Michele Ohayon: Oscar-Nominated Documentary Filmmaker

Being authentic in documentary filmmaking, I can't tell you how crucial it is, crucial and to the success of it. As a Moroccan immigrant in Israel, we really did not have a voice. Not only we didn't have a voice, but our voice was considered inferior and so they were shutting us down And that was the only way I knew how I can be fulfilled by telling stories that matter, stories that have an emotional impact, This is a conversation with filmmaker Michele Ohayon. Michele is a Moroccan director fro

m Israel who broke through with her documentary, "Colors Straight Up," which was nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. Her films have played in festivals around the world, from South by Southwest to Berlin, and her most recent feature documentary is now streaming on Netflix. It's called "Strip Down, Rise Up." Our conversation covers Michele's extraordinary journey building her career, breaking into the industry, and of course, the art of documentary filmmaking. This is "The Catal

yst." I'm Cassius, and in these conversations, we seek to deconstruct successful people's journeys, particularly focusing on those turning points, those catalysts that help them become who they are. I hope you enjoy. Michele, it's a pleasure to be able to talk to you after we've had quite a journey getting to know each other, personally, professionally, as we've made a documentary together. Now we're in post on a yet-to-be-announced, but very exciting, very inspiring project. And let me just sta

rt off by thanking you for the instrumental role that you've played in bringing it to life and helping position it to make the impact that I know we all wanted to have. So thank you for that. - Thank you. Of course, it was my pleasure. It was really a lot of fun working on the film. Most of the time. (both laughing) - So I have a couple of questions for you that I thought would maybe be just awkward to ask unless we were in the confines of an interview, but I wanted to start at the beginning and

ask you how you discovered filmmaking. - So I always say that I discovered me. I wasn't at all on the track to make films. I actually was fascinated by theater. And first of all, let me say my parents have nothing to do with films or television or theater. We didn't even have a television. My parents were adamant about not having a TV. But they had the love of French cinema. So I was around love of films from the beginning. And when I was 12 years old, I started, I like to boss people around. S

o I started directing my friends in the neighborhood and I put the theater play together and I thought, "Oh, I like this." Telling people what to do, stand here, say this, whatever. And that continued until today. I have pretty much, but I was, I graduated high school, I was a little young, meaning I was 17 and a half and my army draft was right when I was 18. They can't draft you before. So I had six months before the army in Israel and my mother arranged for me an internship in the Israeli tel

evision. And I was sitting and watching an editor do her work and I was just blown away by, at that time it was film. So we were still sinking picture and sound. And I was blown away by the mechanics of it and the technicality of it. How is it possible that the audio is here and the video is here and she puts it together and then I was just like, "This is everything I wanted to do." I didn't know because theater is so two-dimensional and here was an opening for something much bigger with a lot m

ore imagination and creativity. And so right after the army, I enrolled for Tel Aviv University. That was the first course that they did for Hands-On Film. And I was one of the few lucky ones that got in. - And what was it out of curiosity? Like, you mentioned that even at a young age, you liked bossing people around, which is a funny way to describe it. But like, the way that I understand that is you had an idea for something that you wanted to do or see and you had the courage or the lack of s

elf-doubt to like go about rallying other people to bring that vision to life. Is that when you started studying filmmaking, did you make the connection that like, was that piece of it foundational to what you fell in love with about filmmaking or what was it about filmmaking itself that you were like inspired by? - Yeah, so it was fulfilling two parts of my brain, which are still there. One is very technical and very practical and one is very creative and imaginative. And that's kind of the per

son I am in life too. I have those two sides and I found a medium that combined the two. So it was first of all, what kind of story I wanna tell and I had burning stories to tell and burning characters to describe, but I also was interested in how to tell the story, not just what to tell. And those two were combined in film. So I remember my first theater play was about my life in Morocco. The housekeeper I miss so much, which was Arab and the whole play was about her. And this was a very new th

ing for kids my age because they were not Moroccans and they had no clue what this immigration looked like. And as an immigrant, that was always a key motive in my stories, always in some hidden or not so hidden form. And so those stories carried on to when I started really making films and I started telling stories about the underdog, which I was very much identifying with and people had no voice. As a Moroccan immigrant in Israel, As a Moroccan immigrant in Israel, we really did not have a voi

ce. Not only we didn't have a voice, but our voice was considered inferior and so they were shutting us down and so they were shutting us down and telling us your culture is not good enough. We are from East Europe, we're better. So I have to tell you that one of my biggest motivators, which is a funny story and not so funny maybe, when I was doing the interview at Xavier University and I passed all the tests, it was pretty rigorous and whatever. And one of my, he became my teacher, asked me, so

what does a Moroccan girl wanna do in a film business on black? I was so shocked by the question. Like today it will be a black person or a black person of color. I was so shocked that in my head, I think that kind of created an enormous urge to show them what I was made of. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna show you motherfucker. I'm gonna show you what I'm made of. And that was always in the back of my mind. Like I'm not just telling stories for me, I'm telling stories for my entire tribe. And

it's been a huge engine for my drive to continue for all these years. I remember talking 40 years and every time I wanna quit, I remember, no, if I don't do this, who will? So this kind of storytelling, that's an ancient drive. Think about it when the storyteller started and how everybody was around the campfire. I wanna create that campfire through my films and everybody's listening and passing it on to the next generation. - And just knowing how, maybe it wasn't as a parent at the time, but I

think now that we have different levels of experience, but we've both been in the entertainment industry and seeing how difficult it is to build a career, how inefficient it is, how far from a meritocracy, at least in my opinion, it truly is. Is that desire to sort of prove people wrong and prove your people right? Would you say like, how important was that to sustaining your motivation to keep going? 'Cause I can only imagine in a career like yours that spans so many projects in multiple decade

s, there must've been moments where you questioned whether you were gonna continue in the industry. - For sure, but still do. That was the underlying. This, what I told you was the underlying, but the bottom line and the upper line was that I wanted to fulfill myself. And that was the only way I And that was the only way I knew how I can be fulfilled by telling stories that matter, stories that have an emotional impact, stories that have an emotional impact, mostly intimate stories that tell a b

igger picture, whether it's historical, social, economic, or whatever, that people can identify with. And because imagine, and one of my films still depends on for me is about a couple of film, "Loving the Holocaust." When you say the word Holocaust, you can't grasp it, but you can grasp it if it's told through a love story and you understand the details of the everyday life. So my biggest motivation was to create some kind of impact on people so that they can either create awareness for people

to ask questions, for people to question their beliefs, and maybe if I'm so lucky to take action after they see a film. And that happened in most counts and that was the most fulfilling part. I mean, think about it, we work two, three years, sometimes four, to make a movie and then it just goes like this. And you watch it with the audience and they love it, you go to festivals and they love it, and then it's done. (laughing) Right, it's like cooking a meal for 10 hours, that's eaten in five minu

tes, it's the same thing. So you really have to love it. And I really love it. And the possibilities and the encounters, and I know you do know that because you've just gone through it, with people you would never meet otherwise. The camera gives me, power is a bad word sometimes, but it is the right word here, it's a positive power to get into places I would never go otherwise. Like I was in the middle of South Central on the streets between the Crips and the Bloods, shooting and talking to gan

g members like, and everybody's like, "Let's get out of here." And I'm like, "No, no, no, what's wrong?" And the camera, if I was without a camera, I would just be running away. But that gives you that power to get in there and to really understand how these people live and bring that to the world. - You know, I'm really excited to ask you some technical questions, but before we get into that, I just wanna sort of arc out the trajectory of your career. So you started at film school in Israel. If

I understand correctly, you actually started in narrative filmmaking, scripted filmmaking with pressure. Is that how, was that your first sort of major project and how did, maybe give us some sense of the interplay between the scripted projects and then your explorations and beginnings in documentary filmmaking? - So I see you did your homework. (both laughing) Pressure was my graduation film. It was a feature, a love story between Arab and a Jew at the time where there was pre-intifada. So the

word Palestinian or anything like that was taboo. It was based on a girlfriend of mine who actually had a boyfriend who was Arab. And even though her surrounding in her family was very liberal, the moment she became his girlfriend, the pressure was immense to a point where they had to split. So that was my inspiration for that film. I, and like I said, I wanted to make, tell stories that mattered and to show Arab people as human beings that they are the same as everybody else. And it was import

ant to me to not cast a Jew in the role of Arab. So it was a lot of casting search to find an Arab actor who was willing to work with a Jewish woman in a film. That on itself was a challenge. And so I took, I wrote a script and got a grant from the film fight in Israel and started to film. And it was important for me to be as authentic as possible because if you were representing a minority, you want them to talk in their own voice, in their own environment, rather than me thinking, saying what

they think. So in the film, they are, he's bringing her to his village to witness his life and how the culture is. So I actually took the actors to the village. She didn't even know where we were going because I wanted to get her real reaction. - That's dope. - And she was as white as they come and Ashkenazi Jew and all of a sudden she's going, not knowing where and I planted them in the village and got the real reaction. So if you will, it's like a docu-narrative but I wanted that authentic fee

ling. And her honest and her first reaction was absolutely important for the film. And his awkwardness bringing a Jewish woman to his village was even more. And you could feel the tension already there. Like, are you bringing her? What is she doing here? So that represented already the essence of the film. Yeah, I was set out to do narrative films but I realized that in the time in Israel where the conflict was burning and it was becoming unbearable, I didn't think I had the luxury to do like, o

h yeah, let me do a nice comedy. Or I felt engaged and on a mission to tell the stories that nobody else would and got into refugee camps and got into a very tough university under military closure, snuck in there, got arrested, whatever, but that was for me. (laughing) - I'm failed by the dean of the, my faculty is embarrassing. But I wanted to tell the stories from the point of view of those who really have no opportunity to tell their stories. And I sometimes got in trouble because it was not

allowed and there were certain words like Palestinian state were not allowed. And so I had to choose, show the movie and endanger my people or not show the movie. And that's tough choice I had to make as a filmmaker. But of course, people's life were more important. So I had to shelf that movie that was very rebellious. - Oh, you had to shelve it? No way. So that was your first documentary? - No, I've made my first documentary was about a portrait of an Arab actor who was trying to make it in T

el Aviv. And I followed his struggle to, he was torn between the two worlds. He wanted to make a career as an actor, but his culture was in a way and being in Tel Aviv was like, what are you doing here? You know, it was the 80s. So that was my first and then the second I did in the West Bank in a refugee camp where students were trying to finish their studies but were accused of being terrorists and they had to live with that and how do you live with that? So that was under military occupation.

And that's why I snuck in with my crew. But I've done some crazy stuff, but without a camera, I would have never done it. (laughing) - It kind of gives you a different level of liquid courage, almost having the camera in your hand. - That's right, that's right. And I've been there several times, either my film or films I produced for other people. I was like the expert on the West Bank. - Out of curiosity, Michelle, when you get to a point in your career where you have so much experience, but yo

u also have not just experienced creating your own projects as a director and as a producer, but also now working with younger directors, less experienced filmmakers, what are the things that maybe intuitively that you did well at the beginning of your career that you still do, but maybe in a more advanced way now? And what are some of the things that, like the big mistakes you made early on, whether it's technical or practical in terms of from a filmmaking approach? - Me mistakes. (laughing) -

Well, you know, my career has been very interesting because I came to Los Angeles in the early 90s, or actually late 80s, where women directors had really nothing to do in the industry. It was a real struggle. For a point where I co-founded an organization called Cine Women, where we kind of decided to employ ourselves, employ each other. And that's how I made my first documentary. It was a Wonderful Life, and continued in that path, even though my path was narrative, but once you do a doc, you'

re kind of closed in this category, and that was that, and I was like, fine. So a lot of my energy and my time was to just find my place as a female director and go on job interviews and compete with guys who had less experience, but were guys, and that was really frustrating and sometimes defeating. But I decided, okay, I don't need you. I'm just gonna make my own and raise my own money, raise my own films. And I can tell you that, you know, when I guest lecture at universities or whatever, I a

lways say, follow your passion, because some people want to make their first film for the real, you know, how I'm gonna show my work, and I can show all these toys I have. That's not the point. The point is, do something that you care about so that if you make mistakes, you make mistakes that you are behind rather than mistakes for something you fabricated to get more work. It just doesn't work. So everything you do, do it from your heart, and sometimes your heart will clash with the people who

finance or whatever, and you have to be diplomatic about it, but at the end of the day, you have to follow your instincts. No one else is. So other filmmakers that I either coach or mentor or work with, it is important that I can help them get in touch with that instinct and intuition, and sometimes it's very hard because the pressure is on, and you have a schedule, and you have millions of producers and all of that, and you also have notions from other mediums that you bring into the doc. But t

he documentary is a craft on its own. It's nothing like news. It's nothing like reality. It's nothing like narrative. It is purely based on intuition. Like, when do you feel something's gonna happen? When do you think somebody's gonna say something interesting and you need to be there? And we have many moments on the set where I was like, "Astrid, we gotta be there now. "Something's gonna happen there." And we were running to the other side. And that's what experience brings, being in tune with

your intuition without distraction, interference, and convenience. Sometimes it's not convenient to follow intuition. - And how do you hone your intuition? How do you know what your intuition is? 'Cause sometimes, like you mentioned, there's a lot of noise. Like, what's the difference between a fleeting thought and your intuition? How can you internally differentiate between the two different thought impulses? - Really good question. I always think about it as, is that impulse or is that intuiti

on? Impulse is something that's gonna go away in five seconds and I never think about it again. So I know that was not worth following. But intuition keeps nagging. You know, like, and if you don't do it, it can be small, it can be big. It just, if you don't do it, it just keeps coming, keeps coming. And then you have to have the courage to say, "No, I really need to do this right now. "I need to go with Tatiana in the elevator right now "because you guys can deal with lunch "and I gotta go now.

" And those are the tough decisions sometimes because especially when the crews are, the way they are today in America, they are big and you can't be mobile and you have people in frame everywhere you turn. It's just not the way I like to work. - And it's so interesting hearing you break that down because that was something that really surprised me was every time you said, you decided to voice, "Hey, my intuition is telling me that we should do this." And we followed it every time and you were r

ight every time. And it was really surprising how accurate it was. And that's why I'm curious to know because I feel like one of the big challenges, especially early on is having the confident, like the differentiation between confidence and arrogance and understanding as a storyteller and as a filmmaker, this is important to me and this is a battle I'm gonna fight because I feel like your whole career as a filmmaker is one long war and each project is its own battle. And then within each projec

t, there are a thousand individual skirmishes. And so you get to a point where, especially with your collaborators, you're battling with them and at some point you're wondering, "Is this a battle I really wanna fight?" So does it come back to intuition? And like, what would you say are the priorities as you look at the important things, the ingredients that make a great documentary? How do you rank those things in order of, "I'm gonna go to bat and fight over this thing "that's important to me?"

- First is the content. I don't care about anything else or anybody else. If I feel like there is something I need to get, whether it's a shot or a scene or whatever, I'm going to go get it and everybody can... Sorry, I gotta get, I gotta, there's no time to discuss it, I just have to go. And that's why I work with a small crew and it's a crew I chose and I ended up being very independent because of that, because I don't wanna have to answer to people who have less experience than me who don't

know the characters like I do or in your case that you do and we really relied on your relationship with Tatiana. The one thing I wanna say with intuition, 'cause you asked me, how do you get into your intuition? It takes a lot of experience, but it also takes tremendous amount of focus, tremendous amount of focus. When I'm directing on set, people ask me, "Are you okay? "Are you okay?" I'm like, "What? Yeah, of course I'm okay. "I'm not, something happened." No, I'm just really focused. (laughi

ng) I'm not listening to chicha, I'm not listening to anything, I'm like this. At the end of the day, I crash, there is nothing left in me because I operate on sixth sense, not, you know. And that sixth sense is what's gonna get you those gems that sometimes you're gonna miss, but it is a struggle every minute on set to be in tune and to not let anything be in your way. So no phones, no like, you can't, this has to be gone. And that's why you have a, if you can have a good producer, so you don't

have to look at your phone and you don't have to communicate with the talent and you don't have to arrange anything, that's an ideal situation where you can just be focused on what's in front of you and nothing, nothing else. Not just what's in front of you, but what's gonna be in front of you two hours from now? That's what you have to plan ahead or have somebody behind you who plans for you. Those are intuition and focus are the main thing. In terms of the order priority, it's not about how m

uch money you have or which camera you have. To me, the most important thing after my content thing is the DP. - The DP? - The DP is your eyes and ears because when I'm looking there to see if something else is happening, she's looking over here and catching the story. And DP has to be a storyteller as much as you are. - And what are those qualities? Like if you haven't worked with a DP before and let's say your go-to DP is unavailable, what are you, how are you gonna evaluate if a DP is the rig

ht, is right for your story or documentary? Like how are you actually evaluating their capability to do what you need them to do on a documentary set? - So other than Théo who did big narrative films but was starting documentaries so knew exactly the language of documentaries that I barely had to tell him anything, experience. So the DPs I've worked with, the last film stripped down, rise up by three female DPs. Also because it was a sensitive subject so I didn't wanna bring too many guys into t

he room. But my DPs were 20 to 30, had 20, 30 years experience in documentary only. They would did not, they don't do narratives. They are documentary animals. - And what's the difference? What's the difference? Like how do they express that differently? - So first of all, the storytelling part. If you're doing a narrative, you have a script and you're relying on the actors to do the missile set, the director is marking everything. So you know what you're gonna do? It's gonna preset. There's not

a lot of place for intuition other than the visual. Here you don't have any rehearsal, any pre-take, any nothing. So you gotta be there in the moment and understand how the story unfolds. I worked with DP in countries where they didn't even speak the language and knew exactly when to pan up to the face and get the emotion. It was unbelievable. It's that same intuition I'm talking about that DP has to have. It has to be a people's person. They have to be quiet because the loud DPs, "Yeah, we're

gonna come in, we're gonna put the lamp here." And then the subject, if they had an emotional moment, that was gone. And then when you see it on set, very subtle, very invisible and just good storytellers. And I can tell you from the way they shoot and talking to other filmmakers and their experiences, but also talking to editors because they are the ones who get the raw footage, have some trusted editors I work with. And I was like, "Kate, what do you think about Sandra?" She was like, "Sandra

is amazing. Every shot I got, I could use or 90% I could use. I don't need to know more than that." - So in your mind, and you brought up something that I think is really interesting, which is depending on the subject matter and where you're gonna be shooting, there might be certain DPs that are more appropriate. So like you mentioned "Strip Down and Rise Up" and one thing that really stands out is the spaces that that documentary takes place in and where you're shooting are almost completely fi

lled with women. And so if you start bringing in a lot of male energy in the crew, you might start disrupting what just is naturally occurring in the world that you're capturing. And I feel like that to me is the biggest difference between narrative scripted filmmaking and documentary filmmaking is in one, you're creating a world and in the other, you're sort of capturing reality through a specific lens. And-- - In addition, you're creating a safety place where a safe place where they can actual

ly express their world to your world. And that's the connection that needs to happen. And the safe space is created by trust. And that's another thing I really should have mentioned in the beginning, that is a key element is trust. Trust, you have Tatiana's trust, which was an amazing asset and bond. And by the way, this was one reason I wanted to be in this project, because I knew that this, without this trust, there's no movement. - Right. - So number one, trust. And that trust has to be prove

n every day, again and again and again and again, because you're gonna be tested as a director. They're trusting you, by the way, that's true also for narrative, that you're not gonna make a fool out of them, that you're going to deal with the subject with integrity, that you're not gonna micromore them, that you're, you know, all these things that you have to every time show again that you are worth the trust, is where you put the camera, is how much you invade the space. And I can tell you, I

am ruthless about not invading the space, but trying to get my story because it's happening and it's the reality, I'm not fabricating it. So I want to be there and I wanna witness it. And sometimes it's not comfortable for them. You know, how many times you said, you know, back off, it's not the right time for Tatiana. Half of the time, I would have gone in. - Yeah, no, I think you're-- - I don't see you anymore. - No, I think you're absolutely right. That, now looking back at production, like i

f, in the case of this documentary, Tatiana and I were able to develop a really close friendship over the course of, you know, two and a half years before we, like, before a full crew came in to start documenting her life. And it's, it really is like, it's part, being a director in a documentary, I feel like is partly being an entrepreneur, partly being a storyteller. And then partly, I feel like it's also being a psychologist and like a friend to your subject so that you can start, 'cause I fee

l like some, one of the most important things is being able to anticipate how they might react to this, like you mentioned, I think you used the word invasion of privacy and like invasion of their space. There's that delicate line between, they're still going to go ahead and live their life and they're opening some portion of it to you to capture, but you have to always remember that there is that life outside of the frame that if you're infringing on that and not anticipating how they're going

to react to the different things that you're doing in their world, it might impact, you know, how open they're going to be in their interview and stuff like that. - Right, but then you give them permission. Sorry, go ahead. - No, I'm demonstrating one of my major failures as a documentary filmmaker, which is, my questions are longer than the answers that I hope to get. How do you approach interviews as a filmmaker? What are you, how do you approach it to get the best interviews possible? - I jus

t want to go back to what you said. I do not become friends with my subject because otherwise I have to be extra careful not to hurt their feelings or which I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, but I have to think three times before I ask something. I ask, can I do this? Can I do that? So I don't befriend my subject. I am creating trust, but there is a distance that allows me to make mistakes and to say, oh, sorry, I was too close. But to avoid that, I tell them beforehand, if there is any t

ime that you feel I'm too close, I'm invading your privacy, please let me know and we can talk about it. - Thanks for clarifying that. That's really useful. - So that's that, because when you come to set, you have almost too much information as a friend that you know and have seen, but I have not seen it as an audience. So I need that information, but you think, oh yeah, I got this, I got this, but maybe you didn't. Maybe because you witnessed it, but you didn't really film it. So the lines can

get blurry. So I try to keep as fresh as possible when I come in. So interviews, research, of course, as much research as I can to know what they got, why they're doing what they're doing, where they come from, is there a personal triggering point that I can hit that will be a shortcut to opening the heart the way I want them to open, rather than ask a lot of question, exhaust them to a point where they just want it to be over. And that's always- - What's an example of the shortcut like that? -

Oh, the shortcut? Oh. So I had a very tough subject when I did SOS State of Security, that was Richard Clark, who was, very experienced security guy, White House, ran the whole 9/11 crisis, very closed person, very closed. And I could not crack him. I just could not crack him. And I was trying this way, this way, that way, that way, that way, it was like, very untrusting person in security. And all my tricks didn't work. Like sometimes I wanted to film very dear with him, but he wasn't up for it

. He just only interviews. So I would come in and tell my DP to shoot from the hip, you know, the old trick, shoot from the hip. And he was so honored that he saw you, like, what are you doing? It's turning off. (laughing) So I tried. But then I realized from research that his real trigger point was Vietnam vets, that he was so angry about how they were treated that there were no words to describe. So I thought, okay, I'm gonna keep that for the end. And then I started to talk about Vietnam vets

and now everything came up. - You're bringing up something that I think is really relevant to note, which is like, it's easy to get so caught up in what you wanna get as a filmmaker that you kind of forget the very artificial and oftentimes uncomfortable position that an interview subject is being put in, you know, when they're being asked intimate questions about their life or about things that, God forbid, if there was controversy or anything else. So I think you're absolutely, it's helpful t

o hear that through research, you found that that topic that was gonna maybe emotionally involve them in such a way that they were able to let their guard down and speak more from their heart. - Yeah, and also you don't wanna overdo the pre-interviews because then you lose all the freshness of the camera 'cause they wanna tell you already everything in the pre-interview. And then when you come to set, they feel like they've said it already. So it's a fine balance between minimal interviews so th

at you know if the subject is right, if they are comfortable, they are in front of the camera. But I'll give you an example, like when I was shooting the couple who survived the Holocaust and I went to their house, she had a very devastating story of a boyfriend in her youth that they lived in Amsterdam and you know, they were 15, 16, but very much in love. And when he got to be about 18 years old, the war broke out and he got an offer to work in IBM in the United States. And there was so much i

n love and they didn't understand that the danger of the war. And she told him, don't go stay with me, you know, we'll eventually get married and we'll live a life together, this is gonna pass and whatever. And then, you know, when the Nazis occupied Holland, he was one of the first one to get captured and die. So that, yeah, so that guilt had lived with her for the rest of her life, that if she had let him go to America, the love of her life would still be alive. Can you imagine living with us?

She married somebody else in the meantime, of course, but, and she told me beforehand, she said, I am not going to talk about Rudy, that's the boyfriend. I said, okay, we're not going to talk about Rudy. And I'm not going to talk about all the pain I went through, I don't wanna go back there. I was like, okay, we're not going to talk about. So I did three days of intensive interviews because they were, she was 18, he was 19, I was afraid to lose them. So I'm like, I'm just gonna cover everythin

g. In three days, intensive at their house. And I'm not asking about Rudy. Day three, she starts to talk about Rudy. I didn't even ask. And she just goes with it all the way, like how she felt, how this prevented her from having joy in her life and this and that. Cathartic moment for her and the whole crew was like on the floor in tears. And those are the moments where you feel you have done your job, not just because you have brought the story to the world, but you literally helped the subject

go through a transformation just by being there and being supportive and creating a safe space where they can actually tell the story. And after that, her very grown kids said, we don't understand what happened to our mom. She's just free, she's walking around the house naked. I don't know what's going on. She's just really got everything. And that was one of those beautiful moments that by being patient, you get it, you get it. - That's really, that's a powerful anecdote. - It's powerful, I've

had several-- - You earned her trust and she saw, okay, she's gonna respect my request and not talk about it. And probably over the course of two days, you let her get so many other things that maybe weren't quite so dear, but we're still tough to talk about off her chest in a way that felt respectful that she was, you created the space for her to walk into that topic on her own. - Yeah, and I mean, another example, which is interesting when I was doing "Carol Straight Up" in South Central after

the riots, I was following mostly black and Latino kids in a program in Jordan High School, a very, in the middle of gang war, world and war, who were trying to change their lives around with the performing arts. And so I told them, if something happens in your life, call me. And I was, we want our way to film an interview-- - And were you more specific than that? Or did you just tell it to them like that? You just said, if anything, 'cause that's something that, yeah, that's a really important

part of the process is like, hey, I'm not living your life with you, so I don't know if something is gonna happen that's interesting, then you have to tell me. - And by the way, the last thing they wanna think about is me or the film when something does happen. So I'm constantly in touch with them constantly and kind of making sure I have information every day. What's happening today? So that day we were going to shoot something completely different, luckily I had a crew. And Queenie, one of th

e girls said, "Michelle, I can't be in the shoot today because there is a funeral. My cousin who's 16 was shot in the drive-by and I, obviously." And so I was like, this is like, everything I'm talking about in the film is happening right now. And I'm here in my beautiful house in Hollywood Hills and I need to be there right now. And so intuition, right? So I'm like, how do I make this happen? So I go to the meeting. - Same day, right? - Yeah. - Same day. - Same day, same hour. I'm like, Queenie

, I know this is ridiculous, but I need to ask you, how can I film the funeral? And she's like, are you crazy? They're all black people. You can't get in there. It's not my, I have to ask. I cannot give you that permission. I said, "Queenie, please, I know this is not, but this is for the bigger picture. Can you ask somebody in the family if we can film?" And by then I filmed them for a year. So we had a very close relationship. They came to my house. So she asked. And the mother or the aunt, I

don't remember, said that we can come down in one condition that I'll give them footage of the funeral. Absolutely. So now we're rerouting the crew. We're going down to South Central, racing. We're coming in literally church, all black people, South Central, and we're like, you know, three people, me, DP sound. That's it, no one else. And we're coming in and we're like going and with everybody and the casket and the screaming and the thing. My DP couldn't even film because the tears were streami

ng down. You couldn't see what was going on. We were all like, and I felt like that was so important because nobody sees it from this kind of point of view. You hear about it on TV, you know, white shot. But I was there. I mean, if you ever see "C being in that moment was huge, absolutely huge. And you're gone at 2.30 your time, right? Yeah. What time is it? Okay, we got just a little more. Okay. I have like, I have two questions that directly relate to that. One is from a directorial standpoint

, how do you cover a scene to know that you have enough to tell the story of the scene in the edit? You're talking about a very tasty scene, I assume. Yeah, very tasty. So to me, coverage is everything because, but again, intuition, like your camera is right here and it's going and you're afraid to move to catch another angle because you don't want to miss something important. Let's use the example of the funeral scene that you were just talking about, which is you don't have time to plan that s

cene out. That's pure intuition, such a critical scene, emotional. How are you cover, what coverage do you need to get to tell that scene the right way? Okay, so first I need to know who is the center of the scene? The dead boy is the center of the scene. Who is in the background, the family? I need to turn around, I need to see the family, I need to see the mother crying. What's the wider picture? Oh, the preacher, he's preaching about not re-ranging, not using, okay, I got it, the preacher. Wh

at are the central characters of the scene, just like in narrative, what is the setup? Where are we? So I need to have one master shot to know where I am. Okay, I'm in the church, where is the church? In South Central, I need to show that. And then narrow it down to the character, the camera. Okay, so there is a balance between being a restful camera, which I like, I don't like this. And at the same time, camera moving so you can get your angles, right? So once the shot has enough length that I

can use it, that I know I have enough content on this subject, then I instruct my DPO, sometimes they do it on their own to move and get the other side or get the surroundings and all this. It's a very, very strong collaboration between me and the DP. I don't walk away and let them shoot a scene. That never happens, unless it's a stupid lecture that I have to film. I am so close to the DP, whispering constantly in her ear, do this, do this, do this, do that. When you finish the shot, pan to the

right, because I think something's gonna happen. Or somebody's gonna walk it. It's a constant communication, which is not usual in normal docs. This is that feature docs are like that. - And like when you, so you described getting the coverage within the scene to set up, are you typically getting your exteriors and like your establishing shots? Do you try and do that before the scene commences after on another day? Like, do you have a rule of thumb for? - I try to do it first. - Right. - Because

we always forget at the end. We're always rushing at the end. So get that first. And I tried to put my subject in the shot. So I keep them under my supervision. For example Tatiana, it's like, okay, can you walk in? And so they walk in, I know they're with me and I walk in with them and I didn't miss anything. Yeah, it's really, you know, kind of going with them wherever they're going, it's very, very important. It's a lot more limited today. You need to release for every little thing you do. M

y time was like, oops, sorry. I didn't know that. So those are the links between the scenes that are not part of coverage, but a transition that you need to have that are part of the character. How do they walk? How do they interact with people? What do they eat for breakfast? You know, all these things that give you the color. - Almost like the in-between moments. Like what happens in between the key scenes? - Yes, exactly. I wanted to give you, yeah, go ahead. - No, no, go ahead, go ahead. - N

o, I wanted to give you an example because you talked about invasion of privacy and stuff like that. So in my film, it was a wonderful life. It was about homeless women who lived out of their cars and pretending they were still the middle upperclass women that they used to be. It was very hard because there was one woman who literally had nowhere to be and was sleeping in her car in the cemetery. And they were assaulted in the cemetery, a woman alone in the car. And she had to go there. And so m

any times I was like, I'm going to take her home. I'm going to take her home. I can give her a shower. I can give her food. I can put her on the couch. And the other side of me was like, I can't do that because I will be changing the course of the story and not telling the truth about their lives. How many homeless women have a filmmaker come into their life now? - Right. - And so those are tough decisions as a humanist to have and not interfere with their reality. That was very hard. - And you

had mentioned something to me when we were, 'cause obviously Verite documentary, you're frequently, if not almost all the time handheld. Are there certain rules of thumb that you have about shooting, like about how you like to approach actually the handheld operation of the camera? I know you mentioned you like prefer a restful camera. Something that you mentioned to me was try and get at least 10 seconds of like a clean steady frame per shot, per set up. Are there other rules of thumb or things

that you know that you like or need to have to make sure that you got it? - I prefer camera on sticks. So for example, unless they're moving and you know, but in "Street Down, Rise Up", they started every time with a circle. So I had two cameras because I had to focus on the main character with the teacher. And then I had the women who were talking and dancing and whatever. So I had one camera on a little stool that had wheels that was in the center of the circle. And the camera was on this rig

. And so the DP could move very steadily and quickly between one and the other. And then the other camera was outside of the circle on sticks, on a zoom, focusing on the other side wherever was talking. And the only time we would go on handheld is when they were dancing and I had to, you know, move around the bodies and you couldn't do it with sticks. But I'd say 60% of the film is on sticks. - Sticks and zooms and zoom lenses? - Zoom lenses, unless I do sit down interviews and then I use lenses

, lenses, not always. Nowadays with interviews, I have two cameras, one next to the other, one wider, one closer. And the main camera moves all the time. So very much unlike people work now, I work differently. I like to, if there is an emotional moment, there's a pushing, I like to pan from something and discover them just for a ride. There because you shoot on 4K or 8K, it's like, oh, we'll just punch in, but it's not the same. - Yeah, I mean, optically it's very different. So out of curiosity

, if you were, you know, just graduating from film school now, or let's say you didn't even go to film school, but you were a young person, you had discovered documentary filmmaking, you watched, you know, "Strip Down, Rise Up" and you're like, that's the kind of thing that I wanna do. What advice would you have or how would you approach building a career, launching a career as a documentary filmmaker today in 2023? - Shoot, shoot, shoot. (laughs) Do as much as you can, don't wait for the money.

Don't wait for anything. Just go, pick a subject that you care about. Pick a story or a character that you care about. And then go in and film it and whatever it takes. If it's an iPhone, do it on an iPhone. Just show your ability and your talent to tell your story in an innovative way. And then people will see it, you'll get noticed. Then, you know, it's not about getting an agent. Agents don't do much for you. It's more like creating a network of people that will appreciate your work and that

you can be visible to them in case they have a film. And keep working, just producing stuff that people will notice, "Oh, this person doesn't stop. "That means they have it in their blood "and they made it." Just continue telling stories, whether they get money or they don't. And that's-- - That's such a key point that I could not agree with more. I feel like the entertainment industry, there's so many people that come in with dreams and aspirations of doing something. And the people that actua

lly work in the industry, like the executives, the corporate types, who control the flow of money, typically, and the flow of distribution. They've seen a million of these types of people come and go, but the people that stand out are the ones that don't need their help. They just continue self-generating projects for long enough that by the time you actually don't need their help is when they start offering their help. It's one of the most interesting-- - That's exactly what happened to me. Tha

t's exactly what happened to me. For decades, I was like, "On my own, raising money, raising money." And then Netflix started to come to me. You have, what do you wanna do? Like, "Oh, where were you two years ago?" They didn't exist. But the funny story is that Ted Surrenders from Netflix called me when Color Straight Up was already done and was nominated, was on the shelf, done the whole festival, TV, whatever. And he called me in my living room. He's like, "Oh, I have this company. It's called

Red Envelope Entertainment." We do, we send DVDs by mail. Like, "Oh, that sounds cool. What do you want from me?" And he goes, "What do you have?" I'm like, "Well, I have a few films that have gone through the circles and it's just sitting there." He was like, "I wanna have it." He gave me, I don't know, a thousand bucks. It's ridiculous. But I had nothing to lose. And we started a relationship. And then there have been my family since then. My instinct was that's a great program. I kind of wan

na be part of it. But the idea is to stay authentic, cancerous. And that was so bogged down by social media and marketing and PR and the Hollywood Reporter. It's not important. - Yeah. - Excuse me. - Do you think if you were starting your career right now that you would be more focused on creating short documentaries that you could self-release and let's say build an audience for yourself on YouTube, for example, or building longer form projects that like, let's say making short documentaries th

at more serve as proof of concepts for, let me go and raise a couple hundred thousand dollars, whatever it is, to make a longer form version of it. Or would you be doing both? - I never did that. I just started shooting and continued even if I had to stop and raise money and continued. I think it's a waste of time to do a proof of concept unless you have no choice. The time you put in in trying to shoot that stuff and edit that stuff and the resources, I mean, in your film, it was a huge amount

of money. And of course it helped get HBO, thankfully, but most of the time it doesn't. And so now you wasted a hundred thousand dollars and you could have made a whole movie with it. Seriously, with starts and stops, but still you can make it. I've done movies like this. I mean, "Cabu de la Morre," I was like, I'm not waiting. Things are happening. I'm going to shoot. And I went and shot. And then show time came. No, I would rather do short content. Do you feel like, 'cause you talked about, pe

ople only come to offer their help in the entertainment industry once you kind of are at a point where you don't need it. You mentioned like you just start going on a project and there's almost this trust that you have in your own ability to execute and complete something. But what I've noticed is in my own career, the more I've approached projects from the standpoint of, let me design my approach to this in such a way that no one can stop me from making it, even if it's a much lower budget, muc

h more stripped down version of it. It sort of generates its own momentum in a way. And that's one thing that I'm really curious to just get your thoughts on is generating that sense of momentum. Is that something you think about? And is that part of your approach to building projects? No, because my passion is there. And my passion is that. I don't need to generate passion. Passion is there. And if it's not there, I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna spend two years on it. So it's like getting up

in the morning and going, I really need to shoot this. I need to go to Mexico and shoot how? I don't know. I'll give you an example, Cabo Delmore. We started, I got the rights from the guy. I'm going home. I'm like, okay, great. I told him next time you do a matchmaking, let me know. And I'm thinking six months, I get time to raise money. Literally a few weeks later, he calls me. He says, "Miguel, I have this client "and he's willing to be filmed. "And I don't know if I'm gonna have another one

." I'm like. (laughing) So I was like, how do I do this? I don't have the money. And so I thought, okay, I thought I'm going to take my little high definition camp. Instead of getting a DP and a sound, I literally calculated it cost me 50 grand with going to Mexico and everything. I'm like, I don't have it. So I didn't know if it was, if there was a movie even. So I took my little HD and I filmed. I went with him to Mexico. I told you I struggled with the sound, but it still worked and everythin

g. I didn't speak Spanish. And I came back and I said to my partner then, who was a DP, I said, okay, there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is the research turned into a movie. The movie is there. Bad news shot on my little HD by yours truly. That didn't matter. It didn't matter. And so that was the seed and then we raised money and then we used the better cameras or whatever, but I still continue to shoot in Mexico, my own, on my own camera. And we made it a stylistic choice tha

t everything I was shot in Mexico looked a little less elegant 'cause I shot it on a little HD and mini HD. And what was shot in America with the groom with this capitalistic structure was much more clean and beautiful and stay. And that worked stylistically. So just have to start. - It's interesting how those things tend to happen. You've had a lot of recognition, I think throughout your career. You've won film festivals all over the world. You've won South by Southwest and you're an Oscar nomi

nated filmmaker. Out of curiosity, I think probably every filmmaker, anyone that's ever picked up a camera has dreamed about getting an Oscar nomination and kind of like getting that recognition from the Academy. Did anything surprise you about how things did or didn't change after you were Oscar nominated for "Color Straight Up"? - Because of the award you mean? - Yeah. - Oh yeah, it changed a lot. I mean, you just get that stamp that gives you a lot of legitimacy and credibility which really i

s not, shouldn't be like that. There are a lot of amazing filmmakers who never got an Oscar or were even nominated. But the chore that I did, first of all, the agents swarming over me like, "Oh, don't sign with this guy. "I'll send you a limo to bring you to dinner. "Don't sign with the..." And the noise started. And then you do the tour of all the production companies. "Oh, we want a weapon. "Where do you have? "We want a weapon." Two years I wasted on that. I didn't make one movie. Two years t

he agent put me in front of everybody in the world. Nothing came out of it. Up to two years I'm like, "Fuck that, I'm going to make another movie. "I don't want to have another meeting." - And that was kind of the opposite of your approach. It was kind of like the opposite of your approach up to that point in your career where you were generating your own projects and then creating the space for other people to come in as opposed to seeing what other people had for you. - That's right. That's ri

ght. So part of my movies have an education of components. So most of my movies not straight down, but at that time I would create with my team a curriculum for the school. It was very important to me. So color straight up, we created a curriculum with LAUSD. We went, we did a version for the classroom. I would tour, for two years I toured in high schools and schools around the country with my cast from South Central. And they have their experience in an amazing, amazing life going through being

the celebrities, but also really hitting on issues of trust and race and living in America. And so it's very important to me to have that. It wasn't one full life was the same. We created a charity anyway. So I spent a lot of time after making the film, just touring with the film. And we had support from celebrities, Morgan and Dustin Hoffman. Everybody wanted to be part of this school tour. So that was amazing. But I didn't make a movie. I just, it was what I wanted to do. I wanted to continue

that extension of the film. So what was... (laughs) - No, no, no. I was just curious if there were things that surprised you that did or didn't change in the wake of getting that nomination. But what really stands out is that, that's like the industry, that's the industry like really bending over backwards to try and accommodate you. But interestingly, it seems that you found your, it was, you still, your working method was still the one that was right for you in terms of self generating. - I m

ean, look at a lot of the directors who won best foreign film and came here to do a big American movie. - Yeah. - Because they were not authentic anymore. They lost their authenticity and it doesn't work. So I think, - I don't know about mistakes, but I learned a lot by just not listening to the noise and really focusing on creating nothing else. Not creating a marketing machine, not creating a PR machine. This is not authentic. And the audience is very in tune with that. And they feel when some

thing is authentic and not authentic, never underestimate the audience. And I have managed to create that kind of relationship with my visible audience, sometimes visible in festivals, where they feel, and this is very important, they feel that they can trust the filmmaker to bring them into a world that they can totally surrender to without hesitancy, without doubt, without question. Like, I'm gonna let him transport me to this world in South Central, in Holland, in this and this and that. And

so when they trust the filmmaker completely, they give yourself to you, the audience, they give yourself to you and they allow themselves to be vulnerable and to be open to what you're showing them, open to emotion, open to questioning their beliefs, but when you are creating a marketing thing around it or within it, it doesn't work. The audience knows it and they will not trust you or trust to a point. or trust to a point. Being authentic in documentary filmmaking, I can't tell you how crucial

it is, crucial and to the success of it. crucial and to the success of it. - And when you, 'cause you've described both having a genuine passion for a subject or a story and then approaching it with authenticity and earning the trust of your audience, is there anything specific that you try to do at the beginning of a documentary to earn the audience's trust and get them to surrender to the story and to the world? - No, I just know that I have to be very disciplined with myself to tell the story

truthfully and from the point of view of the people I'm telling, I'm featuring, not my voice, their voice. Having said that, we're not making a reality show. So there is an interpretation that needs to be put on top of it, which is my interpretation of this reality that I'm from. That interpretation is what the audience is going to get. It has to be there, but it has to be subtle enough so you're not manipulating the audience because they're gonna know it. They are filmmakers that, like Michael

Moore, will tell you in advance, I'm going to manipulate because I'm gonna tell you only my point of view. I don't care what they are saying, it's gonna be my point of view. But you know it, going into it, it's at your own risk. In our case, it's a very delicate balance between I am showing you the reality, I'm also going to show it to you through my lens. There is no such thing as objectivity, it's a lie, because if I put the camera here and not there, it's subjective, right? If I do a close-u

p in several long shots, it's subjective. I am telling you how to look at this film, how to look at these people. So I'm not lying about it, I'm telling you, this is my point of view, but there is room for your point of view as well to come in and judge for yourself, 'cause I'm giving you an authentic picture of all angles that I can access. And that's the formula almost that you need to follow and be very disciplined with yourself to not fall into this other stuff, but really be focused on what

is truthful, what is important, and what has impact. Impact is the main word, visually, technically, content-wise. So you don't just film, but film something that has a meaning, that somebody's gonna feel, that somebody's gonna go, "Wow, I didn't know." And that's where you eliminate all the stuff, just shooting stuff that you're never gonna see or use. - No, that's great. My last question for you, Michaud, 'cause I know you gotta go is- - I know your last questions. (laughing) - Is there anyth

ing, any tool, any protocol, anything that you do that maybe you learned from a mentor that you discovered, but that you do every day or almost every day that helps you be successful? What it could be your mental health, could be your physical health, could be a way you approach producing, et cetera. - I start my day with meditating, whether I'm set and I have to get up at four in the morning or not, that gives me clarity of what I want to do, what I'm trying to achieve that day, or just move th

e clutter and the noise that I don't wanna hear. So I can start the day with a clean slate and openness and focus. The other thing that's important, and of course yoga is you need to move your body. You can't just work with your head all the time. That keeps me definitely sane. By now I've established a strong confidence in my ability to tell a story in the way I know. So I try to break away from what I know because I know it already. So I need to learn something new and break a genre or break a

way from filming or move into a different subject that somebody would think, I would never thought you would touch that. Always kind of challenge myself is very important to me. So I don't get bored with something I've done before. But also kind of think about what have I done, what can I do that I haven't done before that will keep me in this business? And not be jaded. Like you see a lot of people who are like, "Oh, I've done this." They become cynical. I wanna keep my passion. I wanna keep my

passion pure. And that's by just changing the box and working with other people who have passion like yourself. That your passion is contagious. So that fuels my passion and gives me a meaning to like, why am I doing this and killing myself? Because it's important. And that story is inspirational. And that's another thing. Inspiration is what you're looking for. I wish I had a mentor to go back to your question. I never had a mentor and I wish I did. The only time I had a mentor was when Robert

Wise, the late Robert Wise came to South Central and lectured my kids that I was filming about "West Side Story" and they created a play called "What Side Story" based on that. And he continued to mentor me on the narrative side. There are very few people that can mentor documentaries. So I don't really have those, never had. It would have been nice. The other advice I would say, create a strong small team around you that you can work with over and over again. That you don't have to reinvent th

e wheel every time. That they know how to work. They know how to support you. They know what you like. They know how you like to film things. And that's like 50% is like, makes it so much easier. They know your craziness. And for me, it's like, I need coffee in the morning or else. (laughing) - Extra hot. - That's your own risk. Extra hot. - Extra. (laughing) And Michelle, where can people go to follow you on social media and just see what projects you're working on and learn more about you? - S

o there's IMDB, there is @MichelleLohane on Instagram. I'm on Facebook, that old thing. And I have a website. So it's all there usually. And yeah, Instagram is probably the quickest. It's my name, my name and my last name. - Cool. Michelle, thank you so much for this free time. I personally learned a lot. And I'm sure everyone that watches this will be not only better documentary filmmakers but inspired to keep pushing forward. - Thank you, that was fun. Thank you so much. - Appreciate it, Miche

lle. - All right, talk to you soon. - Ciao. - Ciao. - Ciao. - Thank you. Please subscribe to our channel. And if you have any follow up questions for Michelle or for myself, just let us know in the comments. If you enjoyed this, I think you will also really enjoy this conversation. Thank you for watching.