Cinematic Storytelling with Reenactments

Announcer: Welcome to Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.

Angry Man: Is this some kind of joke.

Confused Woman: Biagio-WHO???

Biagio: This episode. It’s episode 59. Cinematic storytelling with reenactments. What are we enactments and when does your film or TV project need them? How do you keep reenactments from feeling generic? How to use story themes to inspire visual motifs. Determining your must have shots and something about metal tangy thingies. Music courtesy Dave Pelman. Music Dave. Hey everybody. She’s jokes.

Joke: He’s Biagio.

Biagio: We’re married. We make unscripted film and television and want to help you do the same.

Joke: Hopefully by teaming up with us.

Biagio: Well, welcome to this, our 59th episode. I know, can you believe it? No. I ask her that every time. She can never believe it’s one day you won’t be able to believe it, honey. Oh, no. One day you will be able to believe it.

Joke: Okay, whatever.

Biagio: Anyways, it’s that 59. Quick update before we get started. Last time we told you that our new show She Made Me Do It premieres on September 6th. We lied. It premieres Wednesday, September 9th at 10 p.m. and don’t worry, we will give you plenty of updates before then. To remind you to to check it out. A lot of interesting filmmaking techniques and just producing techniques in general went into the show, and we’re going to be talking about some of that this week as well as in upcoming episodes. As a matter of fact, today’s episode, cinematic storytelling with reenactments is something of a how to. We wanted to talk a little bit about some of the challenges and difficulties that come up in producing reenactment shows. Talk a little bit about the history of reenactments, ways that you can make sure your reenactments don’t feel generic. Hopefully not cheesy as sometimes reenactments can. And I give you some of the sort of specific challenges we ran into. And she made me do it and talk through how we tried to overcome those challenges. That sounds like a fun episode, right? Joke.

Joke: I love it.

Biagio: I think it’s going to be great. I think you guys are gonna love it too.

Motivated Person: I am so ready to kick some ass.

Biagio: So let’s dive right in. I’m sure most of you know what a reenactment is. I mean, essentially, a reenactment is when a producer or a filmmaker, you know, in a unscripted setting, whether that’s documentary or, you know, an unscripted TV show recreates events that have happened in the past, and it’s usually shot, cinematically shot to feel a little bit more like a movie or a little bit dreamlike. But essentially you are using your creativity in a way where you try to, as truly as possible, recreate the events that you’re depicting based on the research you’ve done and people you’ve talked to. And it is kind of a big deal in the unscripted world. One of the first people to do it was Earl Morris in a documentary called The Thin Blue Line, which when it came out was a sensation. It was in theaters, which at the time was unheard of for a documentary. And even though it was probably the most popular film that year, it was not nominated for an Oscar because at the time, rumor has it that, you know, Academy members were turned off by the fact that the documentary might use recreations to try and impose a filmmakers vision on past events. That said, another great documentary that used recreations, a man on wire, which had beautiful, fantastic recreations, went on to win an Oscar. So I don’t think the Academy necessarily has anything against reenactments as proven by that film. Of course, anything you watch on discovery ID, any crime show is chock full of reenactments, and they’ve been around for years, you know, on classics like Unsolved Mysteries and any, any crime show you’ve caught basically in the past century. And of course, aro coming show. Snap! She made me do it. Lives and dies on its recreations. Now. Recreations. They can. They can be awesome. They can look fantastic. They can engage your viewer. They can be just visual eye candy that helps you tell your story. So great. However, some reenactments can also be a little generic, right?

Joke: Yeah, and I think that comes mostly from budgetary constraints. You know, our shows are obviously working on reality budgets and don’t have the budgets that scripted television shows have. So I think that with that, you know, creativity sometimes go out the window and it’s just about filling the time and having to be role to cover the interviews rather than, you know, really seeing where creatively those recreations can go.

Biagio: Yeah. And that’s hard because you are facing tight deadlines, you are facing small budgets. And so we want to talk about a few things you can do that will sort of automatically lift your reenactments of the generic and into something a little more specific for your show.

Joke: But I’d also like to say that these ideas stem from what we like to do, even with our kind of dark soap shows, right? Like, absolutely. You have to think of those as well, in a cinematic way and how you how you can up the cinematic value even of your Just your Doctor series, because you’re going to need transitional shots from scene to scene, and you’re going to want to have insert shots to make, you know, certain scenes flow better, etc., etc.. So I think sometimes in recreation shots is just thought of as scripted, which it’s not. And it if you do, it gets very limiting. And then, you know, it’s really obvious that we’re not quite measuring up to obviously a scripted show with scripted budgets, with actors and art directors and all those other lovely things which recreation shows don’t really have the budgets to.

Biagio: That’s true. Oftentimes you are the art director and as mentioned last episode, sometimes I’m the actor. So you know, you do what you can. But one of the ways to sidestep that, that generic feeling that can occasionally come with any kind of show you’re doing, but we’re talking about reenactments specifically today, is to figure out, you know, what visual motifs you can create that are driven by themes in your story. So is there a story theme that can inspire your visual approach?

Joke: But for example, on caged, our theme was being stuck in a small town trying to figure out your way out. And so we framed a lot of our shots through like bridges, through fences. I mean, the kids fought in a cage. So obviously that was a very kind of obvious theme to think of. But then looking around in nature and looking around in your environment that you are shooting in for, for those places to place the camera when you’re doing these kinds of shows.

Biagio: Yeah, it instantly gave anybody in the field a direction that would make the show look a little bit different than your standard shot reality show, and then also going with that theme of sort of claustrophobia and being caged when we would not do that, when we would choose scenes that were going especially well for the characters and sort of pull out all that foreground framing. The scenes felt way more open now, bringing that over to reenactments for for a second, you know, obviously our new show.

Joke: Yeah. So she made me do it. The title alone will tell you that, obviously there’s there’s a he said she said version of events. You know, she does she will usually proclaim in a sense where the he would that be, you know, her coconspirator or the prosecution or the detectives, you know, will claim that she was the mastermind. So so there’s a he said she said it’s and there’s a duality just in the he said she said but then we also were thinking about duality and how that plays to our she characters. Right. The women in question, how they have, you know, usually a very nice, innocent, you know, everyday normal side to them. But maybe inside there is the other side that is the the cold hearted mastermind. And so so we ended up playing with the idea of what she made me do it of duality.

Biagio: Yeah, a duality and sort of that, that warped perspective that the way a story can bend depending on what angle you’re looking at it from. And so what we did visually is we used a lot of interesting reflections and refractions, and I think it turned out really great. Basically, we would go into our scenes thinking, what is an organic way that this scene can have a reflection or a refraction that’s not completely obvious, and that could have been using items in the scene to shoot through glass and bend light, and sort of give a slightly warped feeling to the scene. As we were, Dolly passed it. Obviously interesting use of mirrors or other reflective items, but by using that to inform scenes that dealt with the character’s duality, it added an instant visual to the show that it honestly would have lacked if we would have just popped the camera and shot recreations. So that was one thing that really helped us to try to make the show feel a little bit less generic and more specific to the storytelling we were doing. Obviously joke mentioned that, he said she said side of it all in the duality. We wanted to find a way to also carry that into our interview setups, which, let me tell you, our crew really loved us for this one.

Joke: We got a little ambitious and decided duality reflections. I don’t know, how about mirrors? Let’s shoot an interview setup with mirrors, right?

Biagio: Yeah, right. Because, I mean, what could be so hard about popping up mirrors?

Joke: I know, let’s shoot a two camera interview setup with mirrors.

Biagio: Yeah. What could be so hard about taking, you know, two cameras and a couple of, you know, your audio guy and a couple of crew members and popping around your interview subjects who also happens to be surrounded by mirrors. Let me tell you, that was one heck of a setup. It was essentially a black box with mirrors and there was no place to hide. I mean, obviously we would try to use, you know, deep focusing techniques, you know, and we’d pop up some extra duvet and we’d try to position the cameras in such a way that we weren’t catching ourselves in the mirror reflections. But sometimes it was flat up impossible. And so that means careful color correction in post, you know, to hide any of the of the crew members or guac or gear that would pop up in the shots. However, it’s much of a pain in the butt as it was. You know, there’s a reason you don’t see a lot of interviews that have mirrors in their mind. TV, and I think that that is something, again, derived from the theme of duality in our show that informed our interviews and gave them a little something, give them a little something different, a little something extra. And we also played with cool reflections of light to create a sort of bokeh effect in the foreground of our main camera interview, which you’ll be able to see in the trailer or when you watch the show. Just so it wasn’t just Mirrors in Black, it just brought a little extra color and depth into, you know, into the shot in the same way that we’re trying to, you know, bring these stories to life. We’re like, you know, let’s let’s up this shot just a little bit. And so that was one way of using a theme of the show to sort of inform the visual aspects. Another way was the idea of manipulation. Somebody in every episode is, is, is manipulating or being manipulated. It’s part of the the stories that we chose for this show that went along with the idea of she made me do it. And whether you believe that she in fact did make someone do it, or she was actually the victim of a manipulation herself, manipulation plays a role. So that got us sort of brainstorming. Well, how can you sort of use manipulation in a visual way? And we thought about the idea that people who are manipulators to them, you know, the world, it’s almost like a game they play or a toy they mess with. You know, when they look at the world, they see it as something that they can control. And we thought, well, how interesting would it be if some of our establishing shots we actually shot miniature style. So we sort of used the tilt shift photography style occasionally in places that would make sense to, to sort of hint at the idea that to our manipulators, you know, the world is a small little place they like to toyed with. And that was an interesting visual motif. Again, it adds a little extra spice and flavor to a show that would otherwise just be. It’s a normal establishing shot of whatever city we happen to be filming in. So again, something that we pulled from playing with the the theme of the show. And finally, like, like any crime, you know, the truth of the matter is that no matter if someone is innocent or guilty or it’s obvious who committed the crime or not, throughout the course of the investigation, you know, facts become clear over time and even even when you think you know the whole picture, sometimes things are hazy or hard to comprehend. So we decided to play with the idea of interesting focus. In other words, we would put our main action in, sometimes almost completely out of focus and instead focusing on one foreground object. So maybe there’s, you know, this, a flower pot right up in the foreground, it’s completely in focus. And all the action that you would normally see shot, perhaps in a slightly cheesy or over the top manner, happens a little bit out of focus in the background. And obviously we would pick points in the story where it would make sense to play up that idea of I’m not really sure what happened here. I’m hearing accounts and testimony, but what did it really look like? And of course, you can’t do that for an entire show because an audience isn’t going to watch all show out of focus. But when you use that as a visual spice, again, it helps to lift reenactments sort of out of the generic and into the specific specifics.

Frustrated Advertising Consultant: People I need specifics. Spa safe sex.

Biagio: Now. While every story was very different, there were some must have shots that we needed to get every time. And before I let jokes sort of talk about some of that, I want to hit hard that making reenactment pieces, whether it’s a documentary or a TV show, it is different than making feature films. Some ways it’s easier, and in some ways it’s harder. You know, films, for the most part, are told linearly. You know, there’s a visual continuity that is crucial. And in general, when you see a shot in a movie, it’s really only used one time. You know, obviously, you know, some movies have flashbacks or stylized, but for the most part, when you’re watching a movie, you’re watching a top to bottom, and scenes need to connect, and they need the flow with perfect continuity and intercut. Just right now, when reenacted films and TV, you have a lot more freedom. Number one, you have a freedom to let your interviews in. Sound ups drive your storytelling, which allows you to jump around a bit more. You can reuse visuals, and knowing that a different sound up or a different interview will give those visuals a different context, so you can get more mileage out of your footage. However, it’s a double edged sword because in general, in a reenactment, show, or production, if you compare that budget wise to a feature film shot on the same budget, reenactments tend to have exponentially more shots exponentially, exponentially, exponentially.

Joke: Exponentially.

Biagio: Exponentially more shots and setups than a feature film shot at the same budget. So you need to figure out how to stretch your dollar, get the most money from every single setup, and get as many shots as you possibly can. That means you need a lot of interesting footage, and so making sure you have that footage is crucial. So now I want to talk a little bit about what were some of those must have shots joke that we that we told the crew, no matter what the story was, every single time we had to make sure that it release covered these bases well.

Joke: So obviously there’s some stuff that we need to get literally right. So there is a crime scene. We have to know how the crime happened, or at least how police think it happened. We have to know, you know what they found the body, bullet casings, blood trails, any of that stuff. So we have to get those. Literally. We can’t just have a crime series and a crime show and them talking about a crime and not seeing our recreation of the crime scene.

Biagio: And by literally, you know, a lot of times people will, you know, like you’ll you’ll hear somebody talking about something and you’ll cut the wind chimes or you’ll cut to some interesting symbolic shot that’s tough to do in a reenactment series. You can’t do that all the time. So when you shoot something, literally it’s saying, no, we actually want to film this. So it gives you a literal sense of what happened. We’re not trying to be symbolic here. We’re being literal.

Joke: Yeah. I mean, wind chimes have a great place in recreation shows, especially when people are talking about an emotion or a feeling they had or, you know, something that evoked something. But when you have detectives talking about, well, here’s the crime, this is the puzzle we have to solve. I have to see the pieces of that puzzle. So so that’s number one. We can’t really get around that now, depending on how gruesome the scene is. You know, as a producer can take leeway there. As you know, maybe not shooting it as gruesome as it really happened, you know, in certain things like that. But usually you have to be pretty, you know, dead on, on, on what happened so that it makes sense once the interviews roll in, you know, for the audience to be like, oh, right. They talked about they found this at the crime scene and they found this at the crime scene, that we see those things.

Biagio: And there’s other scenes that you have to shoot kind of literally to. Right? Well, yes.

Joke: If there are, for example, a great anecdotes that happen in act one, you know, if they’re talking about how we met or, or how these two people came together on or how the suspect and the victim knew each other, ideally, there are some stuff that you have, right? So if they if they met at a bar and this is how they all kind of got together, it’s important that you see some of that. So so you again don’t just cut to wind chime. Some of it has to stay true to the story that happened.

Biagio: Also, I know we’ve mentioned Wind Chime several times now. We’re using chimes as a as a stand in for any type of symbolic shot you would cut through. It’s not like we’re actually it’s not like most reenacting shows have wind chimes all over, and we’re using wind chimes to illustrate a symbolic shot. You might pop in to represent something.

Joke: So then I think second, one of the stuff that one of the kind of shots we really wanted is, is was, she made me do it. Spin on what we call baking shots or quiet time shots. So in docu series, a lot of time you’ll see shots of someone driving or doing dishes or just staring off into the sunset or pondering. And those shots are used to put voiceover of themselves from their diary cam interviews or the regular interviews as to what they were thinking and what they were going through. So what we thought for our show, it would be great to have some of those shots as well. For our main conspirators, so that when people are in interview putting thoughts on them or what we thought they were thinking or who we think they were, we have those to cut to. So for us, we definitely wanted some innocent kind of looking shots. Or again, they’re just driving or looking off into the sunset or doing anything. And then our quote unquote mastermind shots where it’s like we kind of see the wheels spinning in their brains and, and, you know, those are are all about the eyes. And so sometimes it’s about having them, you know, kind of just the only thing moving into shot is their eyes looking off camera or something like that. So you really kind of get the sense that maybe, maybe she is a mastermind, maybe she is doing those things. And then thirdly, we talk about the eye candy shots. You know, our wind chimes. What are the wind chimes are, or let’s see.

Biagio: Candles out of vigil.

Joke: Candles out of vigils or raindrops on windshields or, you know, telephone poles that, you know, kind of look cool or wind through the trees. I can’t I really just see no people. It’s all objects. And it’s stuff that you as an audience member can project things onto, right? So depending on the music playing underneath it or the sound effects that are added, depending on how they’re used in editing, you kind of can project onto that object the feeling or the mood that that’s happening. So those are kind of our eye candy shots that we always need. And then the kind of the fourth we were talking about, those kind of shots that connect kind of from one scene to another, dolling footsteps or, you know, this is where we could play in reflections. We see maybe two people making out in reflection, and then we doll up to reveal them, you know, actually doing the making out. And that’s kind of a reveal. So that the shot itself is, is connecting to story visuals, is revealing a story within its own shot. It’s a shot that we can hold on to, you know, for more than a couple of seconds. It’s, you know, and it’s one of those things that we had to talk to our editors about because sometimes they cut them up because that’s what reality editors are used to, where, you know, scripted editors are used to kind of holding on the shots for a longer time because, you know, they’re very choreographed. So in recreate, we can kind of choreograph some of those shots. And that’s what these are.

Biagio: One thing as well that I think you considered a must have shot joke that’s kind of unique crime shows this being a crime show with a crime scene insert shots.

Joke: Yeah. So obviously the crime scene itself is talked about a lot, and the crime scene is where the investigation starts, and it’s a series of puzzle pieces. So we needed a lot of crime scene insert shots. Hey, we found these two bullet casings, shot of the bullet casings on the floor, shot of, you know, you know, gloved hands or whatever. The metal grabby thingy.

Biagio: Those metal grabby pointy thingy.

Joke: Thingies, you know, grabbing the bullet casings, dropping them in an evidence bag, or, you know, those evidence markers that are put out, you know, the yellow tags with the numbers that you see blood splatter, right? I mean, you know, that’s going to come back, they’re going to do DNA testing. We’re going to find out does it match? Does it not match. So we need those kinds of insert shots along the way that help us then connect the puzzle pieces later in the investigation. So you’re going to have to keep coming back to those type of shots.

Biagio: Yeah. And so I think that brings us to the end of today’s podcast. I hope you guys were able to take a lot away from this. I mean, again, just to kind of recap. You know, reenactments or a cinematically creative way to bring past events to life. You know, some of the challenges you deal with reenactments is finding ways to make sure they’re not generic. And the best way to do that is find story themes in your show that you can sort of give a visual motif tour that can inspire visual styles when you go out to shoot. And of course, in our own show, She Made me Do it. You know, we dealt with themes of duality and manipulation and items and facts becoming clear over time, and we use that to inform the way we shot the show. You can see all of this in action starting on Wednesday, September 9th at 10 p.m. on oxygen. When our new show snapped, She Made Me Do It premieres, so we hope you’ll all tune in for that. Will definitely be live tweeting that first night. And we’ll we’ll make sure you all know about that. If you want to hop in and tweet with us during the premiere. And that’s it. Thank you all for tuning in and listening. As always, if you would like to break into reality TV or unscripted television or doc series, you know the reason we started this podcast when we were trying to break in years ago, nobody would meet with us and we promised if we ever got quote unquote successful and had our own company, we’d find a way to let people pitch to us. That’s exactly what we’ve done. Just head on over to Producing Unscripted. Sign up for our newsletter and follow the directions. It’s all free. And listen. I don’t want to make it sound like it’s easy to break into this business. We get a lot of submissions, we team up with very few, but it’s a numbers game and if you stick with it, if this is a business you want to work in, I do believe that if you create enough shows, eventually you’ll find one that will be your ticket into the business. So that’s it. We’ll be back in another two weeks. And our next episode. I just want to tell you, it’s gonna be very exciting because we’re going to be talking about a big switch we made when it comes to editing, a lot of people ask us, well, how do you edit your shows and snaps? You made me do it. We made a huge, huge change in how we make TV and how we edit it, and we’re going to tell you all about that next time. I think some of the answers are going to surprise you when you hear what we’re doing.

Joke: Oh yes, this one has been a couple of years coming. We tried a lot of different post solutions and we finally, finally cracked it. At least what’s working for us?

Biagio: Yeah, we’ve definitely cracked what’s working for us. We can’t wait to tell you all about it next time. So see you guys in two weeks. As always, thanks for tuning in and we appreciate every single one of you. Bye bye.

Joke: Bye bye.

Unidentified Voice: Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.