Creator Notes#2: Research is the key to good storytelling
But beware the swamps of over-research
“That’s really true! How do you know that?”, one of The Byrds asked me. I did my research. “God it’s so refreshing to be asked an actual, proper question, rather than ‘what’s Jim Morrison really like?’”, Jim Morrison’s former girlfriend said to me. Again, I’d done some research. In Chelsea, New York City, Giorgio Gomelsky’s young assistant walked me through a dark, empty club and up to the apartment above. Gomelsky wanted to read my questions about his time managing the Rolling Stones and his life as one of the most significant impresarios in rock ‘n’ roll, before he agreed to sit for an interview. After a few minutes studying my bundle of printed sheets he called his assistant back and leaned over to him, saying in his thick Russian accent, “You see, Raul, look at this, what do I tell you? This is a British journalist, best in the world, none of the crap”. A little research had been put in.
It is amazing to me that the primacy of research when embarking on any endeavour is not immediately obvious to everyone. It seemed so self-evident to me that I did not make a particular point of it when hiring new producer-directors at my studio, and the consequences of not doing so were expensive.
The first few people that we hired on, all of whom had great showreels, good CVs, had interviewed well, all collapsed under the failure to conduct proper research. We had to jump onto their films and re-write, re-edit, retrospectively conduct research ourselves, into the early hours, in the teeth of fury from clients whose projects were delayed, in panic and burning under stress.
We then had to choreograph the miserable ceremony of The Firing: the pointless prefatory remarks that no one hears, the concluding platitudes that no one believes, the anger and despondency, in two cases tears; the begging, the pay-offs, the most wretched part of responsibility. I hate firing people, but have learned that you must know how to spot those cases in which it will become inevitable, and do it early, trying to evade the inevitable will only make it more painful for the person who simply is not right for their role; but that is another lesson, I digress, this is a written piece not a party.
Within the creative industries, neglect of proper research comes, I think, from a tendency among creatives to imagine that their work emerges, winged and glorious, from the peaks of imagination, without the need for a prosaic tread through other people’s material. An alternative misapprehension that I’ve repeatedly encountered (and this is a particular blight in documentary-making), is that, when relying on the expertise or experience of others, expertise is therefore not required of you.
I have several times been confronted with the defence “but why would I need to know that? They are the expert” and had to explain that if you don’t know at least a good chunk of what “they” know (and think), you won’t know what to ask them, you won’t know when they get things wrong, which they will, because they learned their subject years ago, or lived these events decades beforehand, and time is an unreliable narrator.
Research is also a critical part of editing. As you research, the final form of your work should start to reveal itself, making each subsequent process easier as the distant shape of a path starts to glitter over the forest floor. I have seen countless films completely fall apart in the edit, with a distraught director losing sight of their inadequately researched, unguided story.
At my studio, we eventually designed a sleek new recruitment process to better identify the research-and-storytelling-challenged. Although I had some design input, this was the initiative of my co-founder, who sat up until 4am in our reception area, opening cans of beer in sequence and muttering rage-filled lamentations about people’s failure to research.
The process introduced several new stages to our application cycle, one of which was a written questionnaire that was intended to test the applicant’s approach to filmmaking, and knowledge of the specific subjects that we were recruiting for. The first question was designed to address research, it was simple, and crafted in such a way that the research-negligent would trip a blaring red siren:
“You are asked to produce a film on X (we specified the subject in the particular recruitment round). What would be your initial steps in researching the subject?”
The candidates were all people in their late twenties, all of whom had a career producing or directing factual film and television. I kept the completed questionnaires, which are sixteen years old now, for posterity, some of the answers are amazing, they include:
“My dad, then my mate Adam’s dad. There (sic) both mad [on this subject]”.
“Magazine editors. I would look to contact and speak to them first. It’s their job to know who’s hot.”
“pre-interviews – spending a day talking to as many potential talent as possible to find a great angle.”
The answer we were looking for was: “I’d read a book”.
Only two candidates got there. This deficiency is unremarkable, as I said at the top, I have experienced first-hand, and heard repeatedly from others, that most factual filmmakers fail to conduct proper research.
But in research also lie dangerous swamps. It’s incredibly easy to over-research, something that I am often guilty of (my co-founder describes it as “disappearing into the vortex”), and, for anyone familiar with Steven Pressfield, Resistance will also persuade you to spend excessive time wandering around in research.
Here are some notes on how I do it, together with some recommendations on how to navigate the swamps:
Buy no more than two books (or comparable online sources)
Start by getting the two best books on your subject, have a careful look through the reviews to see if the ones you choose are likely to hit the angle on the subject, or points of interest, that you want to get into. If they don’t, you are likely to go back and buy more books and the distant Siren-song of over-research and Resistance will start to drift over the horizon towards you.
There are some exceptions to this rule depending on the specific angles of the available literature, or the number of sub-topics that you’re going to hit, but generally speaking every time I’ve started out with more than a maximum of two books, I’ve over-researched.
You can substitute or complement your books with a few really credible online sources, but for online sources I would head for just the absolutely top couple of sites, don’t go rabbit-holing on the internets.
Open your blank sheets
At the top of every research period, I start three documents, which I have open at all times: Notes, People, and Questions.
Notes: I could (and probably will) do an article just on notes. As you read your books and other research materials, summarise all the key facts, events, points and thoughts relevant to your story in your notes. You will be left with only the information required to develop your particular project, having discarded the hundreds of thousands of unnecessary words and concepts that will clutter up your head space and obscure your story from you.
The physical process of making notes will put you more in touch with your subject, you naturally internalise and memorise the details as you record them in notes. It’s also a shadow version of the editing that you will do as the final stage of your project, money in the bank that will pay dividends weeks later when you have only streamlined, pre-edited material to grapple with, and not a vast universe of all things.
Notes also combine all your various sources into a single source, with a single voice. A good set of notes are a streamlined map of your entire project, they lay out your story, contain its facts, themes and (usually) the core structure. They can be used as the basis of a narration, or to show you the next step when you’re tired and losing the thread of your project.
In making notes I get the facts down, but I also identify and select a few key themes that will underlie my story. It can’t be about everything, so which themes am I going to focus on? This is the way to the heart of the story that you want to tell.
It’s easy to over-note, the process should be disciplined. Strictly evaluate your sources as you go, and only what’s necessary goes in your notes.
People: As I go through my books and research materials I record the name of every person who comes up and whom I might want to contact or interview. This will be my project address book.
Questions: Doing research will naturally fire questions into your mind, I record these the instant that they occur to me, by the end of your research you will have a master set of questions which you can use for interviews or further enquiry.
Do a Wikipedia pass
In recent years I tend to start with a “Wikipedia pass”, a useful exercise. While Wikipedia is not a reliable source for research, it’s a good way to get a general overview of your subject and the references sections may indicate more obscure sources or valuable information that does not appear in your books. It’ll also have the most current information around your subject – books and articles are, by their very nature, out of date.
The Wikipedia pass, however, is the first site of danger. It is incredibly easy to haemorrhage time rabbit-holing on Wikipedia, I once started out on rock music of the 1970s and ended up, some hours later, scrolling down the entry on the Plantation of Ulster in the 17th century.
Read your books
Now that you have done your Wikipedia pass and have your sheets open, it’s time to wrestle your subject to the ground.
I advise against reading books as a reader. Reading for research is not the same as reading for pleasure or general education. The first thing that I do with my books is flip through to find all the people who are mentioned and record their names and significance in my “People” doc. I might also take a look at the index and jump to the names listed there.
In the early days I used to sit and read cover-to-cover, I found that this was an unnecessary time sink; I eventually developed the ability to skip read. Skip reading is an imprecise skill, something more akin to an instinctive feel for the rhythm and content of the work. With experience, you can discern quite quickly from the way that a book is written and structured where the information that you want is likely to appear, and scan its pages looking for just those places.
Clinton Heylin’s Bob Dylan: Behind The Shades, for example (and here I write from memory, having not picked up that book for a good ten years), would trace Dylan’s biography, but follow events like a recording session or album release with lengthy digressions in which Heylin gives his views on the work. Heylin’s views are not relevant for me, so I would spot those sections, have a feel for how long they were likely to be, and skip ahead several pages.
Sometimes it may become apparent that you’ve skipped something interesting or significant, if so, trace back and intently read around just that one thing in order to identify and understand what you missed before you dance on with the skip reading.
I also compare facts around my major story points between the sources, they sometimes differ. If so, I make a note that these facts are contested, and embark on a separate effort to excavate the truth. This is what earns you the comments in the tradition of “how did you know that? People always get that wrong” that I listed at the top.
At the end of this process, with my blank sheets filled and the notes as my guide, I’ll start calling people armed with a degree of knowledge that will help make those conversations rich, thoughtful and revealing. I’ll have further information to go into my notes, some of which will be new, some of which may have been previously lost or forgotten, and my story will be underway.