Roger Nygard and Paul Tarantino co-produced and co-edited the award-winning documentary “The Nature of Existence and in the article below they share their experience making the movie.
International Documentary Filmmaking with a Crew of Two (or Less)
By Roger Nygard and Paul Tarantino (co-producers and co-editors of “The Nature of Existence”) (June 2010)
The Beginning
Roger Nygard: Making a personal documentary can consume you. When I started out with just one question — “Why do we exist?” — I didn’t realize it would take me 85 questions, four years, 170 interviews, traveling across six countries, and 450 hours of footage to get an answer. If I knew what I was in for before I started any of my film projects, I would probably have gone to medical school. Sure, medical school is hard, but you don’t have to create a new idea every day. I decided to self-finance the project, so that meant traveling light and cheap, either by myself or sometimes with one other person to shoot B camera. Paul Tarantino watched a rough cut of some scenes and, as I struggled with a way to tell a story, suggested I put myself into the movie.
Paul Tarantino: I’m a writer first and foremost and so I was looking at the material for the through-line. Since some of my favorite stories are road movies, I thought perhaps that would be the best way to approach this. The only drawback is the inclination to have the main character change over the course of his journey. It was our goal to have Roger be the eyes of the audience and present what he discovers. And even if Roger or the audience does not come to a radical new conclusion, their pondering on the subject is enriched. I have lost count of the times that people have called me two weeks after seeing the film and still want to talk about it; it just seems to burrow into people’s minds and doesn’t let go.
Under the Radar
Tarantino: The idea was to fly low and fast into wherever it was we were going. The true beauty in making a concept documentary like this is capturing IDEAS, and sometimes when you employ too much fuss while setting up for an interview, ideas change. When you show up at someone’s home to ask them why we exist, you want them in the chair talking right away with as little of their environment altered as possible.
Nygard: I tried to get a travel visa to Iran to interview the mullahs, but I discovered that it’s impossible if you say you are a filmmaker. We avoided a similar problem in India and China by applying for regular tourist visas. If you apply as a filmmaker, it will cost you a lot more money because they will force you to register with the government, tell them where you will go and who you will talk to, and require that you pay to have a minder with you at all times who may censor you. It’s easy to pull off the tourist gambit. Just make sure you look the part; you and your equipment can’t look too sophisticated.
I was surprised that, once we got into China, nobody ever questioned our right to be there or tried to stop us or refused to answer any questions. Ironically, we were hassled a lot in the U.S.A. and the U.K. We constantly heard, “Hey, you can’t shoot in here!” I attribute this to the prevalence of reality shows; people are more on guard now and aware of potential humiliation caused by those shows. When we went through Heathrow, Paul was shooting footage of me on the escalator walking toward customs as the sun was setting behind me. It turns out if you take your camera out near customs there, they get all panicky.
Tarantino: The British customs agents really tried to sweat me. They looked through all my bags, found notes from previous interviews, and were hitting me with such pressing questions as: “Who’s the rabbi? Who is the rabbi?!” They were literally playing “good bobby, bad bobby.” One of the agents would walk out and the other would sit down with me and casually ask, “So, Paul … now that he’s gone, tell me about the rabbi … and why do you have a map of Princeton University?” It really didn’t help much when I told them I was searching for why we exist. I’m just glad rubber gloves never came into the mix. Eventually, they made me erase the tape of Roger and the pretty sunset.
The Interviews
Nygard: The key to getting beautiful footage on the road is sunlight. Natural light makes people look the best. If indoors, we would sit near a nice big window and let the ambient light key the subject from the side. Occasionally, I had to make an exception. Peter Gilmore, the head of the Satanists, preferred not to come outside into the sun for his interview.
Tarantino: Some of our longest interviews started out with them asking us, “How long is this gonna take?” And judging from the tone of the question, they were hoping it was going to be brief. But once an interview was underway, it would regularly last several hours! Getting the opportunity to express one’s point of view to willing listeners is perhaps one of the greatest joys for human beings. Once they get comfortable telling you how it is, that’s when the interview really heats up and the best stuff starts to roll.
When shooting documentary interviews, ask your question and then shut up. Don’t jump in to fill the space. Silence is the interviewer’s most powerful tool to get people to go deeper. Interview people in their natural habitats. Have them doing things they would normally be doing as you interview them. Be bold. The camera gives you authority; it empowers you to be assertive, and people accept that. They expect it. No apologies are necessary.
Nygard: I take every suggestion seriously, no matter how ridiculous. The way I found the Ultimate Christian Wrestlers, one of the most memorable segments in the film, was through a referral. A friend sent me a link to the wrestlers’ website as a joke, saying, “Hey, you should interview these guys. Ha ha.” I looked at their site and thought, “They look perfect!” The end of their show is the most amazing part, when they present a passion play in the wrestling ring. They’re really nice guys when they aren’t bashing heads. I went to church with them the next day. And filmed it, of course.
Tarantino: In Salisbury, England we interviewed the head Druid, Rollo Maughfling, at Stonehenge in the pouring rain. Soaked to the bone at the half-way point, we decided to dry off and wait for a break in the clouds. Rollo suggested we drive down to Dorset to see the Cern Giant, aka The Rude Man — a huge figure of a naked man carved into the ground centuries ago. I’m glad we took him up on the offer; not only did the rain subside by the time we’d reached Cern Abbas, but the history of the giant offered another piece to our puzzle searching for the meaning to our existence. We would have missed it had it been a nice day!
Finding the Answer
Nygard: When I was in Loreto, Italy, touring the Basilica della Santa Casa, I bumped into the Vatican’s Archbishop of Manfredonia. I approached him and he agreed to do an interview, but he became less and less interested in answering questions as I continued. But when you have somebody on camera, it’s hard for them to quit. They feel like they have to keep answering as long as you keep firing questions. Because it was an impromptu interview, I didn’t have a new tape in the camera and ran out after 20 minutes. During the tape change he fled. I was lucky to get what I did, including his signature on the release, which I always get in advance.
Tarantino: The editing process dwarfs the shooting process! In documentary filmmaking, it’s where the film is made. Some of our editing room debates raged on for hours (they started to remind me of the Christian Wrestlers). With years of our lives invested in the film, our debates got passionate. Our first assembly was five hours. That’s a lot of answers. But people don’t have time for more than about ninety minutes’ worth of answers, so we test-screened and took out whole chunks, and finally slimmed it down to 94 minutes. Alfred Hitchcock once said, “The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.” The final result represents the best balance of what was truly an amazing journey toward better understanding why we exist
Nygard: At screenings, the second most common question I heard (after, “What’s the answer?!”) was, “Do you believe in God?” I responded by saying, “Before I can answer that, I have to ask which definition of God you are referring to.” Most had never thought about that. As Gandhi once said, “… there are as many religions as there are individuals.” The number one criticism I received from people who are in the movie was, “You should have had more of me!” After sitting for a two-hour-plus interview and then seeing that only two minutes remain — or maybe even just one quote — it’s often a shock. Sometimes we cut out segments that were better than what was in the film only because it didn’t fit in the overall scheme.
At the end of the film, I returned home — where I began my journey. And then I asked the same question I asked at the beginning, but in a different way: “Is the world a better place for having had human beings in it?” I wanted to leave the audience feeling positive at the end of the movie, because that’s how I felt after meeting so many interesting people. Having survived the journey, I’m glad I chose the hard road of filmmaking, because it turns out that part of the answer is that the journey itself is the purpose.
