LOS ANGELES -- Making a documentary film is like entering into a marriage, says Oscar winner Cynthia Wade.
“In sickness and in health, for better, for worse, you just have to commit to the film,†she says.
That means the filmmaker could spend years with a subject, years doing research, years asking questions.
Ryan White, the director of “Good Night Oppy,†found he needed to ask scientists many questions to make his star -- Opportunity, the Mars rover -- worth caring about.
What he found? “It was therapeutic for them in a lot of ways because the mission had just ended and they hadn’t talked about it.â€
For filmmaker Matthew Heineman, the director of “Retrograde,†the key is trust. “Trust is not a given,†he says. “Trust is earned. You’re often metaphorically renewing your vows with your subjects. That’s what allows you to get these extremely intimate, sensitive moments.â€
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Wade, White and Heineman are all nominees for this year’s Emmy Awards for their documentaries.
Ryan White, the director of "Good Night Oppy"
Cynthia Wade, director of "The Flagmakers."Â
Alex Pritz, the director of "The Territory"Â
Sara Dosa, director of "Fire of Love"Â
Hoopla brings attention
While the three don’t devote years to a project just to win prizes, they do find the hoopla surrounding awards can help them land funding for their next films.
“You’re so embedded and emotionally connected to the film you’re making that sometimes it’s hard to pull yourself away to get to the next one,†Wade says.
For Sara Dosa, who directed “Fire of Love,†the Oscar-nominated look at a French couple who devoted their lives to studying volcanoes, awards season is a chance to talk to other filmmakers and “flood my imagination with possibility -- that’s really exciting.â€
Winning, Wade says, can be mind-blowing. “It’s like you’re on a different planet.†When she got the Oscar for “Freeheld,†she brought it back to a coffee shop in Brooklyn and someone asked her, “Is that a bottle of maple syrup?â€
“I said, ‘No, it’s an Oscar,’ and the man said, ‘Whose Oscar?’â€
Reality does set in more quickly for documentarians.
Making a difference
A strong film can also make a difference.
“The Territory,†a film about the fight for the Amazon rainforest, has prompted workshops to teach indigenous communities to learn surveillance techniques. Director Alex Pritz says he was taken with the story of an activist in Brazil. He sent her a cold email and expressed his interest in what she was doing. “I went there with a one-way ticket and borrowed some money from a couple of friends. We had no funding to start.â€
Once he talked with Neidinha Bandeira, Pritz discovered there was a bigger story at hand.
Often, the filmmakers say, that’s how their work starts. They get the germ of an idea and once the research begins it expands.
“We follow many more stories than are in the film,†says Wade, who co-directed "The Flagmakers" with Sharon Liese. “We shoot it like a feature and then you pull it back to its essence. There are many more stories on the cutting-room floor than there are in the film.â€
Other offshoots
Sometimes, those stories can wind up somewhere else. “The Flagmakers,†for example, looks at the people who work in a Midwestern flag factory. Even though Wade and Liese interviewed a host of workers, all didn't make it into the film. The good news: "The Flagmakers" has been optioned for a Broadway musical. “Some of our unseen footage will be inspirations for that adaptation.â€
Heineman says he hopes “Retrograde,†his film about the final nine months of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan, will reinvigorate conversation and help the thousands who were left behind. “The war in Ukraine has really usurped so much of the international oxygen around the war in Afghanistan. We seem to have forgotten about this country.â€
The key, he adds, is taking large, amorphous subjects and putting a human face to them. “You want audiences to connect with issues that often feel so distant and so far away but really aren’t. Maybe, you make the world just a tiny bit closer and a little bit smaller.â€
The Documentary Emmy Awards will be presented Sept. 28.Â