From the Edit Bay: Making Crashing The States

I'm looking forward to seeing everybody at the Yearly Kos Convention this week, where I'll be spewing my own special brand of hate pretty much continuously to anyone and everyone who approaches me (It may cause you to experience blanching, the dropping of teacups and fainting; consult your doctor). I'm actually co-moderating the California/Hawaii regional caucus on Thursday at 3:30, so all members of the Golden State should be sure to come by (we'll have at least 3 Congressional candidates speaking at the caucus). And I hope to reaffirm old friendships, make new ones, and find random comments buried in the archives of the site and hold them up as emblematic of the Angry Left.

But I wanted to talk about what I've been spending the last week doing, lending my particular abilities to a project you may know about called Crashing The States, a film chronicling the 26-state journey last election season by two members of our community, hekebolos and Reality Bites Back, to visit all of the Netroots Endorsed campaigns and learn the story of the progressive blogosphere along the way. This was an interesting film to edit, so I wanted to take a minute to explain the process.

I've been editing film and television for over a decade (or at least pretending to while I blog), and I looked forward to working on Crashing The States when I was approached to help last year. Fortunately, a hiatus in my current job allowed me for some time over the past two weeks (or unfortunately, depending on your interest in my maintaining my back account).

The key to a project like this is organization. Over 300 hours of footage was shot in dozens of different locations. Determining a coherent narrative when offered this many possibilities is like drinking through a fire hose. The good news is that Gary (Reality Bites Back) did a great job scrutinizing and organizing the footage. Unfortunately, that process simply takes so many man-hours that there was no way we would be able to complete the finished film in time for the convention, which I believe was the initial goal. So we ended up deciding on a 23-minute "mini-version" for Yearly Kos.

When I was brought in on the project a couple weeks ago, Gary had a 30-minute "stringout" of some of the top moments of the trip. I could immedately see that there was a great film hidden within the footage. The challenge would be to find it, and more importantly to set it in the proper context. We were dealing with a few issues. The first was how to juggle the multiple stories. There's an "A" story of the journey by Gary and Dante (hekebolos) itself. You want to offer some of their personalities and give the feeling of forward movement to give a through-line to the film. Then of course we have the story of the different candidates they encountered along the way. They visited over 30 of them, but for the purposes of this mini-film, we focused on people like Jim Webb, Jon Tester, Ned Lamont, Darcy Burner, Brian Keeler, and a couple more. And then you have a third story you have to weave into the film, the story of the netroots, as told by its leading lights, like Markos, Jerome Armstrong, Chris Bowers, Jane Hamsher, etc.

How do you deal with this?

Well, the important thing is to not lose sight of the goal. The "A" story must remain paramount, and you have to find those areas of linkage to weave in the other parts. This is easier in a 90-minute film when you have enough time to address everything. In a 23-minute film we can only give you a taste of that, but I think we did a decent enough job.

The other challenge you have is not to predetermine your audience and make sure that the film is sufficiently broad enough for everyone to understand it. We will be screening it for a very discerning audience at Yearly Kos, people who know about and participate in the blogosphere, and who remember well the battles of 2006. Nevertheless, you must put the film together imagining that the viewer may not have any understanding of the netroots at all. That's why I thought it was good to setup the stakes in 2006, as well as the history of the blogosphere, right off the top. Once the backstory was settled, then we could move into the journey that is essentially our "A" story. Again, this would be easier if the film were much longer and you would have more time to spread everything out. You may want to begin the journey and then fill in the gaps. But for our purposes, we wanted to inform the audience without talking down to them, and this structure seemed to be the best way to go.

Overall, I'm very pleased with how the film came out. The scenery and cinematography is spectacular, and the excitement you see on the ground in these races is palpable. In addition, the access that Gary and Dante managed to get is very impressive. I was glad to have the time to be a part of it.

But this is the beginning and not the end. This 23-minute version is designed to give people a taste of things to come. My hope is that the production can get the necessary funding needed to... well, to hire me, and a composer, and all of the other expenditures needed to complete the film. As a freelance employee, if I'm not working I'm not being paid. This isn't belly-aching, I'm happy to donate my time to something worthwhile, but this is a story that deserves to be told, and it shouldn't be done on nights and weekends, but the right way, with the attention to detail commensurate with the quality of the effort. If you like what you see at the preview screening, I would hope that you would be able to donate to the cause and help fund the first independent documentary film that has arisen purely from the netroots. I think this film can be a document of our movement, and a historical snapshot of the great victory in 2006.

I'm looking forward to having you all see it.