{"id":20995,"date":"2023-10-19T20:05:09","date_gmt":"2023-10-19T20:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/?p=20995"},"modified":"2026-01-18T18:13:56","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T18:13:56","slug":"how-to-think-like-a-filmmaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/2023\/10\/how-to-think-like-a-filmmaker\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Think Like a Filmmaker"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Erin Peterson<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With dozens of award-winning, conversation-starting documentaries among them, Macalester alumni and faculty have made waves in the industry. Here, they share the mindsets that have led to their success.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students arrive in Morgan Adamson\u2019s year-long course series, \u201cDocumentary Cinema, Theory and Practice,\u201d with plenty of opinions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As is true in most film studies classes, students learn to speak fluently about the history, ethics, and politics of documentary film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for her classes, Adamson, an associate professor of media and cultural studies, also wants students to focus on questions of craft: What kinds of relationships need to be established to create a film in the first place? How is the film structured? Why might a director have made one decision rather than another? \u201cWhen students go into a class knowing that they\u2019re going to make <\/i>a documentary film, they watch films with a different perspective than if they were going to write papers about them,\u201d she says. As part of the course, Adamson brings in award-winning documentary filmmakers including Stanley<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nelson and Brett Story, who dig into the nuts and bolts of their work. By the end of the year, she wants all of her students to know more than just how to create their own documentary. Adamson wants them to be able to think like filmmakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We wanted to learn, too. That\u2019s why we spoke to Adamson, some of her past students who have become documentary filmmakers, and a handful of other Mac alumni who have made a living through filmmaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They shared the mindsets, approaches, and surprising quirks that drive their work\u2014as well as what it takes to succeed in a rewarding but notoriously challenging field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

See the Work<\/h2>\n

View films and\/or trailers from the filmmakers featured in the fall 2023 issue of <\/span>Macalester Today<\/span><\/i>: <\/span><\/p>\n

Professor Morgan Adamson<\/h3>\n

Brutal Utopias<\/em> trailer<\/a> (2023)<\/p>\n

Anna Andersen \u201915<\/h3>\n

No Man\u2019s Land<\/em> trailer<\/a> (2021)<\/p>\n

James Christenson \u201911<\/h3>\n

Running on Fumes in North Dakota<\/em><\/a> (2014)<\/p>\n

Prakshi Malik \u201914<\/h3>\n

Jumpolin<\/em><\/a> (2017)<\/p>\n

Rachel Lauren Mueller \u201913<\/h3>\n

8 Days at Ware <\/a><\/em>trailer<\/a> (2022)<\/p>\n

James Rutenbeck \u201975<\/h3>\n

Class of \u201927<\/a><\/em> (2016)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

1. Trust Yourself and Your Vision\u2014But Be Open to Serendipity<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

In many ways, James Christenson \u201911 seemed like he was cut out for a career in documentary filmmaking. He shot videos with his friends in junior high. In high school, he took on extra shifts at Quiznos so he could buy a high-definition camera. Before he graduated from Macalester, he landed a $5,000 Mellon Foundation grant to shoot an hour-long documentary about high-speed and light-rail transit expansion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t a seamless transition to the field after graduation\u2014he did a stint in US Senator Amy Klobuchar\u2019s office first\u2014but he couldn\u2019t stay away for long. When he returned, he worked with collaborators who shared his ambitions. In 2013, he and his partners, including Eliot Popko \u201911 and Lewis Wilcox \u201912, learned that they\u2019d landed a spot at the Camden International Film Festival\u2019s Points North Pitch. There, they pitched, and landed funding for, what would become one of the New York Times\u2019 \u201c<\/i>opinion documentaries,\u201d or Op Docs, called Running on Fumes in North Dakota<\/i>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The six-minute documentary, which illuminates the human costs of a North Dakota oil boom, got a top billing in the New York Times <\/i>digital edition, and remains one of the most popular videos on the site nearly a decade later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christenson has completed a handful of documentaries since then, often committing years to the projects. He has learned both to trust the feelings that lead him to projects in the first place, but also to embrace the twists that transform the story during the course of filming. \u201cI have to go into a project knowing that something about it really interests me,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I try not to get tied to my assumptions. Usually, whatever you thought you were getting into is actually something else.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A case in point is one of his current projects, To Be Reconciled<\/i>, a MacArthur Foundation-funded project about Carlos Urrutia. Urrutia, an undocumented St. Paul resident whose chaotic arrest by ICE agents in 2018 led to news headlines, has spent the intervening years navigating the immigration courts system to become a US citizen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christenson, who has carefully followed the story since the month before the 2018 arrest, initially imagined it to be a human journey through the legal system. As the case wound its way up to the Supreme Court and then to a lower federal court where it remains, his judgment seemed to be correct. But when Urrutia\u2019s mother invited Christenson to her home in Mexico to share her perspective, he soon understood that he wasn\u2019t telling a story about the immigration system at all: he was telling a story about a mother and son reconciling. \u201cA whole world blossomed in front of me,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christenson says moments that upend his expectations are among the greatest joys of his work. \u201cI never want to make documentaries where I already know the ending,\u201d he says. \u201cThey should be a process of discovery.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Running on Fumes in North Dakota by James Christenson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

2. Recognize that Filmmaking is About Art\u2014And Logistics<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Morgan Adamson had long been fascinated by the brightly colored, brutalist-style Cedar Riverside towers on the eastern edge of downtown Minneapolis. The buildings weren\u2019t just eye-catching: they were intended to be the crown jewel of the larger utopian community. It was the perfect subject, she thought, for a documentary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But before she went out into the field, she did an initial pass through the research. She soon realized that the heart of the story wasn\u2019t the planned utopia, but rather the reasons that the community had never been built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suddenly, the straightforward idea she had started with wasn\u2019t so straightforward at all. \u201cI realized that I really had to spend a lot of time getting to know the people who had participated in that struggle over urban renewal starting in the 1970s to understand what had actually happened,\u201d she says. \u201cThe project involved a lot of archival research, hunting down materials that were in people\u2019s personal archives, and developing relationships with some of the project\u2019s participants from the 1970s.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her experience is typical\u2014while documentary filmmaking is an art, it can often also feel more like a prosaic project management slog. \u201cDocumentaries do require people to bring together things like history and politics and aesthetics,\u201d says Adamson. \u201cBut 90 percent of filmmaking is about organization and logistics\u2014that\u2019s what it requires to see a project all the way through.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The end result, though, can be transcendent for an audience. The resulting film, Brutal Utopias, <\/i>won the Audience Choice award at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival this past spring. \u201cSo much work takes place before you ever pick up a camera,\u201d she says. \u201cBut that\u2019s what it takes to really bring a project to life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Rachel Lauren Mueller<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

3. Find the Poem in the Room<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

When two boys in a Louisiana juvenile detention facility died by suicide within days of each other in 2019, some called it an unfortunate coincidence. But Rachel Lauren Mueller \u201913 and Meg Shutzer, who were both master\u2019s students at the University of California\u2013Berkeley\u2019s School of Journalism at the time, were convinced there was more to the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They brought their pitch to the head of the school\u2019s investigative reporting program, who provided the resources and mentorship they needed to pursue what became 8 Days at Ware. <\/i>Their investigation revealed numerous abuses and overlooked complaints\u2014and ended up as a front page story in the New York Times <\/i>and a documentary that appeared on PBS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capturing the film required relentless, methodical work: the pair traveled to Louisiana a half-dozen times over the course of six months to meet with people and sift through court records. The full scope of the project continued for another two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shoot days could easily stretch to twelve hours, and Mueller might spend much of the time with a fifteen-pound camera rig on her shoulders. All the while, she tried to remain fully present. She knew the tiniest nuances\u2014a mother holding her daughter\u2019s hand, a nighttime toothbrushing ritual\u2014could illuminate the heart of a story in a way that exposition couldn\u2019t. \u201cI\u2019m trying to see what is unfolding in front of me, like a subtle expression or emotion that you can only notice when you\u2019re really paying attention,\u201d she says. \u201cA mentor of mine called it \u2018finding the poem in the room.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Mueller was grateful to be able to work on both the newspaper story and the documentary, the differences between the two types of media reinforced her affinity for film. \u201cPrint can get into the nitty-gritty details,\u201d she says. \u201cBut the film can bring you into the emotions of the story. When you see Bridget Peterson, the mother of one of the boys, you can see her grief. You can hear it in her voice. There\u2019s a different layer of vulnerability there, and I feel an extra sense of responsibility to do the very best that I can with a story because of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result of the project, Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards called for an investigation of the center; it is ongoing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Mueller, this kind of result was what she hoped for when she decided to pursue investigative reporting and documentary filmmaking. It\u2019s also part of what is propelling her in her current work, The Quiet Part, <\/i>about white supremacy in a small town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you put things out into the world, people will do with it what they will, but you always hope\u2014I always hope\u2014that my work will have a positive impact,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
A Reckoning in Boston by James Rutenbeck<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

4. Commit the Time it Takes to Achieve Excellence<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

After decades as a nonfiction filmmaker\u2014which has included two prestigious Alfred I. duPont\u2013Columbia University awards and a Sundance Documentary Fund grant\u2014James Rutenbeck \u201975 knows that one of the essential traits of a successful filmmaker is simple, grinding tenacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take, for example, his current project with Samuel Habib, a twenty-four-year-old disabled filmmaker who traveled the country to meet with disability activists. Habib strapped two GoPro cameras to his wheelchair at the start of his journey, and Rutenbeck had the tall task of sifting through all of the film Habib captured on his travels. \u201cThe cameras were recording constantly at airports, down bumpy sidewalks, and at the beach. We have hundreds of hours of footage,\u201d he says. \u201cI spent a big chunk of last year viewing it; most of it as exciting as parking garage surveillance footage. But interspersed are some unexpectedly riveting moments,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it\u2019s those tiny moments, captured between countless humdrum hours, that can land the most significant emotional wallop. In his first documentary, Company Town<\/i>, which premiered in 1984, Rutenbeck spent a month filming the ordinary moments of life in Widen, West Va., a former coal town in the Appalachian mountains. Nearly forty years later, he still recalls simple scenes from the film: \u201cKids riding motorbikes up gob piles, an old woman singing a hymn in front of her house,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s an atmospheric film with visual references to the past that raises questions without resorting to any political cliches.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Telling a great story isn\u2019t just about having an idea, says Rutenbeck. It\u2019s about having the discipline\u2014perhaps obsessiveness\u2014to capture and illuminate just the right details to bring that idea to life. \u201cIt can be painstaking and rigorous,\u201d Rutenbeck says. \u201cI revisit the footage on the screen and in my mind, trying to find ways to deepen the film\u2019s intimacy and emotion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Filmmakers
No Man’s Land by Anna Andersen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

5. Work Through the Mess<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

When Prakshi Malik \u201914 was just getting started with filmmaking at Macalester, she would shoot hours of film, often to find that she\u2019d made critical errors in the process. In some cases, she shot video with different aspect ratios, making them all but impossible to stitch together. To save money, she\u2019d taped over the mini DV tapes many times, leading to losses in audio. \u201cRookie errors,\u201d she jokes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She also experienced something surprising during the process. \u201cA lot of people dread sifting through all the footage that they shoot. But I really enjoyed it,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s about patience. It\u2019s about being good with details. It\u2019s about working through the mess.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Malik honed this skill at the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned an MFA in film production in 2020. While there, she directed a documentary called Jumpolin<\/i>, a portrait of a Chicana family whose pi\u00f1ata and party store in East Austin was demolished without notice by a real estate developer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On that project, she began to internalize the idea that good editing isn\u2019t just about creating seamless pacing and harnessing the emotions of a viewer: it\u2019s finding the most meaningful and honest story that\u2019s embedded in the footage. \u201cYou can make many different films out of the same piece of raw material,\u201d she says. \u201cIn some ways, choosing what you\u2019re really going to say happens in the editing process.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s that sense of thoughtful storytelling through editing that has led many to tap her for her expertise: she has edited numerous film projects, including On All Fronts, <\/i>an Emmy-nominated short documentary about a biracial Black and Indonesian family in Minneapolis who navigated twin challenges in 2020: the rising anti-Asian sentiment during the pandemic and the unrest after the murder of George Floyd. She\u2019s also working diligently to co-direct and edit a documentary about the family and friends of Abuka Sanders, a father, musician, and entrepreneur who was killed by the Minneapolis Police Department in 2000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an emerging filmmaker, Malik has leaned on communities like Brown Girls Doc Mafia and the Asian American Documentary Network to build connections and find opportunities. She views her career, in some ways, in the same way she views all that raw footage she sees in the editing process. \u201cYou experiment, you try some things, you see what works,\u201d she says. \u201cYou try something else. And it\u2019s okay if it takes awhile for things to be perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Rachel Lauren Mueller<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

6. Do the Story Only You Can Do<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Anna Andersen \u201915 had pre-med plans when she arrived at Macalester, but when she landed in Morgan Adamson\u2019s documentary-making class, she knew she\u2019d found her path. \u201cI thought, \u2018This <\/i>is what I actually want to do,\u2019 \u201d she recalls. \u201cIt was the launching pad.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, it took her some time to find a route forward. In 2018, while working as a video assistant at the New York City-based news and activism organization Global Citizen, she pitched an idea about women\u2019s communities that were built in oppressive environments. A touchstone for the idea was a story published in the New York Times <\/i>about Alapine, a lesbian separatist community in rural Alabama. Her boss turned it down, but the idea stayed with her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, she asked a Global Citizen colleague, Gaby Canal, if she wanted to pursue the idea with her. Canal said yes, and the two left Global Citizen with unbridled ambition\u2014but no roadmap. \u201cWe didn\u2019t know what we were doing,\u201d Andersen says. \u201cWe just made it up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In some ways, they were stymied at every turn: they learned that the writer for the New York Times <\/i>story that had inspired the project had passed away. When they were finally able to track down contact information for Alapine, they got nothing but radio silence for months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, they found ways to counteract every hard \u2018no\u2019 with tiny, encouraging \u2018yeses.\u2019 After finally getting permission to visit Alapine, they relentlessly pitched their idea to funders and eventually received a few thousand dollars from a private investor. They followed it up with a crowdfunding campaign that landed them $30,000 to help finish the film. \u201cMaybe our optimism was stupid,\u201d Andersen reflects now. \u201cBut we kept thinking: there\u2019s no other option. We feel compelled to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The finished documentary, No Man\u2019s Land, <\/i>appeared at many film festivals, including DOC NYC, and the Florida Film Festival, where it landed the Audience Award in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Andersen is at work on a documentary about a universally designed catamaran. It\u2019s run by a crew of physically disabled sailors who plan to sail the vessel in the 2024 Regata del Sol al Sol, a 555-nautical mile race from Florida\u2019s Pensacola Bay to Mexico\u2019s Isla Mujeres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Andersen\u2019s other projects, it\u2019s had its challenges. Still, a track record of navigating choppy waters in the past has propelled her forward. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to believe in yourself and push yourself to do it; nobody else is going to push you,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s worth it to make something tangible outside of your own mind and to share it with the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erin Peterson is a Minneapolis-based writer.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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