DGA Monthly

J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 5 I 3 5 As the viewing public becomes inundated with subjective realities and alternative facts, the Director's role and responsibility in determining how the truth enhances or diminishes story is becoming both increasingly vital and increasingly debatable. On November 23, DGA members gathered in the Guild's New York theater as a panel of Directors discussed their approach and perspective on handling the truth in both documentaries and narrative work during the Eastern Diversity Steering Committee (EDSC) event, Framing Truth: An Exploration of the Director's Relationship with Fact & Fiction. Following welcomes from EDSC Co-Chairs Bertha Bay-Sa Pan and Seith Mann, DGA Sixth Vice President Lily Olszewski moderated a panel with Directors Yance Ford, Annetta Marion and Rob Hardy and prefaced the conversation asking, "What is a Director's relationship with truth? If you are a documentary filmmaker or directing a project based on real events or if you work in news, there's a different relationship with truth. There is weight to your decisions. What shot you get and how it's framed. Where the camera is positioned. What part of the story do you include. There is as much weight in what you choose to show and what is outside the frame, wittingly or unwittingly." Ford spoke about being driven to direct his documentary, Strong Island after the killing of his brother. "There was a version of my brother left in the public eye after a grand jury returned a neutral bill which basically meant that the person who shot him wouldn't face criminal charges. There was this perception left in the ether that he had somehow been responsible for his own death and that he was some kind of out-of-control monster. So, there was this tension between who I knew my brother to be and who my community knew my brother to be vs. who he was being portrayed in the media and in the court process. So, I was really motivated to correct the historical record. I had conversations with people that I hadn't talked to ever about what they had seen or experienced the night that he died until we were on set. I was just like, 'If we're going to have the first conversation, we have to have the first conversation when the camera is rolling because we can't do it twice.' It was super charged, but as a result of sort of telling people that I was going to give them an opportunity to tell their story and I just literally sat there and just received what they had to say. And — whether it was my sister or my mother or my brother's best friend — these moments of testimony and the opportunity to give their truth, really provided me with the material that ultimately makes the film so great." Marion recalled working with Michael J. Fox as a segment Director on Davis Guggenheim's documentary, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie. "Michael Fox was a part of everything from the very beginning. He, I'm sure, many offers for people to tell his story and he felt this was the right time for him. So, we looked at it as a collaboration but we also out of the gate were very clear that we wanted to talk about all of the hard things too. Because I think the beauty is in tough parts of life. His life was so big, so fantastic in the ups and downs. I think the hardest part was fitting this gigantic life and this gigantic story into a 90-minute movie. So, working with him to figure out what we wanted to tell and then making sure that worked with him was really important. From the very beginning he saw clips and screenings of the film when it was nearing completion and that sort of thing. In my experience, there's usually not a contractual obligation to have your subject sign off. It's more of a moral and ethical and humanities sort of obligation that we feel. I've never had that necessitated by a legal contract, but we do it because we're human beings and we love our subjects and we want to honor them and celebrate them, not to point out what's wrong or not." Hardy shared the challenges of balancing the true story while still telling a good, interesting story on series such as All American and Power Book III: Raising Kanan. "All American was a lot different because it was a real person, Spencer Paysinger, who grew up in Los Angeles, really went to Beverly High, into the NFL. [We were] figuring out how to honor him and honor his story but give the writers more creative leeway to be able to fictionalize the story. My relationship with him was about honoring his neighborhood and making sure that Beverly Hills wasn't placed so high on a pedestal and South Central demonized. So, it was a balance, and he was really helpful with that." Hardy also stressed how important it was to visit the real places where the stories took place. "It was important in both situations to go to the neighborhoods with the people themselves, see life through their eyes, talk to their friends, go to the same places, so I could kind of understand it. Because the script is here, but you want to be able to do justice to the place. So, for Power it's more so you want people from Queens, from that era to feel like this is our show. And as a non-West Coast guy, I needed people from LA, specifically South-Central LA to feel like this is my show and you guys represented us from both there and Beverly Hills, so it felt authentic." Photos: 1. (L-R) Directors Lily Olszewski (moderator), Rob Hardy, Annetta Marion and Yance Ford. 2-3. EDSC Co-Chairs Seith Mann and Bertha Bay-Sa Pan welcome the audience Framing Truth: An Exploration of the Director's Relationship with Fact & Fiction An Eastern Diversity Steering Committee Event See more detailed descriptions, additional photos and video, where available, online at www.dga.org. DGA Events Roundup 2 3 photos by Marcie Revens 1

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