Fearless Films Finishes Award-Winning
Documentary "In the Name of the Family"
August 31, 2010
Source: Fearless Films
With a 25-year track record in Toronto’s
postproduction community, Fearless Films brought a wealth
of experience to finishing work for In the Name of the Family,
Shelley Saywell’s award-winning documentary about honour
killings in North America.
The film recently won the Best Canadian Feature Award at Toronto’s
Hot Docs film festival. Fearless Films provided complete finishing
services for the project, including online editorial, compositing,
colour grading, titling, closed captioning and versioning.
“It seems so-called honour killings and related attitudes
and threats of violence have come to our part of the world,”
said Deborah Parks, producer, In the Name of the Family. “It’s
frightening and these girls have nowhere to tell their stories.
That’s why we made this film.” Shot primarily on
Sony HDCAM, the film incorporated footage from a variety of
sources, including cell phone cameras and home movies. Paul
Hili and Andrew Mandziuk at Fearless Films took the lead on
postproduction.
“As is often the case with documentaries, the challenge
was combining the footage and matching colour spaces and frame
rates,” explained Mandziuk. “This film is going
to a lot of different places so we had to prepare for a variety
of different output formats.”
Editor Deborah Palloway did the offline edit on Final Cut
Pro. The material was then ingested into an Avid Symphony
at Fearless.
“The online edit process is a lot more involved these
days than it used to be,” explained Mandziuk. “There
is never just one deliverable, and you also have to figure
what the shelf life of the product will be. Are you going
to go to festivals? Do you need a PAL version for Europe?
You’ve got to talk this stuff out with the client and
guide them through the process.”
“I like to stay very involved in the postproduction,”
said director Shelley Saywell. “It’s the time when
I can finally relax and let others add their creativity to
make the film better. I loved working with Fearless. I felt
that they really understood what we were trying to do and
became involved in the storytelling, as opposed to just working
on images.”
“The different requirements for broadcasters and theater,
soon evolve into creative decisions,” added Mandziuk.
“For the theatrical release the director doesn’t
want to blur things if she doesn’t have to, but for legal
reasons, broadcasters often need to hide identifying details.”
“When you blur someone or black out their eyes that,
in itself, becomes part of the story,” he continued.
“There are different ways to hide parts of the image,
and as editors, we need to be sensitive to the audience’s
emotional responses. For example, if you blur out somebody’s
face with a black bar, it can suggest that the person has
done something wrong. An alternative might be to blow up the
shot a bit and reposition the frame so that the speaker’s
head is off-camera. The impression is quite different then,
and feels more respectful to the subject. Our challenge is
to get these kinds of details right, so that they support
the story.”
“I believe the best documentaries are deceptively simple,”
said Shelley Saywell at the Toronto office of Bishari Films,
who produced the film. “I’m always going for lean
understatement to let the power of the subject matter speak
for itself. I want the film to get out of the way of the issues
of the heart.” Colour correction is another area where
technical and artistic criteria are merged in support of the
story.
“Fearless did the first colour pass when I was not there,”
explained Saywell. “When I went in to look at it, the
film was beautiful – too beautiful actually. I wanted
to capture the mood of the story and the subject matter, which
is definitely not beautiful. Colour grading is a bit like
the soundtrack. My films need music in a minor key and it’s
the same with the color palette. Andrew, Paul and I talked
about that and they really nailed it.”
Review sessions were conducted in Fearless Film’s own
12-seat screening room, which is equipped with a Christie
HD digital projector.
“It’s been fabulous working with Fearless,”
said Deborah Parks. “They listened closely and offered
great technical suggestions, and I love their screening room!
I’ve done several films with them now, and I look forward
to working with them again in the future.”
Produced by Bishari Films for CTV, In the Name of the Family
debuted at Hot Docs in May. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker
Shelley Saywell, it was produced by Habiba Nosheen and Deborah
Parks. The cinematographer was Mike Grippo and sound was recorded
by Peter Sawade. The editor was Deborah Palloway. Postproduction
and finishing was completed at Fearless Films.
In the Name of the Family will continue on the festival circuit
this year and will air in Canada this fall on CTV.
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