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Documenting life on the margins Sándor Lau talks about making doco Squeegee Bandit, which is playing at the NZ International Film Festivals. [Note: a much shorter version of this interview ran in the July 2006 issue of Onfilm.] What attracted you to the idea about making a doco about car window washers and the "squeegee bandit" - "Starfish" - you selected as your subject in particular?I wanted to do a film about struggle - something hard-hitting and political, but also entertaining. We're living in this rich country with plenty to go around for everyone, but people are still out there struggling just to get food and shelter. Window washing is a rare situation where a lot of rich and poor people come together and actually have to deal with each other. And maybe most importantly, I knew that window washing was something highly visual and entertaining because the guys out there are certainly not getting paid for getting windows clean. It's performance art. I searched for about four months to find the right person. When I went down to Otara Markets and met Starfish, I knew he was the one. He was magic on camera from the first day. I knew from the first day he was going to take us on a journey with all the things you need in any film, fiction or nonfiction - character, conflict, resolution, plot points, rising and falling action, set-ups and payoffs. I also knew that through one person I could tell the story of the collateral damage the colonisation of the Mäori people. How long did the shooting for the doco take? You could never do this on a commercial schedule. I would go shoot a Saturday every week or two for about nine months. Sometimes Starfish would disappear or be homeless and I would have to drive all around the Southside just asking for him and looking for him. He would always be between houses and never had a phone. Some days I would make arrangements to shoot with him, and I'd come and he'd be like, "Nah, don't feel like filming today," and there'd be nothing I could do. The trade-off was a total star subject who is not like anyone you are ever going to see on TV or most movies because people like him are censored from getting a say, both in practical terms like the logistics of scheduling, and political terms. How was the doco funded and what kind of budget did you have? I got an initial $24,000 from the Screen Innovation Production Fund, which is just a godsend for independent filmmakers. Later, we received $15,000 in post-production funds from the New Zealand Film Commission, and just could not have done it without that finishing money. That money was quickly spent on the basic things you just can't expect to do a professional quality production without - camera, sound gear, tapes, edit, sound mix. And, of course, there were thousands of favours. So we had to use a lot of resourcefulness and get people on-side to be passionate about the film with us. There were many, many, but I especially want to mention Kerrie Stevens and Greg Junovich at Eden Post Productions. What format did you shoot the doco on? I shot it myself on miniDV with my Panasonic DVX102A, which was amazing, and which I liked better than the Sony PD150 I had shot Behaviours of the Backpacker with. Perhaps even more important to the kit was a good shotgun mic on the camera, and a radio mic, which I had on Starfish all the time, and enabled me to get what I think is a lot of good spontaneous stuff when I was quite far away shooting on a long lens, just letting him be himself. If you see the film, you'll see a lot of intimate moments that I never could have got with any bigger set-up, when Starfish is just putting his soul out there. You're not going to have that kind of a relationship with a cameraperson and soundie there. And even if there was budget for crew, I couldn't be booking them at $1000 a day or whatever the going rate is, only to turn up and have my main subject say, "Nah, don't feel like filming today." So this was the only way this film ever could have been made. With Squeegee, I think I continued developing the kind of guerrilla doco style I have been working in when I was film student at the University of Auckland making Behaviours of the Backpacker. I've worked in more traditional TV styles and found it wasn't me. I think that formative experience I had doing my first works has made a strong impression on my sensibilities. What are the strengths of the format, both in terms of making this type of film and generally? It's all about the story, and small portable gear allowed me to go into a world that I couldn't have gone into with a big shoulder-mounted camera and crew. Good lighting and composition look great on DV and look great on film. Average lighting and composition look average on film and DV. Half of the advantage of shooting with a small set-up, though, was the way the people I was dealing with perceived me. I could go in and look like an overachieving tourist under the radar, so people could be goofing off instead of sitting up straight and minding their manners because there's an important camera. Huge enormous overwhelming advantage with digital: you barely need any light. I shot the Anzac Day dawn service and it came out great. Any weaknesses you think the format has, both in terms of making this type of film and generally? There were some audio dropouts, but it's about the story, and I think people will probably not even notice the technical side because they're paying attention to the world of the film. I don't agree with the idea of the wilful suspension of disbelief. If it's wilful, then you're trying and it's forced and it doesn't work. It has to be a natural emotional response to the world you craft in the work. In a documentary, your camera records facts, light and sound waves, but your job as a filmmaker is to take those facts and make them into truth, to make people believe. Not just in events, but a point of view and a vision of the universe. At what point did Rhonda Kite come on board as co-producer and executive producer? I met Rhonda when I pitched the project at the SPADA conference in November 2004. It wasn't until April 2005 that we finally got together to talk about it. I showed her an 8-minute extended promo I had done, and from that point, she was in 100%. She doesn't do anything half-assed. So what did Rhonda contribute to the process of making the doco? Rhonda is a total star. The way she works is like black magic - it's very hard to explain or understand and it's all about having insider knowledge and finesse and being mates with everyone in the entire universe. Rhonda always has a thousand things she's dealing with, and when she decides she's going to make something happen, it happens. What did you edit the footage on? Why did you used this particular set-up, and what strengths and weaknesses does it have? I edited about 95% of the film at home on Avid Express DV on my home computer. It was just a practicality - no budget, so no other choice. It crashed about 10 times a day, but I had the wonderful luxury of spending a lot of time on the edit and crafting the film down to very fine details. At the end I was able to go in to Eden Post Productions and do some effects work and online with Alex O'Shaughnessy and David Tokios on an Avid Adrenaline. How much footage did you have to play with, and how long did your edit take? I shot about 30 hours of footage, and was probably editing off and on for nearly a year. It's hard to put a number on it because I was editing and shooting and doing all that producery stuff, the business and marketing side, proposals. The actual physical mechanical processes of writing, shooting and editing are less than 10% of making the film. The edit plays a huge part in the story of the film, which is a lot more like a feature film or music video in style than a traditional documentary. There are way over 1000 edits in this 75 minute film, where I was working with eight video tracks, so it was labour intensive. There's rotoscoping and animation, hundreds of effects, stop motion, heavy grading. And that's just the picture. I think we maxed out the number of audio tracks on Protools when I was mixing with Greg Junovich. Was there any consultation with "Starfish" regarding the final shape and content of the doco? I was really clear from the first day, before even shooting that this was my film and I would show it to him when it was finished. You cannot have filmmaking by committee. Has "Starfish" seen the finished doco? If yes, what was his reaction? Rhonda and I were very curious about how he would react to it. In the film you see a tough looking guy who can be a world-class charmer, a gentle teddy bear and a very angry man. We showed it to him the first time and I was sweating a bit about the angry parts, but the only thing he was worried about was what his missus would think about him talking about his past relationships. We showed it to him again, with her, and he just walked out and said, "Awesome movie, bro." I think he learned a lot about himself during the process of shooting, and later seeing the film. It's not that often you have a situation where you can really examine yourself. People grow and change and one of the great advantages we had was filming over nine months, so you could see that organic growth and character arc in him. What we didn't know at the time was that this was also a letter he was writing to his future self, and he can see some things that he's changed and some things he wants to change. For it's NZ International Film Festivals screenings, will it be screening digitally or has a 16mm print been struck? We're screening digitally, as an increasing number of films are. More and more of the kind of cinemas that show films like this are getting digital projection and doing a print would not be cost effective and not be necessary. Digital capture has gone a long way to democratizing storytelling, but digital projection puts the stories where people can see them. What's your pitch to potential audience members for Squeegee Bandit? Here's the easy one: go watch the trailer at www.squeegeebandit.com Now here's the hard one… I modelled the story on a classic mythological hero's journey. Starfish is like Hercules or Odysseus or Maui. He's almost superhuman. He has an overpowering force of personality and can do things almost no one can. Can you go wash a window for fifteen seconds and get $50 for it? I doubt it. Just the fact that he has survived a very difficult life is evidence of how amazing he is, and that fighting spirit and crafty trickster in him are total Maui territory. Like any hero, though, he has some very deep flaws and when he's angry everyone knows it. That's also what makes him human and, in a way, loveable. I didn't want to make a film you watch. I wanted to make a film you participate in, so that you walk this journey of sin and redemption with him, and you understand that this man is your own brother, your own son, and in the end you see yourself in him. If you can understand this one person, you can understand thousands and thousands of others who are struggling just like him. Starfish is also a deeply religious person, (which I am not). If you believe in Jesus and the Bible, then you believe that Jesus came on earth to save sinners, not saints, that he loves all his brothers and sisters. Blessed are the window washers, for they shall inherit the earth. What's on your agenda now - do you have any particular projects you're working on? Just now I'm working on an interesting project for the Office of Ethnic Affairs recording oral history interviews of ethnic communities to put together for a booklet and a play. I have a number of other film projects I'm developing, but also trying to get a patron. Contact me at www.sandorlau.net Anything else you'd like to add? You can also get Behaviours of the Backpacker on DVD at www.sandorlau.net. It premiered in the US this year on The Documentary Channel. © Copyright Onfilm magazine, July 2006 www.onfilm.co.nz |