What makes people act? How can we connect on a deep level and compel others to support our movements and missions? At Micro-Documentaries, we continually entertain this question and try to nuance our understanding of how short film can answer the call. Our Director of Field & Post-Production, Kiran Goldman, reports from a recent talk on the topic in Mill Valley.
As documentary filmmakers, we constantly think about how to engage viewers to help drive social change. Tabitha Jackson, Director of the Documentary Film Program at the Sundance Institute, and documentary film director James Redford explored these questions recently in a conversation titled “Effecting Social Change with Documentary Filmmaking” at The Commonwealth Club in Mill Valley.
Measuring the impact of documentary films is a hot and highly debated topic, and organizations such as Participant Media and the Harmony Institute are currently exploring ways of synthesizing meaningful metrics of a film’s social impact (see here and here for relevant articles). While the metrics may prove to be important, particularly for funders, Jackson and Redford both reminded us why we got into filmmaking in the first place.
“Why do we love documentary filmmaking? It is because of its potential to generate empathy,” Jackson said.
It is the feelings that go along with the facts and events that stick with us and make us act. Jackson showed us a short clip from the 1978 short film “Ten Minutes Older” by Herz Frank to help us understand what she means by emotional impact. In this clip, we see a child experience every possible emotion in the span of just a few minutes.
It is this simple, yet challenging task that as filmmakers we need to return to: No matter how much information we hope our viewers will retain, developing an emotional connection is key. The emotional connection with viewers and the potential to generate empathy is where the art of filmmaking and storytelling comes in. As Jackson points out, “If you can get the art right, there is so much you can do to effect change.”