What does it mean to start at the very beginning? For that matter, what does the concept of “beginning” mean? And how exactly does a beginner “begin”? These are the questions I now began to contemplate as my understanding of things was shattered by the concept of beginner’s mind.

For starters, a beginner does not begin by expecting to do anything good, great or original: He or she simply wants to tell a story, which can be defined as a narrative with a beginning, middle and end. The beginner does not desire to structure this narrative in a complex or ambitious way, but keeps things simple. Moreover, a beginner doesn’t expect to make his or her collaborators happy, or audiences respond in a positive way; those thoughts simply don’t occur because the beginner’s only goal is to tell a story.

Obviously, the desires Isabel and I had for Be Seen & Be Heard were ambitious–we wanted to address racism in the film industry and depict the struggles of minority actors and filmmakers striving for success. But this wasn’t Be Seen & Be Heard any longer; it was a new film called My Dinner with Andre Royo. As I began to recognize and discard the weighty ambitions which were holding me back, I started to see the material before my eyes in a new way. What if the film, which is named after My Dinner with Andre, and is ostensibly about a dinner conversation with Andre Royo, was actually just that–a dinner conversation? What if the storyline was simply about a struggling actress who goes from New York to Baltimore to talk with an established actor over dinner. Straightforward, yet very much like Louis Malle’s My Dinner with Andre in which a struggling playwright and actor has dinner with an eccentric and acclaimed theater director, and what ensues is a deeply engaging and enlightening conversation.

As this basic premise began to form in my mind, I started thinking that the narrative could stay close to the actual conditions under which the interview with Andre was obtained, and that the film could unfold like a documentary. In so doing, we would be straddling the boundary between fiction and reality: the film would depict a real interview involving a dinner conversation between two people who are themselves, but since the footage was shot for an altogether different film, our narrative would essentially be constructed after the fact with a new intention, premise and storyline. The result, I imagined, would be a hybrid of documentary reality with fictional storytelling technique and an editorial process akin to making a film with found footage. Thinking in this way got me excited again, and soon a rough storyline started to emerge. The beginning would show Isabel’s journey from New York to Baltimore setting up the premise of the film, the middle would be the actual dinner conversation with Andre, and the end…well, that wasn’t quite clear. But having arrived at this point now feeling creatively reinvigorated, I was confident that if I followed my intuition the rest of the story would fall into place.

I put together a rough assembly of the opening using b-roll footage to create a visual montage of the drive from New York to Baltimore. Then I began to think about how to approach the body of the film since we had footage of Andre in three different locations: an interview in his trailer on the set of The Wire where he is in character as Bubbles, another interview in the makeup trailer while the Bubbles makeup is removed and Andre begins to change back into himself, and finally a much longer interview over dinner where Andre is well-dressed and groomed, and looks completely like himself. Thinking about how best to use the interviews, I contemplated all the different structural possibilities: Should I intercut between the three locations? Should it all be presented in chronological order–trailer interview, then makeup removal, then the dinner? Or should it all be mixed up but organized by the subject of conversation? If so, then what would motivate the cut from one location to another?

For a day, I did nothing except think about these questions and visualize different ways of structuring the story. Since it had taken some time and unexpected inspiration to pull myself out of serious creative difficulties at the start of the project, I wanted to be careful not to fall back into the quicksand of assembling things only to scrap them and begin again repeatedly. I went to sleep that night without any clear answers. Sure enough, as is the case with creative ideas and the mysterious workings of the unconscious mind, the answer came to me at the inconvenient hour of 5 AM. In a state of hypnopompic semi-consciousness, I realized that a chronological approach would be the strongest structural choice, beginning with the journey from New York to Baltimore (which would include opening titles and a voiceover narration to set up the story), and unfolding with seeing Andre, at first, as Bubbles in his trailer, then witnessing the transition from the character to the actor, and finally the dinner where he is completely himself and opens up to Isabel’s questions. Title cards could be used throughout the dinner sequence as a formal device to structure the different topics of conversation. At the end, we would take the journey back to New York accompanied with another narration by Isabel that reflects on what she experienced that day. It seemed simple, almost too simple, and yet perhaps the point I needed to learn (and embrace) was that simplicity can sometimes be a refreshing way to tell a story, and that complexity and ambitiousness can be hurdles, not merely in storytelling but in thinking too.

“It seemed simple, almost too simple, and yet perhaps the point I needed to learn (and embrace) was that simplicity can sometimes be a refreshing way to tell a story, and that complexity and ambitiousness can be hurdles, not merely in storytelling but in thinking too.”

With this new creative direction, I watched all of the footage again and selected the parts that would best fit the story, choosing clips that jumped out at me as being interesting, humorous, honest, poignant, or revealing. At the end of this first pass, I had an assembly that was an hour and fifty minutes long culled from 4 hours of total interview footage. Then I decided that I should meet up with Isabel and share news of the exciting breakthrough.

As an aside, I must mention here that Isabel is one of the best creative partners I have worked with. When we began editing Be Seen & Be Heard, we agreed to take an intuitive approach towards the editorial process–we would look at the material and allow it to tell us what it wanted to become, rather than impose some sort of external structure upon it. Agreeing to let the process evolve organically, we followed as it unfolded, and gave ourselves the flexibility to take breaks when feeling stuck or change course as needed. We were almost always on the same page creatively, and the editorial experience was such that we began to read each other’s minds after a while. When Be Seen & Be Heard did not pan out, Isabel was disappointed and depressed but she remained open to the possibility of a new film. When I told her how stuck and burned out I was, she gave me the space and time to do whatever I needed, and reassured me of her faith and support through encouraging text messages.

Like any creative endeavor, editing in the early stages is a fragile process that’s introverted and unarticulable. When you begin, you frequently feel like you’re groping about in the dark: you can’t see clearly using the logical abilities of your left brain, but feel and sense and make your way often not knowing where exactly you’re going. Perhaps other editors don’t have the same experience, but I’m constantly insecure and unsure of what I’m doing in the beginning, and don’t know if anything I do will actually amount to something (although somehow it always does). When I first started editing, I used to think something was wrong with me, that I was emotionally imbalanced or unable to handle the creative pressures. With experience I learned that this is all a natural and healthy part of the creative process, for me at least. I have grown accustomed to the insecurities and uncertainties, and have come to see them as my friends because they let me know at the beginning of a project that I’m on the right track. As the process evolves, those feelings are replaced by a resounding sense of confidence in what I’m doing and the final stages of the work take on a teleological import, as if the end result was always the ultimate purpose. For some rational-minded individuals, or those who are either not process oriented or uncomfortable with their own emotional world, this approach would seem alien and unintelligible. But perhaps because Isabel is an actress and the process of acting involves a similar journey, or because, like me, she is comfortable with an intuitive way of working, she was always understanding and supportive.

“Instinctively, I’ve always felt that film editing is very close to music composition because an editor manipulates time and deals with intangible things like tone, rhythm and pacing, all of which are felt on an unconscious level and exert an undeniably powerful influence on the viewer.”

When we met for coffee and I told her the idea–I wasn’t yet ready to show anything because it was too long and too rough–Isabel responded enthusiastically. She liked the simplicity of the approach and, after reflecting on it, thought it could be a real strength because it would allow Andre to show different sides of himself: raw, honest, emotional, humorous. With Isabel now on board conceptually, I took another pass at the assembly to bring it down to half its current length. Hoping to find some suitable music for the film, I auditioned a number of music tracks from two CDs that Isabel owned the rights to. Finding music and being inspired by the tempo, melodies and beats always inspires me when I’m editing. It’s something visceral; I feel the music in my body and use my hands to harmonize sound and image, or work to set them contrapuntally against one another, or play them off each other in interesting ways. Instinctively, I’ve always felt that film editing is very close to music composition because an editor manipulates time and deals with intangible things like tone, rhythm and pacing, all of which are felt on an unconscious level and exert an undeniably powerful influence on the viewer. Having found a nice track for the opening, I recut the intro montage to the pace of the music and then worked my way through the rest of the assembly. I inserted title cards in the dinner interview to break it up thematically, going from Andre’s early life to discussions about family, fear, success and typecasting. The ending of the film still eluded me, but I managed to whittle down the edit to 54 minutes in length, no easy feat considering that I had seen the footage so much that at times I struggled to remain fresh.

Next came the moment of truth: a much needed check that I was on the right track. I screened the 54 minute edit for both Isabel and my girlfriend, Erica, who had been an observer and frequent participant, creative consultant and sounding board for us during Be Seen & Be Heard. Even though Erica had witnessed first hand my struggles with the material and heard about my difficulties, she had not yet seen what I had been doing with My Dinner with Andre Royo. When I screened the cut, It felt like a long 54 minutes–partly because I felt like the film should be around the 30 minute length and partly because, after being in my own head with the material for so long, I was excited for some feedback. The response was favorable and both of them agreed that we finally had something creatively interesting. They both also thought it was too long and, since this first rough cut had no voiceover or clips from The Wire, it felt a little heavy on talking heads. Clearly, it had a ways to go before it would feel like a real film.

But the important thing was that despite the difficulties at the start–or perhaps because of them–we finally had something that we could fashion into a story. For me it was also about learning the importance of cultivating beginner’s mind, and keeping that foremost when working. It’s one thing to read words in a book or adopt a concept or theory; and another to practice in real time, to remove mental obstacles that prevent you from seeing clearly, and to create with the abandon of a beginner.

Coming Soon: Part IV: From Rough Cut to Finished Film

In December 2006, actress Isabel Acosta hired me to edit and help produce a documentary that was going to be called Be Seen & Be Heard, a film about minority filmmakers struggling against the Hollywood machine. While a lot of the 30+ hours of interview footage was pretty uninteresting, a number of subjects gave heartfelt and passionate interviews that really stood out. Notable among these were Terry George (director of Hotel Rwanda), actors Taye Diggs (Rent, How Stella Got Her Groove Back), Andre Royo (HBO’s hit show The Wire), and Maximiliano Hernandez (a very talented actor who will be seen in the upcoming film Pride and Glory with Edward Norton and Colin Farrell), and New York based independent filmmaker Phil Roc (Rhyme Animal).

Terry George

Taye Diggs

Andre Royo

Maximiliano Hernandez

Phil Roc

At the heart of these interviews was the contention that Hollywood is concerned solely with money, and that the racism and sexism evident in many mainstream films is the result of a single-minded pursuit of profit–to the point of producing movies that are dumb, cliched, status quo oriented, or at the worst, completely divorced from social reality. Black actors (and Terry George who is white and originally from Ireland), for example, repeatedly brought up the point that only two black actors are considered viable by Hollywood’s financial standards and chosen to open major blockbuster films: Will Smith and Denzel Washington. If you’re not one of these two, you’ll have a tough time being cast as a lead in a mainstream film and an even tougher time raising a respectable budget (read: over $20 million) for your film.

Check out a trailer for Be Seen & Be Heard:

Understandably, Isabel and I were excited by the subject matter and inspired to craft a narrative that would explore these issues and bring to the fore minority voices that are rarely heard. We worked rigorously for four months to distill the footage down and organize it by theme. At the end of this period of time, however, we had to reckon with the depressing fact that aside from an hour of talking heads interviews, there was little in the way of a story that could sustain this film–very little B-roll, no visual storyline, no follow-up interviews with the participants, no dramatic changes, no main character to follow. This was a case where the filmmakers who began the project simply picked up a camera and, without really thinking through or considering possible storylines, went out and began interviewing people–and got lucky along the way by running into and getting good interviews from Taye Diggs, Terry George, and Andre Royo. But good interviews by themselves don’t make a good documentary; that requires a compelling subject explored in an interesting, thought provoking way where the audience is shown the evidence rather than barraged by non-stop talking heads. Our choice at this point was either to figure out a possible storyline and spend the next year shooting that story or abandon the project altogether. Isabel was opposed to the first option because she had already spent far too much money and over a year of her life on the project before we began editing. The thought of spending another year and several thousand dollars more was overwhelming. It looked like we would have to abandon the film.

Somewhere during the early stage of editing, while watching footage, I was impressed by Andre Royo’s three and half hour interview. Here was an up-and-coming actor, already acclaimed for his role as the junkie “Bubbles” on The Wire, opening up in a very honest, forthcoming and humorous interview about his life as an actor and his struggles not only with the film business but also with himself, with his own fears and insecurities. In this day and age, where the polished actor managed by handlers and publicists is seen promoting every film, where pre-packaged personas are delivered to the world in lieu of flesh-and-blood human beings who are driven to perform in order to explore the deeper facets of the human psyche, Andre Royo came across as genuine, sincere, charismatic, and above all, human. He could at once observe himself and, rather than turn away from his own flaws and failures, own up to them. At some point I jokingly remarked that we should make a short about Andre entitled “My Dinner with Andre Royo”–a tongue-in-cheek reference to Louis Malle’s cult classic My Dinner with Andre. At the brink of abandoning Be Seen & Be Heard, and feeling depressed because we had nothing to show for four months of editing, we began taking seriously the idea of making My Dinner with Andre Royo. After all, if we weren’t able to get a feature out of the material we had, why not try to make a good short film?

Next: Part II: “Beginner’s Mind”