ROBERT DREW DOCUMENTARIES

(Active 1960-) Director: Robert Drew

DVD
NETFLIX

SUMMARY:

Robert Drew is a documentary producer, who, during the late 1950s and 1960s, pioneered a new documentary form for application in the network news departments. This form, which Drew dubbed "Candid Drama," also known as "Cinema Verite" or "Direct Cinema", did not, ultimately, reshape news programming, but it did provide the medium with a radically different way of covering historical and cultural events.
"Candid Drama", according to Drew, is a documentary filmmaking technique which reveals the "logic of drama" inherent in almost all human situations. In sharp contrast to typical television documentaries, which are simply "lectures with picture illustration," and for that reason usually are "dull," the candid drama documentary eschews extensive voice-over narration, formal interviews, on-air correspondents, or other kinds of staged and framed television formulae. Instead, through the slowly acquired photography and long, single takes--called real-time photography--of verite technique, the details and flavor of a scene become the important elements: the fatigue experienced by candidates on a campaign trail (Primary), the fervid concentration of a race car driver (On the Pole) capture our attention as much as the factual information about a campaign or the Indianapolis 500. According to Drew, the purpose of candid documentary is to engage the viewer's "senses as well as his mind." Over a career that spans more than 30 years, Drew has produced over 100 films and videotapes, most of which employ the theory and methods of verite technique; and unlike other practitioners of the form, he has also tried to procure a regular slot for verite on prime time network programming. -MBC

VIDEO:

PRIMARY (SCENE)



CRISIS: BEHIND A PRESIDENTIAL COMMITMENT (SCENE)



YANKI NO! (TRAILER)



ON THE ROAD WITH DUKE ELLINGTON (SCENE)



REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS, CREDITS:

• THE MAKING OF THE CINEMA VERITE BREAKTHROUGH IN AMERICAN FILM
• IFC interview with Robert Drew
• Albert Maysles discusses Primary (VIDEO)
  
• Excerpt from 'Nonfiction Film: A Critical History'
• Drew Associates official site

NOTES:

• Drew was first introduced to the power of documentary photography just after World War II, while demonstrating a new fighter plane for a Life magazine reporter and photography team (Drew had served as a fighter pilot during the war). Struck by the power of the resulting article, Drew, at the age of 22, became a staff reporter for Life.
• The engineering of the first small sync sound and picture camera unit, which he undertook with filmmaker Richard Leacock, has undoubtedly had an enormous impact on numerous documentarians working both for the major networks and independently. Sensitive and ephemeral moments could now be more easily captured than with the cumbersome camera, large camera crew and lighting system that had been used in news coverage to date.
• Also at this time, Drew formed his company, Drew Associates, which enabled him to hire freelance cameramen and filmmakers, some of whom, such as D.A. Pennebaker, Richard Leacock and Albert Maysles, have since gone on to establish celebrated careers of their own.
• The rough immediacy of the hand-held camera in Primary is said to have influenced Goddard's Breathless.
• Kennedy, upon viewing Primary, liked it so much that he consented to Drew's request to make further candid films in his role as President.
• "Good films have to be subjectively made -- the viewer has to be seeing them subjectively. If he's seeing it objectively, it won't work as film. So, if the viewer needs a subjective experience, then the filmmaker has to render a subjective experience -- something that's from the viewpoint of the filmmaker. The filmmaker's job is to tell a story, but he doesn't want to stand off and not be involved or have the camera on a pedestal that doesn't move. The camera must go with the action or the characters, and to that extent, it's subjective." -Robert Drew