Michael Moore takes a shot at guns: a prestigious award at Cannes goes to a new documentary film that, in post, didn't look much like a film at all - It's Always Something - Bowling for Columbine

Post, July, 2002 by Ken McGorry

NEW YORK -- Creative people often don't like to be restricted to just one medium. In this magazine we have covered "multiformat" video production for ages. But now, thanks to strides in HD production technology, such as 24p acquisition and post production, you can also make a multiformat movie -- a real film for theatrical release. And that movie can go on to win a top prize at Cannes.

That's what acclaimed writer director and socio-political satirist Michael Moore did with his recently completed Bowling for Columbine, a two-hour documentary exploration of civilian America's obsession with guns. The film combines TV news footage from the tragic shootings at Columbine High School and surveillance tapes of the gunmen themselves, as well as TV news coverage, archival clips, new interviews and some zany, ironic side trips to places like a bank that offers a free rifle to people who open up new accounts. Director Moore (Roger and Me) collected II different formats -- 24p acquisition representing the latest and the greatest -- to tell his story.

The film's producers are ecstatic about Moore's acceptance and success at Cannes -- he won the 55th Anniversary Award -- especially in light of the thorny finishing job this format-rich project presented. "From a post perspective, it's a phenomenal under-taking, trying to create uniformity and consistency, and they were a pretty amazing group of guys to be able to pull it off," says Charles Bishop, who co-produced the film with Michael Donovan for Salter Street Films, out of Halifax, Nova Scotia Bishop and Donovan had worked with Moore before, on his The Awful Truth TV series, and were familiar with his ironic take on American mores.

Moore started production in the fall of 1999, only months after the deadly shooting rampage at Columbine High School terrorized the nation, and began to shoot 16mm and Super 16. The eight other formats, recounts Avid editor Kurt Engfehr with a bemused laugh, were 3/4-inch, VHS, Beta SP, Digital Betacam, DV, DVCam, PAL DV and 8mm.

But Moore wasn't trying to set records as a collector of rare formats. He was out to paint a picture of how Americans feel about guns, and his story led him naturally to different scraps of precious video and to huge piles of exposed film. Before they were done, the team had amassed 60 hours of newly shot 16 and Super 16. That was before they discovered 24p.

While on hiatus directing a music video for an REM album in June 2001, Moore got his first taste of 24p. Engfehr says that the 24p REM footage was so pleasing Moore took to the idea of shooting the rest of his Columbine documentary in 24p and within a few weeks came up with an additional 60 hours of footage on high def tape.

THE POST

By now Engfehr, who was also a producer, was on the job as Avid editor, culling through the 120 hours of footage and 1,000 other tapes, snippets and clips. It all had to go into the Avid at his 57th Street studio in New York City for an offline that ultimately ran four hours, about twice as long as the target run time. Once he got it down to two hours Engfehr and Moore were also going to need to online all this somehow. And then there was the little matter of turning the whole thing into a film that could be projected at Cannes in May of this year -- if there was time.

Engfehr's cut exploited much of what digital post in an Avid can do. At one point Moore calls for nine different newscasters, culled from real broadcasts, all talking heads holding forth on the Columbine tragedy. In another scene, Engfehr has highlighted the teenage killers as seen in the surveillance footage. The idea was to create the cuts, dissolves and effects quickly in the Avid and then turn it into film later.

Engfehr took the job to NYC's Creative Group, home to a roomful of HD- and 24p-friendly Sony online gear. Meanwhile NYCs DuArt, a film and digital post facility was transferring the 16mm film and, along with using their Teranex Xantus format converter, they would ultimately print the new, Cannes-ready film-out version on their ArriLaser -- if the online version was ready in time.

To do this, the focus was on the Creative Group and online editor Bob Gleason and chief engineer Charlie Suydam. Thing is, even though it's 2002, you still can't do an auto assembly from an Avid EDL and II different formats. Not easily, that is.

Gleason, a veteran promo editor with years of MTV work under his belt, has been with the Creative Group for three years and is a partner there. "This was IS-hour days and weekends. We lived in the edit room,"

Since Engfehr worked in standard definition, his Avid list was in 30fps and the Creative Group had to do a list management to 24fps to match the 24p HD format. Also, the show's 16mm Avid lists were in drop-frame timecode meant for TV broadcast. But the drop frame footage would not match up with 24p, creating a "continuous ascending offset" in the timecode. "Charlie found a way to transfer the codes and was able to get the correct matching timecodes to 24fps," Gleason says, "before we ever got to the edit room.