I wanted to write a quick bit about My Way Home, the doc|UWM film showing during the festival this Saturday and Sunday. If you don’t know, doc|UWM is a program run by filmmakers Ryan Sarnowski and Jenny Plevin in which student filmmakers work on very real documentary projects. Their films often receive airtime on PBS, and the program is beginning to garner national attention. They currently are at work on a series of water documentaries and a series on the Milwaukee Striders running group. They also are in talks with the Pabst Theater about creating film shorts with visiting bands.
Normally, directors and producers get all the credit on documentaries, but if you’ve ever made one, you know the editor is key. Anyone can shoot a ton of footage of a person or event, but documentary films come into their own when someone figures out the story. Editing My Way Home was recent UWM grad and AboutFace Intern Jessamy Meyer.
My Way Home follows a young Hmong-American woman, Dao Chang, as she attempts to comprehend the relationship between her family, identity and past. The film’s press materials explain that she travels “halfway around the world to the country her family was once forced to flee, but her voyage into her past greets her with more questions than answers.” The main production team also included Joe Sacco, Dao Chang, Meg Strobel, Jenny Plevin and Brad Lichtenstein, but to reiterate, the film was shot and edited primarily by students. The fact that this program exists is another reason I get excited about filmmaking in Milwaukee. People often complain that Milwaukee isn’t Hollywood enough. It isn’t, and when I see great programs like this one come alive, I wonder, “Why would we want to be?”
Regardless, I asked Jessamy first about the filmmaking process. “In the beginning,” she said, “it was set up as a student project where everyone would be doing some shooting, editing and producing. But honestly, I went into the project knowing I wanted to be the editor.” She said, ultimately, it ended up making the most sense to have one person log and process that vast amount of footage for organizational reasons. “The process was long and constantly creative yet frustrating in a good way because of the personalities working on it.” In short, she noted, “I loved it.”
Always wanting to know more about filmmakers’ creative processes, I asked about the tense moments, the tearful moments and the film moments that had to go. Luckily, she was willing to divulge and admitted that she almost quit … twice. When an early screening of a cut didn’t go as well as she’d hoped, for example, she thought, “‘if that doesn’t work, I have no idea.’ But you don’t quit, and you have to figure everyone is having those moments. I went home, drafted an e-mail getting all the frustration out, saved it, then went back to work the next day. Everyone was pretty emotionally involved in the project, and we had to see it finish. There was no chance anyone was walking away.”
Although all the people made it out alive, all the seemingly key scenes did not. “It’s crazy what will end up getting cut out of a film,” she explained. “But with 150 hours, obviously a lot of good stuff gets cut out. We had one scene where Dao finally sits down and talks to her Aunt in Laos, and it seemed like it could be the climax of the film.” With more editing, however, “that piece lost its place. We finally had to cut it completely because trying to force it in was causing more bad than good.”
The process is not what she hopes people will see on screen, though (as with any good film). Instead, she hopes Dao gets the credit she deserves for being a willing and graceful documentary subject. “This film was shoot over two years of Dao’s life,” Jessamy said, noting that a lot happened, and it was astonishing that “she allowed us along on that ride through everything. I want an audience to see how amazingly open she was about her life. I’m always taken off guard by the amount of grace Dao has in every situation, despite the camera in her face.”
Regarding the screenings themselves, Jessamy said she’s not nervous yet, but she assumes she will be pacing about the theater day of. “It can be difficult to really appreciate the experience when you’re in the middle of the project, but now I really see it as this amazing experience and the lessons were endless.” Overall, she explained, “doc|UWM was probably the greatest single experience I had through film school. I think I learned what it truly means to collaborate with other people.”
And a new filmmaker is born.
My Way Home screens Saturday, Oct. 2 at 4:45 at the North Shore Cinema and again Sunday, Oct. 3 at 1:15 at the Oriental. Filmmakers will be in attendance for both screenings.
