Why Documentary Subjects Freeze on Camera

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today I am joined by storyteller, filmmaker, author and teacher, Robin Canfield. Welcome to the show, Robin. I'm so happy to have you. Yeah, thank you. Happy to be here. you're joining us from a very unique place in the world. I have never interviewed anyone from here, so tell us where you are. I am currently in Saigon, Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City.

1:16
am in just into the second week of a four week program with students here we call it Documentary Outreach. I heard that you have been on several 14 hour shoots. how many days have you been at this? so five, six days of work we haven't filmed yet. I have them all spend time getting to know the people they're going to film with, getting comfortable with each other. It's partly it's managing three different crews. So some days I have everyone together and I can get through things faster as we do lessons and workshops and things. Some days they're all scattered. So they're not having a 14 hour day, but I'm jumping around. crew to crew to crew and my day goes all the day. I get it. Well, I have a lot to learn about your life. So let me get to your bio and I'll catch everybody else up. Robin is a lifelong storyteller. He studied journalism in school, grew up with a camera in his hands. He has been an enthusiastic photographer his entire life. He is the co-founder and director of Global Operations at Actuality Abroad. where he has led media-centered study abroad programs for over 15 years and helped produce more than 200 short documentaries in more than 20 countries. He is the author of Purpose Driven Documentaries, a field guide to creating impact a new textbook for students and storytellers exploring the power of social impact documentary.

2:39
Wow, that is exciting. So I'm really looking forward to hearing more about what you do. So how did this all happen? Take me back to when you were this young boy growing up with a camera in your hand. My father had a very big passion for photography. So my first bedroom that was my dad giving up his dark room. so all my life watching him, all of his contraptions, all of his gear and multiple cameras, slide conversion, all of the different things and So as soon as I was big enough, had the little, it was the two ring plastic with the connector that you'd pop that on for film. I still remember those cameras and up through having, you know, disposables, plastics, different, somewhere buried in my mom's house is still probably my oldest point and shoot of cameras. So my whole life spent, you know, watching him take pictures, seeing his photos, him looking at photos with me and up through. Even when digital cameras were new and he got my brother and I both a brand new digital camera, each was probably what? Like eight megapixel camera or something like that. But so excited. He didn't even warn me what it was.

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He just came to town where I think I was still at university and it was like, we have to meet. And I was worried something bad had happened. And he's like, I got you the digital camera. So yeah, all my life that was even when I did, go home to visit We had different political views, different views on many different things. If we needed just the time to go out and spend good time together, we'd grab the cameras and go out to a park or a mountain or something where we could just go out and work on our photography together. That is a great unifier for sure brings a lot of people together. That's beautiful. So you're talking about photography, which is a great start in filmmaking for sure. Cause it teaches you about color and framing and, but that's still pictures. And at some point had to make that transition. How did that happen? I'd done some video work, from the big VHS home camcorder things when I was a little kid. And worked with that through college some too, but it was for Actuality Abroad for these films. I came to it with the journalism side from school and the other co-founder, Aubrey, she came to it from narrative film work. And both of us had the interest in working with changemakers, people doing great things in the world.

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so it was it was really bringing in her film part of that with my journalism and combining that to where documentary was a natural path right in the middle. now you mentioned university a few times, so talk to me about where you went to school it sounds like you majored in journalism and not filmmaking. So actually, I went to Oregon State University, and at the time, they didn't have a school of journalism. They had what was rated the number one student newspaper in the United States. But all of us have English degrees that were writing there at the time, Well, did you decide you wanted to go as far away from home as possible or did you start in Oregon? I was definitely determined to get away from my hometown. Oregon, I was not convinced that I would ever leave, which is probably what most people that grew up in Oregon would say. But I do love travel, so it took a while to get that first step out of the country beyond North America and start really exploring. But it was a pretty fast domino effect from that. One of my first big trips was actually to see my older brother who was living in Cairo, Egypt and teaching.

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But within, I think, six, eight months of that, I was abroad again and just kept going from there. What did you think you wanted to do I wasn't totally sure what I wanted to stick with, but I did know by the time I graduated that the newsrooms weren't the same as when I even started at university and was not sure that that's what I wanted to stick with. So I finished school, I did freelance writing for a while. I wrote quite a bit for some local independent different papers, but was still kind of feeling it out when the opportunity came to start with, was actuality media at first, and then we changed that to actuality abroad. We did a trial run before we were officially a company borrowing a group of business students from Oregon State University, again, where I went to school, but also where Aubrey, the other co-founders, mentor had become a professor. So it was her students from the school I'd gone to. We were able to borrow a group and we did a short project in Guatemala that was a test run. We weren't totally sure it could work, but we'd spent time in this small town, San Miguel Escobar, outside of Antigua, Guatemala, lived with coffee farmers for a while, made a short documentary about this cooperative that was They were fighting Starbucks to be able to take their own beans and instead of just selling them, they roasted them, they ground them, they sold them to tourists, they made a whole bunch more money than they usually did otherwise.

8:06
It was a great story. The film was, I usually just say it was okay, but it was a group of business students who also didn't really have film experience. So we were pretty sure with that result, if we... got film students out who were really, knew more of what they were doing, were passionate about it. We could tell really good stories, make really good films. how did you come up with this idea, you and Aubrey and, and why? What is the why behind what you were trying to do? And, has it changed since then? Or has the mission remained the same? It started as really awesome people out in the world doing these really cool things for the community, We really started with wanting to meet these people and help tell their story. And how could we do that in a more sustainable way? And it was not an idea to let start a study abroad company. It just became, Hey, If we could create these projects that students can come on and work on it, we can teach things to students and make these programs happen and travel to all these places and share this, not just with us and not just with an audience, but with these people that could go with us. So it took some time and some thinking to come up with the study abroad part.

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Aubrey had been on some study abroads when she was in film school and said that she would rather not ever show anyone those films because it was not great topics. They were just having a good time. We thought we could make this more meaningful. And if we give students this goal, set this bar, look at these great stories we need to do right by these people, we can make great films with it. So we had some ideas early on of like, could we do this in the United States too? Closer to home, make it an easier start. But... em no one in the US where I went around visited schools up and down the East Coast, West Coast to see what interest there was. And people weren't really interested in going elsewhere in the United States. But as soon as we said, oh, Guatemala, Columbia, maybe Nicaragua, hands, I want to go, I want to go. so that's the way we went with it. Interesting. let me just see if I understand so far. You go to schools and you offer the individuals or the schools this actualities abroad program. Yeah, we do both actually. So on the documentary outreach like has me here in Vietnam right now, this is just an actuality abroad project.

10:42
I have people from Australia, Canada, UK, Germany, US, people from anywhere that's allowed into the country and is 18 or over is really someone that we'll consider can come with us. I also though build programs for universities. So one week, 10 day, up to three months actually we've done for schools of building ones. Usually it's working directly with faculty at that point. If a professor at a school says, I'd love to take people here and do this kind of a project, we'll build that with them too. In that case, it's all a cart kind of of choosing which elements of our regular programs they want to have with their students on that trip. Whereas with these four weeks, it follows a very set curriculum that we have developed ourselves. And that's where everything's based in that is in the textbook I wrote also. Okay, tell me about that textbook I was working on a handbook for the participants of our program, honestly. It's a building off of everything that I teach them in classes and I do a week and a half of lessons here. So expanding on that and taking it through, there's still guiding people through a lot of the filmmaking on the ground once we're here after the lessons stop. But yeah, it was meant to be something that I give all of our participants as a resource, Maybe even as something to carry with them out in the field, though I didn't necessarily expect everyone to just print that out, but it was Professor Bolton from University of Tampa, who told me like, Hey, this, this publisher is looking for proposals.

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Even you, have you ever thought about taking that handbook you talked about and, actually publishing it. So I had a meeting with one of the agents from that publisher after I sent them an email, they were. Really surprised. said, usually people just come to us with maybe a chapter. I was like, I already have every chapter and at least one or two, one or two revisions, of each chapter still took work to get it to where it was ready to be published as the textbook. it's smaller than most other documentary textbooks. Most other documentary textbooks aim for feature length and students just aren't working at that. So trying to get something out there that people new to film, especially people wanting to help create impact can take and make documentaries. I think it's very interesting that you didn't go to film school or study anything like that. And here you are writing a textbook. Truthfully, how did you learn to make good films without really studying it? Not only that, so much has changed since you started. So much has changed with equipment. in technique with editing. So much has changed in every way humanly possible in terms of, online tools and goodness gracious, even in the last year, I can't imagine the updates that would be needed on that book.

13:35
I leave the gear as a, like, these are, these are things you need to be able to do. But I can't point out, use this piece of equipment. Cause by the time it's published, will already be outdated for that too. So yeah, I tried to step back from specific gear suggestions, things like that, because that would just date the book too quickly. think for how on the filmmaking I was, always a storyteller. I wrote fiction, even serial for some of the papers that I was also doing articles for. So I've always been a storyteller. with our curriculum, it's looking at it from the hero's journey structure on how to pace it, not using it exactly, condensing it, changing it, adapting it to documentary, but making it workable for that kind of storytelling. I've given talks where I paralleled the Little Mermaid and the Cove for story beats. I could pick any different documentary in any animated film, for two sea based stories, it works really well. But that then, and just doing it, going out for years now of being out with students, knowing what to look for, how to put a story together. I try to phrase it with my students as if it were me rather than this is what you should do. I'm just very quick to look at these situations and say, this is, this is your standout details.

14:56
This is the conflict you really need to center it on. I don't demand that of the students. I give them options when I can. like them to embrace it, them to own their project. But yeah, it's just been a lot of doing to get to the point of being good at this. For the gear. I balance the gear of what's light and what's portable with what do I want? What do we need? I've had university groups that showed up in Guatemala with big power banks for for lights and things. I'm like, I'm not sure that we can find a place to plug that in. And if we can, I think you're gonna blow out the power for this whole village. So that's not gonna work. It started getting easier with the more portable lights, just watching everything get smaller has been very convenient for the travel filmmaking. We stuck with Canon cameras for a long time for being very portable and capable. But actually what I have with everyone here and now in Vietnam is iPhones that have the Tilt-O-Chronos rigs on them. So cages with all kinds of attachments and handles and things that makes it more capable for filming. But a really big part of that that I found is a lot of the people who are being helped by those organizations.

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are not used to interfacing with cameras. I've seen people go from totally outgoing and joyful and happy to a cameras in front of them and they're just rock solid, closed up, nervous, but they're all used to cell phones. So even with the attachments on these rigs, they see these phones and they're like, well, it's a phone though. And they're much more calm. It's easier to get into conversations. So it's helpful on the portable side. but it looks good and every student knows what they're doing with at least a little help. in May of last year, I was in the capital of Columbia in Bogota. That was a program with all grown former foster care youth from Chicago. and they had no film experience whatsoever. The organization finds different life experiences for them to have to experience more of the world. So it was myself, one of their leaders, and 10 young women from Chicago. Again, no experience, but we had the discussion of, I'm gonna tell you more of exactly what to do here. and I could position some, you stand here, you hold this one, you film them as they go by. Some of them we needed, we need volunteer tourists.

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Three of you come walking through here for us too, for this example here. And I would stage all of them and tell them this is what you're doing, whether you're in front of the camera or behind the camera. And with the cameras we used to have, it would have been a lot harder to describe what they're doing, but they're like, oh, it's an iPhone? Yeah, all right. tell me what I'm doing here as I move and control this, but like there was no fear of putting the camera in their hands. They felt very confident in what they were doing too. fascinating point. On the job is definitely like they learn a lot being out there and interacting with the world, with the organization that is for how we work, it's kind of semi client based because they're not paying us, but we are, we want it to be something that benefits them too. So we're asking them questions that these students don't always know. Or like, this is what you, as you're consulting a client, you need to know what they want out of it. These are questions you would ask them too. But. Before they get to that stage, there's even, there's all of the lessons that I'm teaching you, interviewing, thinking visually, things that sound right, make sense for film, for documentary. I also have communication in there because that's not really a regular class either. And they need to know one, most of them and none of them.

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that are here with me in Vietnam had ever met each other before they got here. I start chat groups, I get them starting to be friendly, but they've never worked together, never been face to face with anyone. So they need to be able to communicate constructively to work together as crews on their stories and their films, but also to work with the people out in the world. And some people just don't have the experience to be comfortable with that, to make it easy to jump into that. And a lot of the time, the pushback I get the most is from people that they're not all film students. Some of them journalism, some of them just curious. That's usually a minority, but the film students, especially I've had pushback of like communication. Why do we need a class on communication? And I have to be the one to tell them like, look, no matter what you're going to start as a PA, you're going to be on a set somewhere. And 20, 50, I don't know what the number is anymore. A lot of other people would love that position too. So no matter what, you need to do a good job, but you also need to communicate well with these people so that they like you because that is going to be key to them calling you back. And if you want to keep doing that, you don't have to like them, but you need them to know that they like you.

20:08
And that is where your communication is key. The other thing I wanted to comment about, when I asked you, you didn't go to film school and you're response well. I've always been a storyteller. And the fact is a lot of people outside the business for sure, but even some in the business, don't understand or undersell the story aspect of it. But story is everything. Story is everything. And if you don't have the story, if it's not written down or like you said, in a way that is the classical beginning, middle and end, the hero's journey, the protagonist and antagonist. If you don't have those classic story structures, the story really doesn't work, It's not interesting. So you have to have that regardless of its documentary or not. That's just, I don't know, good storytelling. And you do have that background and you were trained So if you're listening to this and you don't have a film degree, but you do have some experience in journalism or writing, or those classically trained skills that can make a great filmmaker. Definitely. Everyone is a storyteller. 100%.

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Everyone could be a better storyteller too. Is a thing I start with for people if I'm talking about why, why I have all kinds of different people that come in. Cause yeah, again, mostly film students, some grads, some people in the industry trying to change, do different things. There's always a small. percentage of people that just really are interested and want to check it out and I would never let that don't let that become like a big number I want people who have some film experience in on this too, but I love watching the students when they're working on their projects and it's usually that small percentage other person without the background when people are just throwing out ideas What if we do this? What if we do that and man that one's boring this one to that and it's the small percentage person who's like What about this? And people are like, there's no way. That won't even work. That'll never... Wait, could we do that? Like the most random, out of left field ideas that have some of the greatest, you know, throw the audience off or really drive the point home for them or really get them involved. That's a lot of the time where those ideas come from, because that's just the person who's going to think of the most out of the box type of idea. It's really fun to have them involved.

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It's really fun to watch the students too when their eyes light up with things like that. It's like, oh, that could be a thing. We really could do that. So yeah, I love bringing in all types of storytellers and just helping people figure it out. Because everyone has stories they love to tell. That doesn't always mean that they know how the audience will best receive them or how the audience wants to hear them.

24:13
Talk to me about how you're able to do that financially. There's a lot of hows like how financially, language barriers. You're doing a lot of filming in countries that it's not developed. And so I'm thinking about a lot of very arduous situations. visa situations. danger. health. insurance. I mean, there's just this whole wealth of problems that could be happening. I tell the students all the time, documentary filmmaking is problem solving. Funding wise, I mean, if it's with the school, then it's the school is paying to us. Students might be paying them. Some schools are ones where they're programmed. The fee is just part of the student's tuition and that kind of thing. For our independent ones, most people here are going to get credit. A lot of that's through their own school, but we do the paperwork, we help coordinate with the school, make sure all that's gonna happen. We also have an agreement through the California State University system, it's called the Entertainment Alliance, so people can register through them as students from outside of that system or in the schools, and to get internship credit through them. So most people, it really is like it's study abroad. They are getting university credit that they can get back.

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to their school or through the school. And so they are paying us for that full experience. And the funding then comes from them for putting the program together. Much like most other documentary production, it's not a huge money-making production here, but it does pay for itself and pay some staff people, things like that. So that's where the funding comes in for that. For visas, that's in every country is different. Some of them want us in as film. None of them want us in as students because we're not going to any local school. Most of them still want us in as tourists because we're just coming to work with these organizations. None of the organizations are paying us any money. We're not charging nonprofits to come make documentaries with them. It is all just from the student side. Some of them, depends on the length. If we go to Thailand, and we spend 14 days or less, we are tourists, the film board's page says very specifically, if you are coming for less than I think 15 days actually, do not bother us. I've had schools be like, you sure we shouldn't check with them? And I'm like, no, it says very clearly, do not bother us. But if you go for longer than that, then you need to talk to them and get in on a filmmaker visa.

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Sometimes we're on volunteer visas because we're with these nonprofits. It really, it's technical, it depends on where we're headed. For safety, I mean, we're always going to, one, places where lots of tourists are. That's not specifically because that's where we want to go, but a lot of the organizations we work with, pull foreign volunteers also. It just ends up being an overlap. These are the kind of places we end up. Sometimes it's smaller cities. Sometimes it's bigger, but the last few, San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, pretty sizable. Bangkok was the one before that. That's huge. But, you know, small mountain town in Guatemala is not a thing out of the question either. As long as there's enough organizations, we can have multiple crews. That is part of the economics of it too. It's a lot harder to take one small crew to one place, but 20 people, five crews, that's great. We can go almost anywhere with that and make things work. Back to safety though. that's finding housing that's well reviewed, that has safety, making sure it's a safe place, talking to some of the foreign volunteers with those organizations, asking them what it's like there for them, making sure we're going to be safe walking around, being out with gear. When we're working with the organizations, we always have someone from the organization with the crew showing them around, showing them the ropes.

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How do you get on this bus? How do you get across town from here? Sometimes it's, you Guatemala is even like, do you wash your hands in this interesting three basin sink system? Not so much for danger, but so we don't offend people. Laundries on one side, the tonight's dinners on the other, do not get soap in the wrong one because you could ruin people's food, that kind of thing. So all kinds of customs and safety to go with that. If there was any interesting takeaway of where it might be concerned, we had government guides with us. You know, that was a required thing to go out to this village to visit this office and visit some of the homes. had people that were escorting us out there to just, I think just to watch us. They talked to people, but mostly they stood out to the back of that project. But then I think it was like a week later back in the city of Hoi An and I was just to the local coffee shop where I would go like. almost every day, so established pattern. And I walked in and it was empty except for the two regular staff guys and one man just sitting at a table smoking inside. That was different. So I knew something was not usual going on, but he wasn't facing me. He was just sitting at a table smoking and is sitting in a suit, looking out the window.

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The guys at the counter looked at me and just waved me over to a table. They knew what I was going to order. So they brought that over to me. And as I'm sitting there, getting my computer out and things, the man in the suit turned to look at me, smiled as he's smoking. And I looked at him and knew immediately that that was one of our government guys that had been out to the villages with us too. So they were watching us. They were curious what we were doing, but as soon as any government person ever actually talks to us, they're like, oh, nonprofit and you guys are making, okay, yeah, you're fine. They watched us for a little bit and then they just. went on with their day and we went on with ours because no one's ever upset with us for working with these different NGOs and changemaker groups. you keep mentioning challenging places to film, like where you are now, as well as Guatemala and other places. Do you ever go into fun, beautiful places like the French Riviera or Italy or Barcelona? Then after you answer my location question, then let's talk about post-production Locations, it's part of it is where are the changemakers? Where are a lot of the groups in the world trying to do good things to make the world better, starting with their community? And that is there is that everywhere, United States included, like I said, but people weren't that interested in going there.

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The only one I've done in Europe is in Istanbul. It's just. It's a lot of it is cost. it makes it a lot more expensive to go into places like that. And so we've just found other parts of the world, you coming from the United States to Vietnam, the flight is a big cost. But once we get here, we can keep every housing and food and everything that we build into the package. A lot of it is not that expensive. We let people actually do a lot of their meals on their own because we'll be scattered around different parts of the city. but it's much more affordable for the food here, just as it is the housing, the transport, all of that. So I would love to be in different parts of Europe, but I still argue that we go plenty of beautiful places too. I've been the middle of the Andes Mountains in Ecuador and beautiful remote places, Thailand too. uh One of the more recent, very beautiful places was the Maya Biosphere. We were filming in the jungle in Guatemala at the village there in the archaeological site that it's named after is Huachactun. So it's the em oldest 365 day accurate physical calendar.

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It is a pyramid, but depending on where the sun comes, they have some other stones that help mark that. It tells the day of the year, it tells the season, all of that. And we were interviewing people in front of this. smaller pyramid, especially in comparison to Tikal, which is a very huge Maya setup. That's the one that we had to drive through every day. actually, for our government permitting everything, we had to show it at these gates, because all these tourists, all these foreigners and locals coming in by the busload to go see these pyramids, and we would drive through those and keep going another hour or two into the jungle, thick, hot. humid bug-filled crazy jungle, but the village had a nice big open space because they had a long green strip that was mostly a soccer field now, but it used to be Wrigley Gums landing strip. The planes would fly down. That's where they would collect the sap they would use to make chewing gum. So imagine that surrounded by just miles of or kilometers of forest in every direction. Crazy, amazingly beautiful place. That does sound beautiful. That sounds amazing. Well, talk to me then now about the post-production.

33:19
So I'll preface the post-production saying that we do a lot of pre-production more than what the students usually expect, more than the average production, I think, to get everything as well set as possible, knowing everything's going to shift, things are going to change. But it really helps put editors into a good place for taking over as soon as we have enough footage and really going into editing. For us, if it's a week of research and building relationships, a week of planning, and then the week of filming, we call the fourth week editing. But really in filming week, as soon as there is enough footage, the editors are starting to sort and cut. But they already have a full treatment from their crew so that they know this is our roadmap of how we want to lay things out. I push them on then cutting everything by scene. And as I work with the students, the scenes, a lot of them function very modular. We're not trying to fabricate anything, not trying to distort any timelines or any of that, but we still have like moments that we can touch on throughout the film that, it could go here, you know, could be sequence two is really get emotions going here, but this really could be better in our callback in sequence four and help build the story from that. So like they start putting these pieces together and then, you know, in the editing week, they'll have multiple rough cuts, fine cut.

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that kind of thing, but at the same time, while they're putting these scenes together and working up to these transitions and they're fine tuning things, I'm with the rest of the crew. do what we call paper cuts and I will have note cards or, it's hard to find those here. Some countries note cards, index cards don't really exist. So sticky notes, something we cover walls with all of the beats of the story. that's visual, that's audio. Sometimes they want to segment that out to what's interview and what's just natural sound in different places. And we have them all on the wall so we can take it all in at one glance. you know, being on the computer scrolling back and forth is good for some purposes, but for this is like, where, what can we move? How can we rearrange things? How can we make this a better story? And we let that editor keep going different room on their computer. But as we rearrange full parts of the story, it does, we take a picture of what it was to start with, and then we start moving pieces around. Sometimes that's not, it doesn't work. We were like, no, okay, we thought we had a good line. This is not gonna, we lost the thread though, cause we took these pieces over here. There's nothing else to make this better.

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We put it back. But every now and again, they, especially it often ends up being that like. 10 at night, one in the morning sometimes with the crews that are just going all night, like it's just not right yet, it's just not there yet, what do we need to do? They're moving pieces around, moving pieces around. I've seen this happen with people like laid out asleep in chairs and tables, but there's a director and like a producer still going and changing up parts of this paper cut. And they'll stop and be like, wait, that's it. That, yeah, like that, that's exactly it. And their eyes just light up and. wake up, wake up, wake up, get everybody up, this is it, look at this, this is how it goes, all right? We, editor, like, take this picture, see how this timeline is gonna be now, let's, we need to see this on the timeline in the computer, start reorganizing, and the energy just immediately floods back into them. yeah, so that's all part of the editing week process that we go through. We get it to the last Friday of the program, so two days before we leave. We will show these films. We'll find it in Mexico, the library in San Miguel de Allende. They were big fans of our project. We even filmed an interview there for one of the films. And they invited us to come in.

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had hundred person theater in the middle of this old colonial structure. And we were over full, people standing on the sides trying to cram everyone in to come in and watch the new films. uh In Bangkok before that, it was at a coffee shop. big coffee shop, they had an upstairs theater that we used for screening there. We find someplace where we can project the films and invite everyone that had anything to do with it. We don't want to just be extractive with the stories. We want to share these stories with the people we filmed with before we leave. So anyone we film with, any of their friends, any new friends we made along the way, and then the crews. we'll all get up and introduce their films, but then stand to the back and get to watch the first audience watching their films too. So we get the films, I like to say about 98 % finished before we leave. Sometimes the 100%, but that is 98 % to the screening. There's always something there. Maybe we watch a scene and realize the sounds only coming out of one channel and they need to go in and balance that, or there may be maybe a little spelling error somewhere in the subtitles or in the credits. Those sometimes get fixed that next day, but it's a rush. last day, people remember souvenirs they wanted and things they needed to see before they leave that kind of thing.

38:31
But we get those last little bits finished too. And then we put them online so people can watch them free. People can download them. We want the organizations to be able to leverage those as however they can. But so that post can be for 10 minute or less is the goal of the four week programs. We get that done on site in you know, if they're filming by that Monday, so they'll start on a Wednesday, it's like eight, 10 days of editing to get that finished. So the students don't own their work, right? The the NGO owns their work. actuality abroad actually holds the rights to the films. Partly it's keeping it under a US-based umbrella before the fair use protections. That's really big for us. No one's ever come after us, but knowing that if the car drives by with the song playing or if there's a Coke logo in the back or all manner of, we've had crews that used some clips from news programs. We do due diligence and reach out to them, but You know, volcano going off was part of a story for one of the crews in Indonesia that was filming on that volcano with some rescue groups and different things like that. We make sure to hold it under the fair use so that everyone has that coverage.

39:51
As soon as we publish it online, we put it under Creative Commons. It's still protected for, you people can't re-edit it. and people can't sell copies of it. But we're already giving it away for free. I don't know who's going to try selling copies. It's really just trying to protect it. For the people that came that far, did all that work, we want it to stay as the film that they put out. But if people want to download it for free, share it from there, great. That's what we really want them to do. So the students, they can download it as soon as it's up for that too. We have them show it at festivals, show it on campuses. add parts of it to their reels, sure, like we're happy to let them take that and do that with it as well. wonderful. So that's just incredibly fascinating. it seems like you're, giving a whole lot of people around the world opportunities that they wouldn't otherwise have teaching them skills that they probably didn't know that they, had or could learn. And I'm sure you've learned a lot of stuff along the way as well. Definitely. lot of mine storytelling again already was something I was focused on the interacting interpersonal relationships, working with students. A whole lot of my communication has improved from the years of doing this too.

41:09
So you're in Vietnam and going a lot of other places. It is not happy to be an American abroad right now. are you concerned about that? The biggest concern to me is more the border crossings and even getting home. In all of the travels, the most intimidating customs I ever come through is still going home to the United States. And that has only become more of a thing as we hit current times versus 10, 15 years ago. It's very few people that think the American person they're meeting represents all of the American government. It's most people I meet recognize and just know that people are not the same as their government and their policy. And a lot of the places I go, they would like me to remember that too. People know that as just an American traveler, I'm not a representative of whatever is going on back home. That said, I have been sat down, not officially, but sat down by other travelers to say, hey, like, Help me make sense of this. Sometimes I'm like, I can't. This doesn't make sense to me either. I'm sorry. Sometimes I can at least say like, I can give you the steps that I understand is what led up to this event or this line of questioning or this, you know, this decision by the government back in the United States, but I can't always make sense of it.

42:37
That's for sure. And one of the other things I always keep in mind is I only do that when I'm asked. I was in Scotland, when there was still Brexit in the works, hadn't been finished yet. And I happened upon, I'm a find a hole in the wall restaurant or less visited type of place person for everywhere I go. And so even in Edinburgh, I was looking for what is not heavily reviewed. I found a tavern that was not on Yelp. It had very few reviews, but it looked very nice. So I just went to check it out on my own. It turned out to be one bartender, one assistant, and five, I want to say 65 plus gentlemen sitting at the bar drinking whiskey, complaining about Brexit and the government. And they looked at me when I walked in, said, well, where are you from? And this was long enough that this was when the Trump's first presidency, I walked in said, I'm from the United States. They looked at me. I don't know if swearing is okay on here, but you're... They're like, you're fucked. Pull up a stool. And just uh had a very fun time, actually. They just wanted to share, commiserate in disliking the government that they were under also.

43:58
That's funny. Well, since you have started your whole endeavor, the film industry is on its head. Upside down, everything has changed from, streaming to equipment to distribution to everything. Has that changed how you do your job and what you teach? It hasn't changed the storytelling side of things. It's changed the goals of the students coming in. When I started BBC National Geographic and watched that shift to Vice after some years and have seen that shift to more more independent projects too, actually. But not just, well, trying to think of also, you know, I get Canadian students and I've watched the film board support go away for a lot of projects there too. So watch student help and other independent funding slide and get to lesson for people. And so what we've looked at more as we change things is not that they necessarily have to crowdfund, but we send them all of this prep work of, if you're raising any funds for this program, you should start in on crowdfunding now because it's a requirement.

45:18
Basically, if you want to be a documentary filmmaker, you need to get used to asking people for not maybe directly for money, but look at this project that I want to do. help me make this happen. And that's more of an interesting learning one that we didn't use to necessarily teach with people of, you need to learn how to bring these funds in, how to network with people, how to talk with people. Because going forward, if you want to be a filmmaker in this, you know, in this field, you're going to have to be able to do it. It wasn't the biggest leap to me. You know, I send people out to already my crews here in Vietnam were out last week. All they had to do was film something to make a one minute scene. Half of that is because it's interestingly in the last few years gotten harder to get students to visualize a scene and film that. So I've done more with practicing that. But also it's just they're like, does it have to be with the change maker? Does it have to be an impact thing? No, go out. It can't be your own crew. You have to find someone here and film a scene. It could be one of them went to a cafe, one of them found a street vendor making the most delicious passion fruit juice. And they're like, but we do we have to get their consent? And I'm like, yes, you absolutely do.

46:36
And that's something they've never done before. So that's a big hurdle to them getting over their fear of talking to people and asking if they can film them. And to me, it's not that much different on the crowdfunding, getting used to talking to people about that and asking about funding and helping with the project. So it wasn't that different. It's just realizing that this is where things are going. People are just you're not going to go get hired to do something. You're not going to get, know, most production companies aren't going to just hand you money and say, yeah, that sounds like a great project. You have to go out, find your own funds. And so you have to learn how to talk to people and also tell them stories, get them interested, get them excited. Yeah, great advice. Also, I would advise them to listen to the documentary first podcast because we are talking to filmmakers that are out there doing things and they are finding resistance in lots of different places, but they are also finding out how to make things work and make their way in the world. And so we have lots of different filmmakers doing things lots of different ways. That's number one. Also, we have an amazing sponsor to our podcast, Virgil Films, who love to talk to filmmakers that are telling interesting stories from all over the world. And they are always looking for stories that are well told.

47:57
did you bring a documentary that's your favorite to share with our audience? We're going to head into everybody's favorite segment, DocuView Deja View. for the field that I'm in, I like to share with people, Poverty Inc. is a documentary. It is kind of a depressing one though. And I really like to give people an inspiring reason, an exciting reason to get into documentary film. I mentioned The Cove earlier, that used to be one years back that I would show people because it's it's so engaging. It helps people get excited for the whole field of documentary. So actually something that I suggest to a lot of people because it's very fun, it will just grab them and they'll be through to the end of the film before they even realize it is the Pez Outlaw. It's not anything to do with change making. It's not a social impact film. but it is a fascinating documentary It's the story of a man from the US that used to go to Europe to the factories and then smuggle back. know, the US had its own market and they had their own pes dispensers, but the collectors were willing to pay money for the other ones. So he would smuggle them back in.

49:18
It's very fun. mean, the production value is pretty high because when he comes to imagining things, they're letting you envision them. But it's, it's so much fun just to be along for the ride on that one and to go through all the paces of that story. I'd forgotten that great recommendation. Well Robin, it's been a delight talking to you. Thank you so much. Please tell everybody where they can find you. We're gonna put all of that in the notes, but tell everybody where they can find you and get your book, et cetera. I push everyone first, Vimeo, YouTube for Actuality Abroad, because those 200 plus films, they're all up on there. The book, Focal Press, it's linked through our website. it's on Amazon. It's on college campuses too as it's starting to spread and I talk to different faculty about it. Even trying to work up extra online resources for faculty. to help use it in the classroom even better. But yeah, it's all out there online under my name, under Actuality Abroad. Great,