have no prize other than your name or names in my column. I want, if possible to come up with a new description for the cable television “documentary.” I usually refer to it as a the “hybrid.” That is not good enough. Sometimes I think it is almost a form with no name, perhaps even best left without a name because a name would make what it is too significant.
These and many more subjects about the documentary film, including independent narrative films, and documentary photography, are what I plan to write about in more depth as the mood strikes me. If you have questions, I will address them as best as I can, as long as you do not ask me to read a light meter.
Read Ron Steinman’s Survival Manual blog

Story and Image Part 1

Story and Image Part 1
By
Ron Steinman

An earlier version of this article appeared online at The Digital Filmmaker — http://digitalfilmmaker.net. With the documentary film now so much a part of our life I rewrote Story and Image Part I and Story and Image Part II. I will post Part II in a few days.
***

For the film critic and the casual viewer, the style, execution and the presentation of the documentary film often are important than the story. In this age of up-to-date technique it is easy to achieve a film that “looks” good but misses essential story telling. Technique does not always rule, nor should it, but without it, the film could fail. Consider that knowing how to use a camera does not mean that the result will satisfy the viewer. In fact, proper or advanced technique is a poor substitute for a good story.
Many who make independent narrative films, meaning fiction films, spend more time honing the look and feel of the work, the color and sound, the cuts, dissolves and effects, better than one would think considering an often paucity of money. Creating and using applications is second nature to many people, even those not involved in making a film. Filmmakers have become more adept at using the new software that seems to appear with regularity. In making an independent narrative film, you usually have nothing but time because the time is your own. Typically, there is not much money to support your endeavor. There is no scheduler for a cable network breathing down your back to finish your project so it can have a slot on the schedule. Often you make the film in starts and stops, depending on the money you have available.
Critics more than viewers want something from a documentary that is impossible. The governing idea, the heart that is behind the film is more difficult to achieve. The documentary filmmaker should not submerge his or her vision with an over abundance of technique, but he or she should make a film that is satisfying to the eye as well as to the mind. So technique is important even for the non-fiction film.
The documentary filmmaker usually seems content to get the story finished and into the marketplace, rather than to spend additional time in making the picture crisp, the sound audible and the effects, well, effective. An editor I once worked with theorized that the documentary film should always be a bit rough. By that he meant if it is too polished, its story suffers. I agree to a point that the story must always rule.
The documentary film may be the only medium where a compelling story will matter more than, finally, how the film looks. I know this sounds counter to what I have been saying, but story can rule under special circumstances. The filmmaker can shoot his story with a low-end camera using poor stock, cheap lenses and barely workable microphones. The film can come across as if shot by an amateur. It may even have weak or suspect reporting, and, worse, shoddy writing. But if the story is compelling and the characters strong, those two elements invariably help the filmmaker overcome the problem of something that looks like home video or, in the old days, 8 millimeter film, or one better, Super Eight film.
Let me also be clear that I am talking about films of length, meaning 20 minutes and up, not shorter pieces usually found on magazine style shows that run anywhere from 2 minutes to my designated 20 minutes. Stylistically, these short pieces may resemble the documentary film, but length does dictate content. In no way does a short pictorial story, with moving images, stills and sound – thus multi-media — for either TV or the Web approach a documentary because someone used a similar technique. These techniques are universal. They apply to every video or film story, but, to make its points, a documentary requires time despite the audience of today and its hurry-up show me quickly because I have to move on attitude. It is impossible for a short piece, even a so-called 3-minute piece, long for the Web, to have depth and breadth. Usually these pieces will only be a slice of life, limited in scope because the focus is far too narrow to effectively tell a meaningful story beyond the immediate emotion it produces.
The marketplace dictates how one produces a documentary film. Though the pure documentary is dying in today’s marketplace, it still represents the only outlet for one’s personal viewpoint. Therefore, the production team must take care in how it renders the final product. However, postproduction costs money. The culprit is cable where postproduction work on a pure documentary is almost non-existent. Cable works on small budgets and slender margins. Using video almost exclusively, and often old black and white film with all its problems of age and misuse, the final product for air looks thin, seems to have no depth, and often has a weird patina or shine on the final product. This does not apply to the semi-documentary shows that dominate cable where re-enactments are king and where the “you are there” feeling prevails and works to confuse the audience as to what is true or false. In the purer documentary form – think PBS, a few National Geographic films, some shows on Discovery and its many channels, nature films on a few other channels — if the producer, whether as individual or with a production house, is to make a profit, there is not much money for what an executive for a cable network once described to me as “the niceties of film.” He went on to say, “ the audience does not know good from bad in a documentary anyway, so why should we care?” I thanked him for his insight and exited his office as quickly as I could.
In television when I worked with film, we took pride in how the piece looked when it went on the air. It mattered to us that the audience deserved the best quality we could give it. Connecting with the audience was important then, and it should be now. Giving the viewer a palatable image, however strong, emotional and daring, was uppermost in our minds. It still should be. Sadly, it is not. To make something better does not interfere with creativity. It in itself is a creative act. It enhances the possibility of getting your message across to the viewer in a compelling manner. As a producer, you need the time to give your documentary that extra something that will link the story you are telling to the person seeing it for the first time. But there is a problem, especially in cable. Each day that some film lingers beyond its completion, means there is less profit for the company making it. Most cable documentaries do not hold quality as a goal. That would be asking too much in that highly competitive world.
When you are a producer for hire, you have no choice but to conform to the will of your masters. Producing documentaries or hybrids for cable is a world of its own. I will soon tackle that in another column.
It is a shame that some documentary filmmakers prove lazy when it comes to giving their work the best quality possible. I understand too well how costly it is to enhance the color and sound. Money is always a major consideration making an independent film of any kind. But if you cannot hear what the characters are saying, why see the film? If the images are fuzzy, hazy, and lack color, if the blacks and whites and grays all seem as if they are the same and without definition, the audience will react in kind and turn away from your work.
I do not include the world of video art, often subsumed under the rubric of the avant-garde, an area filled with all the tricks of editing and shooting, but none of the soul of a meaningful film. These films usually end up in art galleries and critics review them as if they are “art” rather than the personal indulgence of an artist at play. Just because inexpensive cameras are available, and more recently easy to learn and use desktop editing, does not mean I have to sit through an often disjointed and rambling discourse that uses diverse and mismatched elements and images that are only clear in the mind of its creator, if at all. I leave that criticism, which I hope will be fierce, to art critics who seem better able to interpret what I can only call self-indulgent juvenile drivel. I have to wonder, though, if these art critics are pandering to what they would like to be a creative act for the sake of saying something about nothing.
We never forgive sub par standards for a non-fiction writer, a novelist or a poet. They, too, often create something so powerful that we find their work impossible to ignore. Yet, critics demean these other artists for their “misguided” efforts if in the end what they create does not meet the standards of “worthy” art. I exclude painting or sculpture because these are inanimate arts and the stories they tell are self-contained by the restraints of physical movement. Why give film this leeway?
Finally, without a compelling story, there will be no documentary film. I know that sounds simplistic. Some filmmakers compose their documentary in the field where they shoot everything in sight and then hope they can find the films essence in the cutting room. The other method is to have a plan, to know your story as well as you can before you shoot a frame of film. Be prepared for the unexpected, though because it sometimes changes everything. Even with a reasonably defined story, the unexpected can and should be welcome. However, do not become mesmerized with your film because of what you hope is a compelling story, a single powerful interview or a one-time image or set of images unique to that film. That is not enough.
In the end, the audience, and the reviewer who matters because the marketplace looks to critics for advice, will sometimes ignore many of the elements in a film that deserve criticism, good or bad. When critics and the audience gloss over the making of a film, its composition created from all its elements, they do a disservice to that film and all future films. Form and content must mesh. They must compliment each other. If they do not, we will soon forget the piece as a whole, deny the art, and rarely remember the message.

Part 2 of Story and Image will concentrate on the story.

The Economy and the Loss of Nerve

The Economy and the Loss of Nerve
By
Ron Steinman

I grew up in Brooklyn the son of parents who, as with many other people, barely survived the Great Depression. My father sold general insurance. In the 1930s, he often carried his clients on his books by paying their premiums for them. He did not want his customers, many of whom were friends, to be without insurance in case something bad happened and they needed the protection. When the depression ended years later as many knew it would, and with the start of World War II, that he helped his clients during the worst of times paid off because they staid his customers. His strategy worked. But as with many survivors of the Great Depression, his life, and of course, the life of my mother, my younger sister and I would never again be the same. He became a cautious man in how he governed his life and the lives of our small family.
His dream for me was to become a doctor, a dream I subscribed to for many years until the end of my sophomore year in college when I decided medicine was not for me. I was not sure what I wanted to be. Either, medicine, dentistry, the law or teaching, a few of the professions my father thought would suit him and thus me, were not in my sights. I thought I wanted to be Ernest Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald, but that was an aspiration well beyond my talent. For a long time, the dream of being a great novelist kept me together. I eventually entered journalism and filmmaking, where I have been ever since.
This, however, is not about me but about the economy today. I am looking for the answer as to why American’s have become so meek. Why are they staying home and off the streets? As bad as things are here in America, no one is in the streets. No one is marching on Washington. People are not caressing tin cups or standing in front of city hall shouting and holding signs that declare the sorry state of the nation’s economy. Yes, there are a few tent cities that are springing up to remind us of Hoovervilles from the 1930s, but protest, as a means of making officials hear and see people in trouble, seems to be dead. Those who are agitated because life is dealing them a bad hand, appear to have been kicked hard in the stomach. They have little or no fight. They have had their legs pulled out from under them. They appears to be are no longer strong or resilient as American’s are often depicted. As jobs and thus money evaporates in our flailing economy, it is as if people who should be screaming the loudest have gone underground where they huddle in the dark in despair. Are they embarrassed about their situation among the unemployed, the underemployed and those fearful of joining a future bread line?
I am not advocating that people march on Washington. I am not a rabble-rouser or an agitator. I do not propose revolution. After having traveled the world, I know we still have the best system of government and the most workable way of life. The other day there were serious demonstrations against the government in Moldova. It was violent. I have been in the middle of demonstrations in Northern Ireland, Vietnam, Korea, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Italy, to name a few places. Some were peaceful. Others were not so peaceful. During the Vietnam War, there were many demonstrations against the war. In the heady years of fighting for civil rights, there were many demonstrations. Few of those were peaceful. There have been few demonstrations against the war in Iraq, just as no one is demonstrating against the government because of the economy. There have been demonstrations for gay rights, for women’s rights, and even for the right to demonstrate. My question is why have there been almost none about the economy? Why aren’t people standing in front of banks and shouting at them for their failures, their greed, and their thievery? I have no answer, except that people may simply be weary of how the economy has kicked them in the teeth, enough so to knock from them the needed spirit to go out and say, “I am mad as hell and I won’t take it anymore.”
Read Ron Steinman’s Survival Manual blog