Documenting The Phantom Menace - Q&A with documentarian Jon Shenk

Q: So, why no narrator in the documentary?

Jon Shenk: It's funny, I think in the realm of a "making of" it's a real unusual thing. But there's a whole history of cinema verite-- observational docs that have this style. And that's just something that I sort of fell in love with when I became a documentary filmmaker. And it just always seemed like a very direct approach. You know, sort of a human approach to making a film. And we had discussions from the time when I started work on this project that we wanted it to be an honest take on what it's really like to work on these films because we hear it all the time through making ofs, various formats, the rosy picture and kinds of things that Rick was talking about, how funny it was that certain quirky things happen. But we knew we were going to be around for a long time, and we had the luxury of collecting these scenes that allowed us to tell the story well. Without a voice of God narration to come between.

Q: How long did the entire process take?

JS: Well you have to understand I was shooting the documentary footage over the course of almost three years. I had so much time to think about a finished film as I was going along that it's really almost impossible to count. We would shoot scenes, and there are certain scenes that you shoot and know immediately that that's going to be in the film, you start working with it right away. The actual editing time once the DVD came around and there was sort of this idea that there was going to be this hour long documentary that we were going to put on the disc, that editing period was about three months or so.

Jim Ward: In fairness he's being humble. We didn't give him a lot of time, When the decision was made to do this, it was like, "Jon, the good news is let's do what we've always talked about. Bad news is you've got like a couple months to do it," and he, talk about living it as a lifestyle, that's what he did.

JS: But by that time, to be fair we had had and I had shown to Jim sort of what they call in the film world a rough assembly. Which is a really rough kind of almost an assembly of best stuff. It was probably three or four hours long, and Jim had seen that and so we were starting from a place where we kind of at least knew the basic structure of the film.

Q: How long did it take to log all this stuff, and how did you do it?

JS: My brain. It's a copywritten database by now. Yeah actually we did. We knew very early on, actually when I started the job in November of '96 there was already a stack of tapes a mile high that other people had shot from the day that George had started writing the script. So I knew right away that a logging system was something that we would need. And I actually ended up working with a guy who had helped create the logging system for Episode I to log their dailies. And we modified it and I told him the kinds of things that I would need for documentary footage and it was a Filemaker Pro based thing.

During busy times we would actually have an assistant do nothing but watch the previous day's tapes that I had shot. Because sometimes I would shoot five, six, seven hours of footage in a day. That guy was going through it the next day typing in detailed logs so if I thought or if Jim said to me "hey do you have anything where you know the guys at ILM are really freaking out," we could just type ILM freaking out and hopefully get some shots that we needed.

Q: How do you narrow down 600 hours of film!?

JS: It's a painful job. But partly you make an early decision about what the through lines are going to be, and that immediately knocks out half the footage or two thirds of the footage. Because you know that you're only going to be dealing with certain characters and you know they have a certain through line. And also you have to understand that while I was making this (thing?) that's on the DVD, I had other things to do. So I was shooting for electronic press kits and we had a whole series of short documentaries that were on the web.

So it's true we did shoot 600 or 700 hours of footage, but a lot of that stuff was specifically for other things. So when it came time to do the veritepiece that we put on the DVD, it was already honed down. I mean still it's a lot to go through, but then it's just a matter of diving in and it's part of the editing process.

Q: Was the scene with Mr. Lucas and Mr. Spielberg something that you knew was a keeper?

JS: Definitely. When you know that you're not going to use a narrator in a film, you know I'm trying to avoid sit-down interviews that allow you to tell the story in hindsight how it happened, you basically depend on being a sniper, being in the right place at the right time to capture what you need to catch. And so there was always talk on set that summer that Spielberg was actually shooting this movie called Saving Private Ryan a few miles down the road in England and that eventually he'd probably come to the set. And you know he and George are pals and that they would have some kind of something on set.

I wanted to be there when that happened. So I just made it my business, and that was just one example of a lot of things I did, I sort of had to constantly be a private detective asking people when things were going to happen. So when I found out that that was going to happen I just made sure that I was standing in the right place, and in the film there's five or six minutes of that scene probably but you know the tour of George taking Spielberg around the set was just, it was just a magical thing.

You know there's always sort of a magical experience of working on Star Wars because it was just such an exciting project to be around. But to have these two giants in one place, and to have the rapport that they have just felt really great and yeah, it was definitely one of those things where we turned to each other afterward and felt like we got something good there.

Q: Was there a day where you didn't feel welcome on the set? (laughter)

JS: Was there a day where I did feel welcome? That's the question. (laughter) I mean you know, I'm trying to think of a specific example. It's, as Rick kind of alluded to, it's very difficult to do your job with a documentary film crew in your room. Especially if you know it's very delicate work and you already are feeling kind of nervous about trying to do the best job that you want to do. And suddenly you have a camera and a sound boom and you feel like you're on national television it's difficult. And so I constantly had to tread a line between getting what I needed to get and trying to hold back because I knew I was going to be involved with this thing for a number of years. I knew that I had to maintain working relationships and become friends with these people to get what I needed.

So really probably the on-set stuff was the most delicate. Because you know when they say OK everybody shut up and be quiet, we're going to shoot this take, you really have to do that. But as a documentary shooter you have to be in the right place, and you're constantly tripping over things, and when there's light stands and cables everywhere it's really an awkward thing. So probably the shooting period is the most difficult.