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dialogue is anyway, so why not let it be part of the film? I guess what my conversations have that conventional interviews don't is a serendipitous quality, an emotional charge that has something to do with the personal connection between the subject and the filmmaker. I never came with a list of questions.
MacDonald:
Did you call ahead and prepare people?
McElwee:
Well, in the case of Karen, the lawyer, the last portrait in the film, I said, "Can I come and spend some time with you? I have my camera and I'll probably do some shooting. I'm making this film about women in the South and about my journey along Sherman's route." And she said, "Sure, come." In one sense she's startled when I walk in the door shooting; she hadn't quite expected that, but in general she's prepared. That scene on the porch when I'm asking her, "Where have you been for the last year? Why didn't you ever write?'' is exactly as it happened. We didn't talk about it beforehand. In fact, if I had called ahead and told her I'd ask her about certain things, she'd have inevitably tried to preconceive what she was going to say, or would have said, "Well, I don't think I'm going to want to do this." It's just easier to go ahead and film.
MacDonald:
What was the balance between how much you shot and didn't shoot when you were with people?
McElwee:
I think a more accurate way to think about this is that I was almost always ready to shoot. I kept the camera within reaching distance, sometimes balanced on my shoulder. Maybe
Sherman's March
took five months of shooting. I never figured it out exactly. But even between major portraits, when I was on the road, I was totally open to filming whatever might happen in a gas station or in a restaurant, or wherever. So in one sense you can count all that time as "filming time."
I'd guess the total amount of footage I actually shot was about twenty-five hours. I don't remember exactly. In the finished film I ended up with two and a half hours of thata ten or eleven to one filming ratio. But that other ratio, between five months and two and a half hoursthat's astronomical.
I spent five or six days with Charleen [Swansea]. That was probably the shortest period overall that I spent with anybody. She's so intense, things happen so quickly with her, that I didn't need to be there long. Of course, there were also times when I'd go with her prepared to film, and film nothing because it wasn't interesting enough. I'd just relax and enjoy myself if I could.
MacDonald: Sherman's March
is another portrait of the South, and like the other films, it includes moments of interrelationship between whites and blacks. Your conversation with the fellow whose daughter has died is especially memorable.