now at lumiere.net.nz
The Art of Walking Backwards: How to Make a Documentary for NZ$12,000 [Part A]
An account of the journey of film student and first-time documentary maker, SÁNDOR LAU, who walked 500km from Auckland to Cape Reinga, New Zealand's spiritual tip, to make his documentary, Behaviours of the Backpacker.
» Part A | [Part B]
A Mäori proverb says you spend your life walking backwards because you can see the past but not the future – that's why we trip. The journey to make Behaviours of the Backpacker is full of stumbling blocks – especially on such a small budget. But the luxury of time to improvise and develop relationships that cannot be purchased outweighs the setbacks.
The documentary tells the stories of backpackers, tour operators, organic farmers and Mäori communities, all walking backwards to find the way home.
Walking Backwards
I'm walking alone 500km from New Zealand's least spiritual place, Auckland, to its most spiritual one, Cape Reinga, to make my documentary, Behaviours of the Backpacker. Cape Reinga is the top of New Zealand's North Island, also called Te Ika a Maui. It's Aotearoa's spiritual tip, where the wairua (spirits) of Mäori travel after death to leap off and return to their ancestral homeland, Hawaiki.
I walk into one of the country's only Mäori backpackers after lugging my pack full of camera gear 40km, and I'd like to sleep for the next 14 hours. But when I meet the owner, Pete Kitchen, I know I must interview this man NOW!
Pete explains a Mäori proverb, which says you spend your life walking backwards:
You can see where you've been, but you don't know where you're going. If you're walking forward, you know where you're going, you wouldn't trip over anything, but we do. So there's your story of your life.
It's a more developed version of hindsight is twenty-twenty. And the man met me only a little while ago, but he's sorted out the past and the future of my film before it's even finished.
In The Beginning
With the proverb in mind, I should go back a little way. I think I can safely say I am New Zealand's only Chinese/Hungarian-American. I came to the University of Auckland in 2000 on a US Fulbright scholarship, and had the opportunity to attend film school – something out of financial reach in the land of opportunity.
To make the documentary, I received NZ$12,000 (A$10,000, US$8,160) of grant money from Creative New Zealand and Fulbright New Zealand, which came with neither strings nor lifelines attached, allowing me to produce the film myself. The grant basically paid for living costs on the road, and absolutely essential production expenses.
Another aspect of the proverb is going back to the beginning to get to the future. So I thought back to my hometown and the video store where I worked. I could only watch the PG movies there because of the kids in the store, so I developed an interest in Hollywood films of the 1930s and 40s, which found new creative directions because of the censorship restraints of the Hayes Code and the National Legion of Decency.
Looking back to those films, I knew I would have to turn my weakness into strength. An average hour of Australian documentary costs NZ$238,000(1) (A$206,000, US$156,000) and an hour of Discovery Channel, NZ$1.5million(2) (A$1.3million, US$1million), compared with a standard documentary budget of NZ$140,000 (A$121,000, US$92,000) in New Zealand. So the only thing for me to do was make a documentary with NZ$12,000 that could not possibly be made for a million dollars.
With a backpack full of three changes of underwear, a box of DV tapes, and a Sony PD150 digital camera, I set out to do what big budget productions rarely have the luxury of doing – improvising. The next two months I spent walking, sometimes forty km a day, convincing other people on journeys to share with me their visions, dreams and sorrows.
Fairy Tale
I wouldn't say I'm not fond of the city. It's not like cities are breeding grounds for all the world's greed and unhappiness and bad behaviour. They've never been able to prove that viral marketing, multi-tasking and retail therapy actually give you cancer; and someone has to drive the cars to burn the gas to start the war to keep the gas prices down. It's not like the market can do everything for us.
—voiceover leaving Auckland.
I always conceived Behaviours of the Backpacker as a classical fairy tale or epic. A young man undertakes a journey despite the warnings of those around him because the situation as it is cannot be allowed to continue. Maybe he has to go fight the monster (Beowulf), discover knowledge (Maui) or return home (Mahabaratha, Odyssey). Maybe all three (Behaviours of the Backpacker). Anyone familiar with the practices of colonialism or the WTO knows that monsters have many faces.
The journey's object becomes a McGuffin – a device to drive the story and give the protagonist an objective. In the end, maybe the McGuffin is a genuine prize, Odysseus reclaiming the throne of Ithaca, Maui gaining the secret of fire, or maybe it's just a Maltese Falcon. Whatever the conclusion, the journey is the most important end result. And what makes the journey are the characters the traveler meets along the way.
Dramatis Personae
I meet a Tasmanian hippy, Bel, who lives in her van with her dog and hasn't had a shower in a week. And it's all on tape because our interview started ten minutes after our first meeting. She's here to test her theory that the universe provides everything you need. Which I think is horseshit because when she runs out of money she gets on her cellphone to her parents. But I'm walking backwards, so the horseshit turns to prophecy, because I need her for my movie and she drops out of the sky straight into my frame. And in the million dollar alternative universe with the lighting truck and production design, she would have vanished into smoke.
Another founding premise for Behaviours of the Backpacker was that war-torn countries produce refugees, impoverished countries produce emigrants, and decadent countries produce backpackers.
Dror is an Israeli stoner who smokes through his entire interview. We're talking about backpacking and he tells me, "Outcasts, you meet a lot of those...you can see that in their own country these people are lost, they just don't fit." And I wonder if he's only talking about other backpackers. What began as active intention has become a kind of natural selection because everyone I interview is on their own journey to fight the monster, discover the knowledge and find the way home. For many, though, finding home means leaving it. This is the kind of middle-class homelessness I wanted to explore, the kind that doesn't come with a press kit, doesn't make appointments, and doesn't come on Friends.
» Part A | [Part B]
» Part A | [Part B]
A Mäori proverb says you spend your life walking backwards because you can see the past but not the future – that's why we trip. The journey to make Behaviours of the Backpacker is full of stumbling blocks – especially on such a small budget. But the luxury of time to improvise and develop relationships that cannot be purchased outweighs the setbacks.
The documentary tells the stories of backpackers, tour operators, organic farmers and Mäori communities, all walking backwards to find the way home.
Walking Backwards
I'm walking alone 500km from New Zealand's least spiritual place, Auckland, to its most spiritual one, Cape Reinga, to make my documentary, Behaviours of the Backpacker. Cape Reinga is the top of New Zealand's North Island, also called Te Ika a Maui. It's Aotearoa's spiritual tip, where the wairua (spirits) of Mäori travel after death to leap off and return to their ancestral homeland, Hawaiki.
I walk into one of the country's only Mäori backpackers after lugging my pack full of camera gear 40km, and I'd like to sleep for the next 14 hours. But when I meet the owner, Pete Kitchen, I know I must interview this man NOW!
Pete explains a Mäori proverb, which says you spend your life walking backwards:
You can see where you've been, but you don't know where you're going. If you're walking forward, you know where you're going, you wouldn't trip over anything, but we do. So there's your story of your life.
It's a more developed version of hindsight is twenty-twenty. And the man met me only a little while ago, but he's sorted out the past and the future of my film before it's even finished.
In The Beginning
With the proverb in mind, I should go back a little way. I think I can safely say I am New Zealand's only Chinese/Hungarian-American. I came to the University of Auckland in 2000 on a US Fulbright scholarship, and had the opportunity to attend film school – something out of financial reach in the land of opportunity.
To make the documentary, I received NZ$12,000 (A$10,000, US$8,160) of grant money from Creative New Zealand and Fulbright New Zealand, which came with neither strings nor lifelines attached, allowing me to produce the film myself. The grant basically paid for living costs on the road, and absolutely essential production expenses.
Another aspect of the proverb is going back to the beginning to get to the future. So I thought back to my hometown and the video store where I worked. I could only watch the PG movies there because of the kids in the store, so I developed an interest in Hollywood films of the 1930s and 40s, which found new creative directions because of the censorship restraints of the Hayes Code and the National Legion of Decency.
Looking back to those films, I knew I would have to turn my weakness into strength. An average hour of Australian documentary costs NZ$238,000(1) (A$206,000, US$156,000) and an hour of Discovery Channel, NZ$1.5million(2) (A$1.3million, US$1million), compared with a standard documentary budget of NZ$140,000 (A$121,000, US$92,000) in New Zealand. So the only thing for me to do was make a documentary with NZ$12,000 that could not possibly be made for a million dollars.
With a backpack full of three changes of underwear, a box of DV tapes, and a Sony PD150 digital camera, I set out to do what big budget productions rarely have the luxury of doing – improvising. The next two months I spent walking, sometimes forty km a day, convincing other people on journeys to share with me their visions, dreams and sorrows.
Fairy Tale
I wouldn't say I'm not fond of the city. It's not like cities are breeding grounds for all the world's greed and unhappiness and bad behaviour. They've never been able to prove that viral marketing, multi-tasking and retail therapy actually give you cancer; and someone has to drive the cars to burn the gas to start the war to keep the gas prices down. It's not like the market can do everything for us.
—voiceover leaving Auckland.
I always conceived Behaviours of the Backpacker as a classical fairy tale or epic. A young man undertakes a journey despite the warnings of those around him because the situation as it is cannot be allowed to continue. Maybe he has to go fight the monster (Beowulf), discover knowledge (Maui) or return home (Mahabaratha, Odyssey). Maybe all three (Behaviours of the Backpacker). Anyone familiar with the practices of colonialism or the WTO knows that monsters have many faces.
The journey's object becomes a McGuffin – a device to drive the story and give the protagonist an objective. In the end, maybe the McGuffin is a genuine prize, Odysseus reclaiming the throne of Ithaca, Maui gaining the secret of fire, or maybe it's just a Maltese Falcon. Whatever the conclusion, the journey is the most important end result. And what makes the journey are the characters the traveler meets along the way.
Dramatis Personae
I meet a Tasmanian hippy, Bel, who lives in her van with her dog and hasn't had a shower in a week. And it's all on tape because our interview started ten minutes after our first meeting. She's here to test her theory that the universe provides everything you need. Which I think is horseshit because when she runs out of money she gets on her cellphone to her parents. But I'm walking backwards, so the horseshit turns to prophecy, because I need her for my movie and she drops out of the sky straight into my frame. And in the million dollar alternative universe with the lighting truck and production design, she would have vanished into smoke.
Another founding premise for Behaviours of the Backpacker was that war-torn countries produce refugees, impoverished countries produce emigrants, and decadent countries produce backpackers.
Dror is an Israeli stoner who smokes through his entire interview. We're talking about backpacking and he tells me, "Outcasts, you meet a lot of those...you can see that in their own country these people are lost, they just don't fit." And I wonder if he's only talking about other backpackers. What began as active intention has become a kind of natural selection because everyone I interview is on their own journey to fight the monster, discover the knowledge and find the way home. For many, though, finding home means leaving it. This is the kind of middle-class homelessness I wanted to explore, the kind that doesn't come with a press kit, doesn't make appointments, and doesn't come on Friends.
» Part A | [Part B]
(1) Australian Film Commission www.afc.gov.au/gtp/mpdocosactivity.html. Accessed 5 April 2004
(2) Liang Yu, 'Discovery may channel-hop', Shanghai Star 22 March 2001
(2) Liang Yu, 'Discovery may channel-hop', Shanghai Star 22 March 2001
