Appendix 5

Interview e-mail to Maya Newell

I wrote this email to Maya Newell in the hope to obtain an interview.

Dear Maya,

There’s a risk that this time of the year is way too busy for you to have a moment to talk. My exegesis is due on November 20th, so I thought I’d send four questions only. I would be very thankful if you could reply (even if they are very short and simple answers, it’ll be very helpful).

First, I’d like to say that I was very impressed by your Masterclass at AFTRS last year. It inspired me to write my exegesis about the tools a documentarian can use to make more ethical films particularly when it involves your own children.

What I loved the most was:

-        How you obtain informed consent. Your consultation techniques all along the process of making a film.
-        Your sense of duty of care (participants, their family/mob, community, audience, crew, and yourself) and the allocation of resources for it.
-        Your sense of collaboration/partnership in a formalised way.
-        Your choice of funders who won’t control the story.
-        The awareness of bringing more than an idea/project (bias, identity, attitude, maybe help, but also disturbance).
-        Your will to give agency to the participants.
-        How you workshop with the whole team/crew. And create a sort of film committee.
-        Your will to create cultural and mental safety.
-        The open doors to postproduction, inviting participants to watch cuts.
-        Your will to rebalance power by letting kids or participants interview and film you.
-        Your idea of sharing your films’ profits.
-        How you stay connected with the participants and their family.
-        Your own work on impact producing and your choice of impact producers like Alex Kelly whose presentation I loved.

My AFTRS Capstone film is a 30-minute documentary I’m co-directing with Leonore, my 11-year-old daughter. It’s a conversation about growing up. It follows our mother-daughter’s journey and dialogue, but also involves family members and her school friends. It is an attempt at identifying and deconstructing taboos around puberty, particularly menstruations and our body.

I would like to seek your advice in order to do the right thing. Here are my four questions:

-        Do you have ideas on how to rebalance the power between Leonore and me? So far, I have given her a camera to film and interview me. I have made her co-director and given her a total veto right. I organised consultations with a psychologist specialised in consent. I have pressed the off button when she asked me to. I have set up a consent meeting explaining the risks and potential consequences of making this film with her. I made the crew come for dinner prior to the shoot to get to know her on a casual basis so she’s not the only person in the room who doesn’t know anyone. Is there anything else you could think of?

-        One of the difficult points is when she doesn’t want a scene in the film, I’m tempted to enter a harsh negotiation mode. Explain that a film can’t be interesting if it’s just a slideshow of good moments. It needs to talk about and show more difficult one where she cries for example. Have you handled similar situations and how do you preserve the integrity of the film, of your idea while respecting a participant’s will?

-        I would like to share the (very improbable) profits generated by the film with Leonore. What is your advice on this?

-        The last thing documentarians want is a set of imposed strict ethical rules. My idea would be to train “Ethics Consultants” a bit like Intimacy Coordinators were trained from a choreography/combat background to manage intimate scenes to informed consent and then crew and actors’ wholistic wellbeing. This person would provide an optional service which could save the production a lot of time and money. It would limit the risk of consent issues, participants defections and lawsuits. It would allow the director and crew to identify the right ethical approach for each project very quickly, efficiently, and formally, avoiding months of research.
The idea came to me after involving an Intimacy Coordinator on a previous film. She helped me enormously with separating and gaining different types of consents, setting boundaries, and closure practices. I hired her for my Capstone. The idea was born.

I would like to have your opinion or input on this idea.

I’m sorry for the huge email.

I hope you have a lovely sunny weekend. 

Kind regards,

Flore