Stages of Filmmaking: The Power of Collaboration

When I moved to New York City four years ago I didn’t have a job, I only knew one person and I’d only been to the city once before. But I knew, despite all that, that this was the place for me.

I’d spent the past five years in Chicago. While there I went to school, taught inner city high school kids how to make movies and worked towards my most important goal - to be a filmmaker. After that fifth year I realized that one key ingredient was missing in my quest to make films. That ingredient was community.  I had many great friends in the windy city but not a group of people that were interested in doing the things I wanted to do with filmmaking and putting in the work in to make them happen.

I decided to head to New York City with hopes of finding a community of people that I could make films with.  I figured a city that played so many movies had to have many folks who wanted to make them as well.

The first year was rough.  I worked an awful retail job that required me to test out lotions and soaps on random strangers in Herald Square. I went to a lot of films and had a lot of dinners by myself.   Eventually I started to get video jobs, one of those being in the Bronx teaching high school students how to make video blogs.  While there I met two young men who were just starting an interesting project called Meerkat Media.  The goal of Meerkat Media was to make cinema without hierarchy--to abandon traditional roles and use collaboration to tell stories.

As I became better friends with my co-teachers I started to work with them on projects and soon I was a full fledged Meerkat.  At the time I joined the collective, which was made up not only of filmmakers but also artists, educators, musicians and activists, they were starting out on what sounded like an ambitious project: to make a documentary that would be collaboratively written, directed and produced by the twelve of us that then made up Meerkat Media.

The focus of the film would be a theater project that was happening on New York City’s Lower East Side at two community centers, University Settlement and The Door.  At University Settlement a group of older Puerto Rican women would be working with teaching instructors from The Phoenix Theatre Ensemble to create a play out of the stories of their lives.  At The Door, a group of teenagers would be doing the same.

We weren't so interested in the stakes of whether they would be able to pull off their plays but, much like how we made films, in the process they went through to get to their final performance.  The interesting thing to us what what happened when people, who society gives little voice to, had a space in which they could safely tell the stories of their lives.  A space that allowed them to share, create, laugh, cry and be comfortable confronting both their future and their past.

What happened was nothing short of amazing. And while that adjective might seem a little strong for a film that is about teens and old folks telling stories I can assure you it’s not. The stories these women and young adults tell are the stories that define our country, that define all of our lives.  They represent where we're going and where we've been and how important it is to talk about both of those places.

Now, two and half years, later we are proudly premiering the film, called STAGES, at The New York International Latino Film Festival.  And as we get ready to share this special piece of cinema with the world I can’t help but reflect back upon what I’ve learned about filmmaking and storytelling from both the characters in the film and the process by which Meerkat Media documented those characters.

It wasn't always easy but the lessons learned and the results gained are priceless to me.

1. Consensus Does Work: Whenever I tell anyone that STAGES was directed equally by 12 people the first question they always ask is how?  And with that I tell them we used consensus, an organized way to make sure everyone’s voice is heard during discussion.   And just as everyone’s voice is heard, you must spend more time listening than you do in most discussions.  You’d be amazed at how different filmmaking is when people are genuinely listening to each other. Believe it or not you're actually able to accomplish quite a lot. Likewise, in STAGES, it is quite extraordinary to watch what happens when people who spend much of their lives alone have people that genuinely care and listen to them.  The play they make is also proof positive that consensus not only works but truly aids in the creation of powerful work.

2. Different People Bring Different Things to the Table: No matter how knowledgeable you are about something, even filmmaking, there is always something to learn from folks with different perspectives on life.  Much like the characters in STAGES, all of the Meerkats have different backgrounds and different experiences that make us who we are. Making a film with people who focus on the world in different ways, through music or art or activism or education, can broaden perspective and make a story more universal.  Simply put, you learn the most from those who are different from you.

3. Support Makes Films Stronger: Living in New York City and making films while also having a day job and a personal life can be really tiring and frustrating sometimes.  When you make films alone and a “funk” strikes you it is usually your film that pays - from your lack of working on it or from your working on it when you have other things on your mind.  When you make a film with a group of people who all have ownership and understanding there is always someone there to help out if someone else needs a break.  Likewise, in STAGES, all of the characters have their tough moments and what gets them through those moments is having a community around them that cares and supports them.

4. Collaboration Equals Freedom: To make movies you need to work with people.  There is no way around this. When you work in a more traditional hierarchical structure you often have to hire people and work with folks you may not know very well.  Making a film with a collective, where many folks have many different skills, means that you don’t have to outsource a project that means a lot to you.  You can instead work with people you trust and with that you gain a certain freedom to experiment and to try new things.  You don’t have to worry about time sheets or divas and you can simply focus on the filmmaking (or making a play in the case of STAGES).

5. Collaboration is hard: While all the things above are true I would be lying if I didn’t say that collaboration can also be super frustrating.  There are disagreements and times when you can’t have the control you want or things aren't going in the direction you prefer.  But, as I stated above, the awesome thing about collaboration is that in those moments you can step back, calm down and reenter the process when ready.  Plus the feeling you get watching something that you made with other people is so powerful that even in the worst moment, it's easy to remember why you’re there.

6. I'm Very Lucky: Not only have I spent the past two years working on a film that explores an issue near and dear to my heart, the importance of community art spaces in urban environments, but I’ve spent the past two years working on a film with people that are near and dear to my heart.  More than that I’ve learned so much about the stories I want to tell, how I want to tell them and who I want to tell them with.

This summer marks my fourth year of living in New York City.  I can’t help but cringe when I think back to that first year here and how awful and lonely it really was.  But even with that, when I think about where I am now, I can’t help but smile.  I came to New York City to find community and not only did I find it, but I made an awesome collaborative film about it.  If you live in or near New York City I encourage you to come out to the New York International Latino Film Festival and check out STAGES, I promise you'll be glad you did.

STAGES screens at the New York International Latino Film Festival on July 29th at 3:30 pm and July 31st at 5:00 pm.  Both screenings take place at the SVA Theater on 23rd St between 8th and 9th ave.

You can buy tickets here: http://nylatino.bside.com/2009/films/stages_nylatino2009

The trailer is below: