Hot Right Now: Orlando von Einsiedel
- Posted: 20th Jan 2011
- Category: Articles
An ex-pro-snowboarder, Orlando von Einsiedel wove his way into filmmaking and currently works on a dizzy kaleidoscope of projects for Grain Media, which he co-founded. He may be better known to you for making Skateistan, showing at Sundance this year (the only British short documentary to have been selected to date). Last year, DFG met Orlando when he won the Current TV Series Development Funding pitch at the Sheffield Doc/Fest DFG Day. Meghna Gupta catches up with him to find out what’s brewing, pick his brains about developing documentaries and the door-opening opportunities that come with making a standout short.
Can you tell us a little bit about the project that won the Current TV pitch on DFG Day?
It’s a TV series about men and women who work in war zones, so that's journalists, aid workers, soldiers etc. We've found some great characters all theway across the world, they're up for being part of it and it looks like it could be an amazing series shot in some very interesting places.
What follows once you’ve won a pitch for development?
The normal thing if you do get a bit of development money is to write a fleshed out treatment. So rather than a 1 page document, you basically add meat to the bones of your idea. You write down every episode and you actually find real characters that you've definitely got access to. You basically really flesh out everything so that when you next meet with the commissioners, you can answer every single one of their questions and present the series to them in a way that looks like its ready to go. Normally you'd also make a taster tape which might be a couple of interviews with different contributors, and some shots that show the style that you're looking for with the programme.
What are the different elements involved?
If I were to break it down; Firstly find the contributors. Then, there's working out the style and the format - That’s really key. The style may be how you shoot it, the camera work and the look. The format - is it observational, is it an authored journey, is there a strong concept in there? You also need to prep a budget. Those are really key things. Additionally you need to work out the feasibility, - I suppose in the case of this series the health and safety aspect is important. Also is it actively possible to do - on the time and the money?
How have you developed narratives for this project?
We develop a style that every episode has and each episode has what I think is quite a dynamic narrative running through it. However, its too early to be telling all our secrets for this series just yet…
What are some of the difficulties you face with narrative at this stage?
I suppose…for all documentaries of any narrative, you can try to plan absolutely everything down to the last shot. But ultimately you never know what you're going to get. You really don't! And certainly with this project it will really involve a lot of very intense time with contributors in really difficult environments. You don't know how they're going to act and what will emerge. It's not really a controlled environment. On the flip side I've just done a documentary about a debating competition in Nepal. The environment was fairly controlled and there was a real structure to the film and I was literally just following things as they happened, I kind of knew what was going to happen from the start. This series is very different because we really don't know what we're going to get.
How did the funding from Current TV help?
For this series, I used the money Current gave us to employ a couple of researchers to find contributors. Everyday we'd have a catch up meeting to see what each person had found out. With the contributors who seemed like they would tick the right boxes it was then a case of phoning them up, skyping them and having a proper conversation. Some of them had also done video stuff in the past, so we could also see what they were like in front of the camera. Other than going and meeting people, which is obviously the best, the only other way you can nail down your characters is by talking to them and researching their background.
What are some common dead ends and distractions you encounter in documentary?
The easiest one is when you get overly excited about an idea. Because you think it's really interesting you think everyone will think it's really interesting, you sort of assume that everyone will think it's really interesting. I've certainly been guilty of that many times in the past. But obviously, it might not be interesting to anyone else - in fact everyone else might find it really boring! It's certainly not just about showing your ideas to people who are making films either. You need to talk to people not involved in this industry – I find that my friends and my family, are always really good benchmarks. So all in all if your friends, strangers you meet in the pub and your family all think you have a good idea you are probably onto a winner.
How far do you feel you need to develop aesthetics at this point?
I absolutely think about things beforehand, you really need to. The first couple of bits that you shoot, you never know, may be the most important bits of your film. But if you haven't already worked out the style that you're shooting it in, it's going to seem really weird when you use those bits in the rest of the film. Stylistically, this series needs to feel very edgy and energetic. I probably won’t even use a tripod the whole time we're filming. It’s very observational, a lot of that will depend on what happens. [However] with a film like Skateistan, I knew very clearly how that would look, the way we were going to shoot interviews, [as] I wasn’t going to include any talking heads and the kind of feeling we wanted to get. It’s even more important with a short film. You only have a few minutes to leave a lasting impression on everyone. Short films - if they need to be noticed, most of them need to look really stunning too…We knew we would have a girl and boy character. We knew how we wanted to portray skateboarding and how we wanted to tell the story of Afghanistan in it - through these children's eyes. That said, we couldn't go as far as storyboarding it though because we had no clue about how these kids act with us - whether they'd like us, what they'd say to us etc. I think with a documentary, you can set your format, set your characters, set the style you're going to shoot it, but because you never know what you're going to get, storyboarding is almost futile. I certainly have done it in the past, but it really just ends up just going out of the window anyway.
How useful do you feel shorts are?
I used to think if you can be paid to do a longer film, why would you want to do a short film, which has got a lot less money and in the last couple of years, I've done quite a lot of longer documentaries for Al Jazeera and for a long time, I didn't really see the point of doing short films. But now I think I've really seen the benefit of doing short films - you can tell a lovely story normally without any huge amount of money, in a nice way and then if it is successful, it's incredible and it can open lots of doors. Bizarrely enough, you can make lots of stuff for television and no one ever notices who you are other than the people in that particular channel. If you have a short film that does well at festivals, then almost the whole industry takes note. So on that level, doing short films is a good path in career development and getting some respect among your peers – if you’re into that sort of thing. It opens doors and I guess that's got to be good. Skateistan lost us money and it took a lot of energy to make it work and happen. But it was super worth it in every other way. I definitely would say to people that doing a short is a good idea. If you've got a good story go shoot it!
What kind of doors may have opened?
Certainly I'll be able to say that Skateistan film has won x number of awards or has been to Sundance. That will never hurt when you are next pitching an idea. Everyone who works in television can recognize that. They know that's a good thing to have done, so that's certainly useful. Its weird – bizarrely, recently I've had loads of emails inviting me to do different things - you get invited to various exclusive screenings. And while all of that may be fun, at the event, you also get to meet the decision makers and the people who fund each of these projects. That's priceless.