Well, first of all, hello and thank you for having us back, Frank. We love being here. So I’m Christina. And I’m Marge. And today I want to talk to you about these two guys. I’ve been capturing the public attention in an unprecedented and completely surprising way. Although they’re diametrically opposed in their values, there are some striking similarities. There are some obvious ones. They’re both old white dudes. They both have crazy hair. No offense to any old white dudes in my line of sight. They both do this a lot. And they both have a kind of a shouty demeanor. But there is one less obvious thing that they share in common. And that’s the one we want to focus on, which is authenticity. Now, whichever side of the political divide you may find yourself on, there is little doubt that their unscripted and unvarnished approach is engaging huge numbers of audiences. Back. That’s really hard for an Iranian to do. Back into the political process. And these are folks who had really become disengaged and tired of the kind of canned speeches and teleprompter rhetoric. And they’re truly invigorated by the spectacle of something that feels more real. And from where we stand, that craving for authenticity goes well beyond the political realm. And if we think about media over the last 20 to 30 years, we can see this constantly increasing appetite of audiences to connect with something that feels a little bit more real. Whether that is reality TV, as it were, the rise of YouTube stars, or even in narrative fiction, we have a lot more of these gritty portrayals of real life as opposed to the stagey performances of the Kerry Grants and the Catherine Hepburns of our past. But I love Catherine Hepburn, by the way. But if we accept that there is this craving for authenticity and we feel that authenticity does have this power to engage people who are otherwise disengaged, because instead of leaving them with this feeling that they’re being sold something, we’ve left them with a feeling that we have shared something, then our question is, how do we use this in our field? Now, of course, we are not telling you anything you don’t already know. These words, authenticity and credibility have been bandied about in our field for a long time, but there’s still a problem. And that is that creating authenticity is a conundrum. Trying to be real doesn’t work. You either are or you aren’t. So as documentarians, our job is to draw out the truth and to create an environment where authenticity can happen in front of the camera. But we’re also strategic communicators. And we have clients who have to deliver impact for the stories that we tell. So we still have to work within these messaging boundaries. So the question becomes, how do we get our clients out of their comfort zone of scripted and rehearsed work without sacrificing strategic messaging? How do we get them to mitigate and control for some of the risks of pursuing authenticity, but at the same time embrace some of those uncontrollable risks, because it’s those edges of uncontrollable part that actually create the magic moments of realness and authenticity? As filmmakers, we often think about the metaphor of farmers versus hunters. And I think that if you think about the videos that we see in this space, you can see there are clearly two approaches. In the farming approach, everything has been planned and laid out in advance. And the job is to execute against that preordained plan. There may be scripts. There may be storyboards. There may be teleprompters. And usually, one set of people have written some language, and then another set of people take that language and learn and repeat it back. Everyone feels really safe in this approach. And that’s a good thing. The client knows what they’re getting. Those carefully crafted messages are nice and secure. And the folks in front of the camera feel very comfortable and prepared of what’s expected of them. So it’s a low risk enterprise. And that’s a good thing, because these things cost a lot of money and nobody wants to take a gamble. It’s used a lot, and it’s used successfully for these reasons. We think of ourselves as hunters rather than farmers, because we really thrive on the thrill of the hunt and the spoils of the hunt, the most important of which we think is authenticity. From our vantage point, scripting and authenticity are mutually exclusive. But strategic messaging and authenticity aren’t. Now, no good hunter sets out into the field without knowledge. They have observed the animals. They know something about their natural habitat. They know their natural patterns. And they set out into the field prepared. A good hunter may not know exactly what she’s going to come back with, but she knows what to expect in the field. And this makes this also fairly low risk. Now, we in this room all have knowledge, too, right? When we’re setting out to do a campaign, we know who our audience is, what messages they need to hear. We know which campaigns have worked in the past, which haven’t. And so the question becomes, how do we turn all this knowledge into something that feels authentic? Well, when we approach this, we always ask, where does this issue live in the real world? And 10 times out of 10, we find that it lives in the daily experiences of some specific human beings. And so our hunt is for their authentic stories. So we rely on some rules of the hunt to really guide us through this process. And those rules cover us for how we prepare to go out on the hunt, what we do when we’re out in the field, and then how do we assess the spoils of the hunt when we return? I’m going to skip over our really fancy chart here. Hey, we’re filmmakers, not graphic artists. And the rules that we’re going to talk about today, we’re going to talk about the filmmaking process. But to be honest, we feel like these rules really apply to any form of authentic storytelling. So the first and most important rule to start off with is choose your animals wisely. Now, from a documentary perspective, we see documentaries as the pursuit of truth from the specific vantage point of a character. Now, while we don’t usually apply the idea of casting to documentary, in this sort of hybrid form of documentary and strategic storytelling and strategic messaging, it is critical that we cast well for our characters. And the first step in that process is we need to find the people who inhabit our issue, whose stories and voice and experiences match up with the message that we’re trying to convey, and that it happens in their own voice and in their own world. And once we’re able to match people up with our strategy and our messaging, we need to know that they’re confident and articulate about communicating their stories. They have personalities that are going to translate across the screen. And that’s not always big personalities. Quiet people can have a deep, intense resonance on the screen as well. So it’s not just about being a big personality. And in order to judge whether or not things are going to work, Marge and I really have to engage our human intuition. And this is all about that really deep listening. Because we’re listening for, does this feel real? Does this feel authentic? Are they comfortable telling their story? Are they starting to form a connection with us when they tell their story? And Marge and I have to do a lot of investment in building relationships with anybody who we are privileged enough to tell the stories of. Because we have to make them feel comfortable and secure. And when we do that, and the cameras are rolling, that investment pays dividends because they return this warm relationship and connection back to us through the camera. And that’s what authentic storytelling is all about, delivering warmth and connection from the human beings on that screen to the audience that you’re trying to communicate with. Rule number two, big animals aren’t always the best. So when we started our company, one of our first paying clients was an organization that works in juvenile justice. And they were generous to fly us up to the Bay Area. And we got to meet the former chief of probation for Santa Clara County in person to see if she’d be a good fit for the film. Now the chief was an extraordinarily impressive woman. Her resume was large. And she had single-handedly turned around the reputation of a really failing department in just a few years. But when we sat down with her, we just weren’t feeling it. Impressive and prolific as she was, she was a very quiet woman. And she was very measured about language. And she told us that she’d recently had a bad experience with the media. And although we pulled out all the tricks that we have in our bag, we couldn’t get her off the points that we knew her team had prepared for her. And we just knew it wasn’t going to work. Because when we brought out the cameras and the lights, this was only going to get worse. So we left the room sort of scratching our heads thinking, ooh, what are we going to do now? Well, that day they had assigned probation officer to help show us around the facility. And Sean was straight out of central casting. He was this tough-knut cop. And he was quite harsh in his language. But he had a lot of warmth for the kids. And he spoke really authentically about what this experience was like. And he didn’t tread on eggshells. And he just told it like it was. So we knew that Sean was the voice we wanted to use. But unfortunately, we had to convince our clients. So we called them. And we said, so thanks for the meeting with the chief. Actually, we want to use this beat cop we met called Sean instead. And they were like, Sean Rooney? You want to use that guy? He’s so harsh when he talks about the kids. You know, he’s so tough. And we said, exactly. That’s why he’s the right voice. Because when this guy says that the program that you do reaches these kids in a way that no other programs do, we truly believe him. And since he’s not leadership and he’s boots on the ground, he has a level of credibility that we can connect with. So we were lucky. They listened to us. We liked when that happens. And we did cast Sean in the film. And ever since then, we use the word Sean as shorthand when we know we have to make a different casting choice. When we’re looking for stories, we’re always casting a wider net than the ones we need. So if we need three voices in a film, we’re looking for 10 people. Because we need to be able to hunt for the right story and discard the ones that aren’t right. And as Sean showed us, the big animals aren’t always the best. So rule number three, find animals in their own habitat. So in addition to casting, the other thing we need to do is we need to look for things that are happening in the lives of our characters that inhabit the issue that we need to portray. And we know for sure that animals in their own habitat act naturally and authentically. And the minute you stage something, things get awkward and weird really fast. So we often refer to Henry James’ theory of illumination because we’re fancy like that. Which is when we think about this idea of filming humans in their own habitat. And the theory, the idea is that in fiction, anytime a character interacts with someone else or in a new situation, it reveals some truth about that character. It’s like turning lights on in a room one at a time. And when all those lights are on, we have revealed the full picture of who this person is or what the experience is. Well, in nonfiction, we see it the same way with shooting humans in their own habitat. Which is that every time we put them in a situation where we see them interacting with people, it reveals truth and authenticity to the experience. So a few years ago, we were working for Australia’s largest foundation. And they had heavily invested in genomics and DNA sequencing as it related to personalized medicine. And one of the amazing benefits that this research held was that it had the capacity to quickly detect and diagnose really hard to test for and diagnose diseases. So enter Ruby. At two years old, she started losing mobility. She was now eight years old, and she was in a wheelchair. And in the ensuing, or the six years in between that time, she had endured countless painful tests with absolutely no clarity about what was going on for her, which was deeply painful to her and her family. Enter this new technology. She is now on a clear path to diagnosis and a treatment plan. And when we talked to the family and we asked them, beyond the obvious of this treatment plan, sort of how this new technology had affected their lives, they said, this is the first time that we have allowed ourselves to feel joy in six years. Now, you can have somebody say that in an interview, but it’s not as impactful as actually being able to experience that with the family. So we said, well, where does Ruby feel the most joy? And they told us when she’s in her swimming lesson, because it is one place where she feels physically free. And they said, in fact, for them as parents, this was the place they felt the most joy watching her, because their eight-year-old got to act like a normal eight-year-old. So swimming it was. And we opened the film with Ruby in her swimming lesson. So one of the lessons that we have definitely learned from the field is that absolutely nothing is a given, that we have to really remain open and present to all the possibilities, because the intersection of best laid plans and real life is gray and messy. Real life is harder to control. Real life is full of contradictions. And Marge and I have seen this time and again, where in the field, we’re out in the field, and we meet obese kids who are malnourished. We meet poor kids who have a couple of nice things. We meet good people who make bad choices. And we have to embrace these contradictions, because this is what real life looks like. Rule number four, be nimble when you find surprises. So for the last year or two, we’ve been working for the federal office on child abuse and neglect. And we’re doing a large film series telling a number of stories. And it was on one of these shoots that we met Belinda. Belinda is a young mom of two kids. And she’s trying to get them back from child protective services. Belinda had fallen into an abusive relationship with a man. And she wasn’t able to keep her kids safe. So she’d left Joe. But she’d become homeless when she left him. And this had meant that they’d taken her children away. Luckily for her, there’s an innovative new housing program in her community. And 10 months in, she was really turning her life around and on track to get her kids back. We had seen her with her kids, and we knew she was a great mom. But we showed up one evening at her house to do some filming. And we were slightly taken aback by what we found. When we walked in, the house was utter chaos. There was laundry on literally every single imaginable surface. And there were these giant stains on the rug in her living room. And she apologized. And she said, we’ve only just got a table for the first time. And that’s why the kids have spilled food on the floor. So this image of Belinda was a far cry from what a farmer might have gone out and packaged, a success story mom. But we didn’t shy away from her chaos, because the chaos that we found there was an inherent marker of the chaos that she was experiencing in her life, trying to struggle to hold things together. And it was also something that all the other people like Belinda experience in their true life. So we embraced her reality. We even asked her if she wanted to take a minute and deal with some of her laundry while we were there. And she did. And we ended up filming that. And it became this beautiful contemplative B-roll sequence we were able to use in the film. When you encounter something that’s unexpected like that in the field, we find that if you don’t judge people, they don’t feel judged. If you’re able to see the real person inside, then they’re able to reveal that to you. And if you don’t scare the animals away with the weight of your own expectations and you adapt, then they are usually just fine. Rule number five, they can smell your fear, so relax. So one of the places that we oftentimes see this disconnect between what we expect in reality is in interviews. Because no matter who you are, you pull out a camera and you put on a lighting set up on someone, and it feels daunting. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s a mom on assistance or it’s an expert who knows everything there is to know about our issue. But here’s the thing. You cast people because their authentic story and their authentic voice is the voice of your issue. And all you need to do is make room for them to do that comfortably in their own voice. What gets in the way is when they feel like they have to deliver some plan to us, when they feel like they have to perform or please us in some way. So we have to make sure that we never let them know there’s a plan. We never send questions in advance. And we always ask people, like, once that camera’s on, forget about that, and just talk to us like we’re having coffee. Now, we are holding the strategy in our heads, and we are thinking through everything we’re getting and clocking what we need and asking other questions or digging in different ways if something feels like a talking point. We’ll try and find an angle around things to get it in people’s voices. But we never let people know that we’re doing that. And the investment of time in doing that is much greater. Interviews take a lot longer this way. But the authenticity that you get from people when they really speak in their own voices is worth it. And yes, maybe they miss a bullet point here, or they use language that’s slightly different than the messaging strategy. But the authenticity that you get in exchange is well worth the trade-off. So we know that when we’re in the field, three things are going to happen. We’re going to get a lot of stuff that goes the way we expect it to, things that we expect to have happen are not going to happen the way we expect them to, and things that are going to happen that we could never have planned for but are completely awesome. So we always try to stay open to the experience and embrace everything that’s going on when we’re out in the field. We go with the flow, because in that unexpected moment is gold, and that is when the thrill of the hunt is at its most intense. So rule number six, a story about that. Always follow their tracks. Those of you who heard us speak here before at Frank will remember that we talked to you about a Dutch scientist called Mark Post, who had invented the world’s first lab grown burger. You can all grown now. No, grown’s great. We’ve made progress in two years. So the second film that we made in that series was a character piece about Mark. So our research had shown that when people think about a lab grown burger, they immediately start to think of Monsanto and Big Agra, and there’s a real lack of trust. So we needed to make a film that would allow folks to get to know Mark and trust him. The Mark that we had met and spent time with was a really honest, earnest scientist who was just concerned about using his skills and knowledge to solve one of the biggest problems that we have, which is the sustainability of meat production and the impact that’s having on the planet. He really was one of the good guys. So we were really lucky, and we were the only film crew allowed in his lab in Maastricht when he put together this first ever lab grown burger. The burger had cost well over $250,000 to develop. And we can talk later over drinks about what it actually looked like. So Mark finished making the burger, and he sort of packaged it up in this neat little box. And he was traveling the next day to the big global press launch. And after that, we were to follow him home and do some more filming. So we said, Mark, how are you getting home? Should we just follow you in our car? And he said, oh, I’m going to take my bike. And we thought, of course you’re going to take your bike. You’re a Dutch dude. So we didn’t really understand what was going to happen with this $1,500,000 burger. Like, how is that going to get home? So I said, well, what’s going to happen with the burger? And he was like, no problem. I’m going to strip it on the back of my bike. Apologies for the crappy Dutch accent. So I’ve been working on that for days. I don’t have it. So anyway, Mark had never told us in all the conversations we’d had about our itinerary and what we were filming and when we got the schedule was he’d never mentioned this detail about the bike, right? Because to him, it must have seemed totally insignificant. Why would we care how he commutes to and from work? But to us, it was the perfect illumination of exactly the character that we were trying to show. This wasn’t big business. This was a guy who was willing to strap this world’s first ever thing on the back of his bike. So we rented a Vespa. And Nick, who is Christina’s husband, who she picked up on a street corner in Brazil, who’s our camera person. A wise investment. Hung backwards off this Vespa and filmed Mark riding home, holding this incredibly expensive burger on the back of his bike. Now, this was not something we could have farmed forever, right? This was a moment of pure authentic gold. And it told way more story about Mark than anything we would have ever been able to put into words. So rule number seven, assess the spoils. So once we get back from the field that we’re in the edit, this is where the strategy and the authenticity really meet back up in a bigger way. When we’re out in the field, we are absolutely collecting every option that we see available that has some resonance to our character and some resonance to our issue. We never edit our choices in the field. We collect everything. And if the clients had been with us when we were in Maastricht with Mark, they would have been like, there is no fucking way you’re putting that burger on the back of that bike. That would have been at the expense of not only a nice humorous and human moment, which is always lovely, but more importantly, it was a great character truth that completely met up with the strategic message of who this guy was and the fact that he is completely living his values when he deals with the burger. So as hunters, we get it now and we decide later. And all the control comes back when you’re in that edit. And the strategy and the messaging and everything you need to deliver, that is the filter through which you judge all the material that you collected in the field. And the strength of those pieces and how strong they match up to your messaging, that all happens when you’re back from the edit. And you put those pieces together and use those building blocks to build the strongest story that really conveys authenticity, meaning, impact, and your issue in its strongest form. All right, last rule. The best stuff often happens in the dark. And by that, I mean in the unknown, in that little space of risk. Because when we are in that space, we open up. Like when you travel, you’re open to fresh perspective. New narratives, you see things with fresh eyes. To allow the unknown into your stories in this way is to give them the breath of life. And so we feel really privileged to be the rare kind of hunters who get to create instead of destroy. And while each piece of our journey takes a little longer and is a little more undefined, it’s a really worthwhile investment of time and faith if you’re looking for authenticity, which brings me to my final insight. When you’re looking for authenticity, how do you know if you got it? Well, Nick, our partner, always says that authenticity is a little like pornography. You’ll know it when you see it. Happy hunting, everyone.