I have been asked why I shoot what I shoot.
Sometimes with a condescending smile, sometimes with a “really, this is what you are doing now” cocked eyebrow, and sometimes with a quiet look of mutual respect.
See I shoot 80 percent of my work for non-profits, charities and causes. The other twenty percent of my time I am shooting for adventure companies.
“For these charities I shoot at cost. No fee goes to my overhead (rent or salaries). All fees go to new equipment or replacing old equipment (film equipment is outdated every two years).
This is not a blueprint for being financially successful in the film production business.”
So how did I end up shooting for charities.
I won’t tell you my life story, but I will step back to my childhood for one second. I grew up in a family of nine: six kids, two parents and my grandfather. My mom was what you would describe as a charitable person.
My mom insisted that as teenagers we donate four hours a week to charity. My sisters were candy stripers (volunteers in the local hospital) and I was a junior corpsman in a hospital.
“Now four hours doesn’t sound like much. But it was New Jersey, there were parties, lots of parties and lots of fun things to do at parties. And the last thing I wanted to do on a Friday night was take a sample (I didn’t want to know what it was) down to the lab. ”
Anyhow I believe these things in your early years stick with you.
Fast forward to my advertising career. I had a great career and enjoyed it. But over the years the business turned from a bastion of sarcasm (I can be pretty sarcastic) and fun to a dark, cynical and even mean environment. The joy had gone from it.
Coupled with that, over the last few years, the work that mattered to me the most was the cause work: both for our clients and the Ad Council.
“I think the things I am most proud of in my career are helping my client, Citi, bring Citi Bike to New York City and helping Adopt A Foster Child get 40,000 kids adopted. I wanted to do this kind of work 100 percent of the time.”
In my last job, as President and Chief Creative Officer, I had helped take an agency from 220 people to over 800. But I felt little joy towards the end. So I left the industry.
I did a little travelling and within the year I was diagnosed with cancer. Cancer wasn’t an aha moment for me, but it certainly confirmed for me what I sought.
I wanted a different path. I wanted a life with more purpose.
I decided to take my marketing knowledge and apply it where it might be needed, helping non-profits, particularly with social media. I quickly realized most non-profits are focused on fundraising. Instead, I thought people needed to see where their money was going and emotionally connect them with the work charities were doing on the ground.
“I felt charities needed issue raising instead of simply fundraising.”
At first I directed a couple of videos for charities. On my second shoot, for Triple Negative Breast Cancer, I had two cameramen, hair and makeup, a producer, sound and there were even sandwiches on the shoot. But at lunch, the client said the only reason they were spending this much was because it was their fundraiser.
“I knew right then and there, charities couldn’t afford big production crews and the associated day rates. If I was going to support them with films for their social media feeds, I would have to become a one man band: cinematographer, director, producer, sound engineer, and editor. ”
A couple of classes and a few hundred hours of online training later, and I was on my first shoot as a professional with Regional Hospice in Danbury, Connecticut.
The size of the crew? Me.
Oh and I had a social worker.
We were interviewing caregivers who had gone through the hospice experience with a loved one. So if it got too tough for the people I was interviewing, the social worker was there to provide assistance.
“It was here I started my approach to filmmaking. I wanted it to be intimate. I was going to be filming tough stuff. I didn’t want the people I was interviewing nervous about a big crew and expansive film set with big lights and gear everywhere. ”
I designed a minimal set: no big lights, just natural light with one small fill light. I didn’t want a crew, I just wanted it to be me and the interviewee. I even wanted a small camera.
I wanted the act of filming the last thing these people had to think about.
“This light filmic approach also helped me with my shoots with environmental causes and adventure companies where I would need to be nimble and light, and go where many film companies could not.
”
I also began interviewing people either by phone or in person before the shoot. I wanted them comfortable with me before the day of the shoot. And I wanted to see what questions might help tell their story best.
That first shoot for Regional Hospice I met with a couple who had lost a thirteen year daughter the year before. This child had physical complications from birth. Her life was filled with organ transplants and then finally cancer.
I met with the couple before the shoot and during the interview, everything was fine. But the day of the shoot, the mother really struggled. I felt terrible. Was I making her journey through grief only worse? I was incredibly thankful that I had my social worker with me. Fortunately, they got through it. To this day, I still hear from the father.
But the thing that stayed with me, was just how inspirational this couple was. They had spent virtually 13 years caring for their sick child, travelling to different cities and different hospitals, putting virtually everything on hold. The other stories in that film were equally powerful and demonstrations of caring and commitment that were unbelievably powerful and humbling for me.
“While I love the creative aspect of filmmaking (deciding what lens to shoot with, what your b roll should be, editing, color correcting and the like), what i truly love is how inspired I am by the people I interview. ”
In Tanzania, I interviewed a poacher, a woman, who poached to merely survive and put food on her family’s table. But through entrepreneurial training from a charity, Grumeti Fund, she was now a successful seamstress who could send her kids to school. Closer to home in Bridgeport, Connecticut, I got to meet a homeless veteran that had been a drug addict for 40 years of his life, and now he was clean, sober and studying to be a drug counselor. I met another homeless vet, who had suffered in her life as she said, “Every kind of abuse imaginable.” While sheltered with a charity, Homes for the Brave, she went to community college and then went to undergraduate college and received her Bachelor’s Degree and now works in public health. In Boston, I got to meet and shoot disadvantaged youth who were working to generate enough money to build a school for disadvantaged youths in Africa.
I once had an ex-poacher describe for me the nightmares and PTSD he still suffers. As he told me, the life of a poacher is a nightmare. Imagine walking to work except you are walking through the high grass in the Serengeti, where hidden lies any number of predators: lions, leopards, snakes, cheetahs. He once stepped on a crocodile while crossing a river. He once held off a lion with a hunting knife. He was chased by elephants and wild buffalo. Now he had a life of peace as beekeeper and shopkeeper thanks to the entrepreneurial training he had received from Grumeti Fund.
“Not only am I inspired when I meet these people and then film their stories, I then get to sit in an edit bay for a month with their stories.
There have been a few days where I have sat in my office, editing, with a lump in my throat or worse, overcome by the stories of the people I have filmed.”
And then there are my clients.
I had some great clients in advertising. But I also had some clients who weren’t so nice.
Every single one of my clients now is amazing. Because every single one of them is trying to change the world.
Sure, disagreements happen just like in advertising. After all, that’s part of the creative process. But now when we are debating a cut, I will remind myself, she’s trying to change the world. He’s trying to change the world, Every single one of them is trying to change the world.
“So yes, I love being a filmmaker.
But what I love most is being witness to what my clients are trying to change in the world. ”
And most importantly, being witness to how the people they are helping are moving forward in their life, what these people have overcome, and where they are headed.
I wonder how did they have the strength to overcome 40 years of drug addiction, a life of abuse, 13 years of taking care of a sick child, years of struggling to put food on their dinner table, and years of simply trying to survive.
That’s why I film what I shoot. I am not shooting a plate of food. I am not shooting a model in jeans. I am not shooting a soda can pour shot.
I get to shoot the strongest people I have ever known.
Rob Feakins is the founder and director of For All Humankind, a company that is dedicated to shooting and consulting with charities, non-profits and environmental causes.