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When Docmakers Marry by Don Schwartz
Docmakers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine. photo: courtesy Geller/Goldfine Productions
Partners since the mid-1980s, San Francisco-based filmmakers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine have been producing documentary films, seven features to date, under their Geller/Goldfine banner. Indeed, the two have created a near-ideal foundation for their producing efforts.
Realizing there would be funding challenges of documentary production, they established Storyline Productions—a corporate media production company that provides basic financial support for their documentary filmmaking.
The couple’s strong film foundations also include college degrees. Dayna received a B.A. in Feminist Studies from Stanford University. Dan received a B.A. in History from Cornell University, and an M.A. in Documentary Production from Stanford University.
I was curious how the two have so successfully managed a marriage and a professional partnership and they kindly spent an hour with me, graciously quenching my curiosity. I could easily have spent many more hearing about the projects they’ve completed, and the trials and triumphs they’ve experienced for almost 30 years.
When I first glanced at their filmography, I was immediately struck with the variety of subjects they’ve covered, so we started there:
CineSource: You’ve covered a lot of different subjects.
Dan: Yeah, that’s one of the freedoms. If you have to raise funds via grant money as the entire source for making a documentary, it usually means that it’s best to pursue one style and one kind of subject. It’s often the case. You begin to build a track record for certain kinds of movies, and a certain approach.
We don’t have to do that because we earn our nickel, primarily, through other work. So we’re free to explore subject matter, style, tone as we wish.
There was a film critic—I think Scott Foundas—introducing a film at the Telluride Film Festival years back. He might have been quoting Bertrand Tavernier who had said in his view there’s two kinds of filmmakers—miners and farmers. The miners dig, dig, dig deep and keep hitting new, interesting veins of rich ore, and farmers plant field after field of different amazing crops.
And in both cases you’re getting an amazing richness, but they’re very different approaches to a career in the arts—to be a miner versus a farmer. I think we’re farmers.
The dancer George Zoritch in choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky's 'A Faun’s Afternoon' (1958). photo: courtesy Geller/Goldfine Productions
Dayna: You know, it’s interesting, when we finished our Isadora Duncan film, we definitely had this wonderful bout of beginner’s luck. Once we finished the film, it got into Sundance; Landmark Films asked if they could show it in a handful of theaters; KQED came in and broadcast it—lots and lots of things happened with that film that were really fortuitous.
Because we’d never experienced rolling out a film before, we just assumed that, ‘Oh, this is what happens! You finish a film, it gets into Sundance; it gets distributed, lots of nice articles about it.’ We had no idea that that’s not par for the course.
Alas! when our second film came out, we were rudely disabused of that idea. With “Frosh” we had a different result. But, anyway, we finished ‘Isadora’, and the first question people started asking was not ‘what’s your next film?’ but ‘what’s your next DANCE film?’
That shocked us. We hadn’t thought of ourselves as dance filmmakers, we thought of ourselves as documentary filmmakers. So we looked at each other and said, ‘Well, we’re not going to make another dance film, ‘cause that’s not what we want to get pegged as.’ It wasn’t even of interest to us at that point. We’d spent two or three years thinking about nothing but modern dance. It was time to move on. As Dan said, there are filmmakers who tend to get into one area, and that’s what makes them tick.
But for us it’s more about ‘What subject can we explore for the next X number of years that we don’t know a lot about, but that’s going to feed our souls, that we can kind of fall in love with?’ And, hopefully, in that act of falling in love we’re capturing what has made us fall in love, and giving that to the audience.
Initially, it was only a somewhat conscious decision not to make another dance film. It became a fully conscious decision after that became the question we were continually asked. I still find it shocking that people really do expect you to do the same thing over and over again if you’ve had a success with it.
But then, ironically, I learned to say ‘never say never’ because, lo and behold, several years later we ended up making “Ballets Russes”.
But that’s real freedom.
Dan: Yes, that’s the wonderful part of it, yes.
What is the most gratifying film you’ve produced so far? I know this is a ‘Sophie’s Choice’ kind of question.
Dan: Because the experiences are so different. To live in a freshman dorm for nine months, to hang out with these incredible dancers in their eighties and nineties, to go down to the Galapagos Islands, and make friends with people who were born there, or who moved there sixty years ago—each of these experiences is so rich, and so rewarding that, in terms of the making of a movie, I couldn’t possibly pick one.
In terms of distribution and getting a film way out there, “Ballets Russes” so far has been the most widely seen film [of ours] across so many countries, in theaters and on TV, all sorts of different ways—so there’s that aspect of success.
Dayna: It’s not even a ‘Sophie’s Choice’ kind-of thing. It’s more like with each film—because we’ve gotten to pick a subject that we want to deal with each time—it was about living this really rich experience. There’s not a single one I wouldn’t have done. And there’s not a single one that hasn’t brought its own unique sort-of emotional gifts.
I know I’m being really vague, but for me it’s the act of getting there that has been really what it’s about. In looking back on the very different issues, philosophies, and thought processes that were behind each of our projects, I’ve come to realize that I was dealing with something very unique at each moment. I think [that] informed the choice of each project—even if I didn’t understand that at the time we were choosing to embark on that project.
Poster from the film 'Ballets Russes' by Geller and Goldfine. photo: courtesy Geller/Goldfine Productions
So, like “Ballets Russes” was, on the surface, interesting to us because we didn’t know anything about the world of ballet—we had made three projects in a row about teenagers and young people, and had never worked with people at the opposite end of the age spectrum, and had made several cinéma vérité documentaries, but hadn’t tried our hand at an historical, archival-based project in quite a while—we were already a year or so into that project before I realized that ‘Aha, I’ve just turned forty.’
And I think subconsciously I was looking for role models in the aging process, and what better role models are there than these incredible octogenarians who we got to hang out with, and be friends with, through making 'Ballets Russes'.
And if people ask, ‘Well, what do you think 'Ballets Russes' is about?’ I’m like, you know, on the surface it’s about the history of these dance companies and ballet. But really, for me, it’s about what you look like if you’re lucky enough to be seventy, eighty, or ninety years old, and you’ve spent your life only doing what you’ve loved, like you’ve really followed your bliss, and not worried about money.
It seems to me you’re describing a complex interaction—that can rise to the spiritual level—between who you are and what you cover?.
Dan and Dayna: Yes.
Dan: Pretty much. I would say that’s true.
Dayna: And, again, sometimes you don’t even know it when you start. For instance, we got the idea for the current one we’re working on, the Galapagos documentary, many years ago when Dan and I were hired to do camera and sound on a project that was taking place in the Galapagos Islands, in the late nineties, which was a very typical Galapagos story, you know, Darwin and evolution. And we went down there not knowing anything about the Galapagos except that it was Darwin and evolution.
But while we were down there we stumbled across—well, first of all, I had no idea that people actually live in the Galapagos, or had ever lived there, so that was a big revelation—and then we stumbled across this really interesting murder mystery that had never been solved which happened in the early 1930s. We completed the project we were hired for, and returned in 2007, and shot over the next few years.
When we started this project, 'Satan Came to Eden'or 'The Galapagos Affair'—we still haven’t decided on the title—we thought we were going to try to solve a murder mystery, and then in the end, once we started researching it, and shooting it, meeting people who have lived in the Galapagos for decades, and thinking about the early settlers, we realized, ‘you know, it’s really about the search for paradise, and how that’s something humanity has done since whatever Day One was for humanity.
Ultimately—it’s going to sound facile and silly—but ultimately, if paradise isn’t inside of you, then it’s nowhere.’ So the search for paradise is really about trying to find yourself.
So, what started out as a murder mystery—and still is, you know, on the surface a murder mystery, and probably lots of people will look at the film will still think it’s a murder mystery—is ultimately a much more philosophical exploration.
When I read your introduction to this film I thought the story you discovered screams narrative.
Dan: Well, I have a particular language choice that I think is worth noting. You go into a bookstore, it doesn’t say ‘nonfiction’ and ‘narrative’. It says ‘fiction’ and ‘nonfiction.’ And the description of documentaries—there’s a legacy of documentaries being boring, informational, not emotional. The carry-over is that people don’t have the language, these days, to say the difference between a fiction and nonfiction film.
A good nonfiction film—or whatever you call it—has a great narrative. It should. It’s a great story. So, the really interesting movies have that, and so, to me, it is a ‘narrative.’
Steve Jobs (left) and Mike Markkula from 'Something Ventured' (2011), released by Zeitgeist Films. photo: courtesy Geller/Goldfine Productions
So, as far as being adapted into a fiction movie, it certainly could be done; but I think we’ve got a hybrid on our hands, and it will show when people start to see the movie. It’s a literary adaptation in some ways—of journals and memoirs that are then going to be in voiceover character acting roles.
And we have film footage shot in the 1930s of all the people who were involved in the things that went awry on Floreana Island. It will feel and look like a strange hybrid—a film that has the narrative and cinematic immersion of what would normally be a fiction film. So, sure, it could be adapted, because it’s got such a strong story to it.
Dayna: I always think that truth is more interesting than fiction. Once we started meeting and incorporating these people who are living still, who witnessed some of the characters in the murder mystery, or dealt with the philosophical issues that anyone who decides to uproot themselves to the ends of the Earth have to deal with, I don’t see a Hollywood movie being able to incorporate that. Maybe it could, maybe my imagination isn’t big enough.
But the other thing is I feel like, as Dan said, the film has ultimately become more of a hybrid. I hadn’t realized that until about a year ago—at that time we’d finished our first draft. We really had to, in a sense, write a script based on the words of all the characters of the murder mystery [part] whether from books or journal articles or letters.
At the end of our first draft, I said, ‘Oh my god, we actually did write our first script.’ In many ways, we’ve actually done an adaptation. And that’s not something that we had ever done before, but it was really just an interesting experience. I now feel like I can empathize with a person who comes up with a screen adaption of a novel or a biography.
How did you two find your ways to the filmmaking world?
Dan: I was introduced to filmmaking and the tools of filmmaking early on. My father, Robert Geller, who had been a high-school English teacher, was quick to understand the power of media both in terms of stimulating reading and literacy in high school students. [This included] the compare and contrast of film to literature, adaptation as an interesting way to get students fired up, but also the power of media itself in shaping perceptions of the world.
Early-on, he was also writing quite a bit for different journals about deconstructing media, and trying to find ways for students to become more aware of the ways in which media—film, television, news reporting—needed to be looked at as a screen behind which things happen.
If you accept at face value a movie or a documentary without understanding the perspective of who is making it and why, perhaps other motives are behind making it—remember the nature of monolithic broadcasting entities. If one wants to be a better-informed citizen, one might best understand how these things are made.
He wanted to get students to understand that it’s best to read between the lines. In the case of television or film, [that means] to see behind the screen, to be critical viewers of film, television, news reporting, rather than just accepting the story as given. From that he wound up bringing grant money to the Mamaroneck, New York school system to acquire media-making equipment. As a student in that school system, I could tap into that—beginning in elementary school.
I began holding a camera around fifth grade. I made lots of fun little short films, stop motion animation, things like that. I was making films through junior high school, and then became a science geek in high school and part of college. In my senior year at Cornell, it suddenly dawned on me that this is what I like to do. I hadn’t touched a motion picture camera until I left college, and went to graduate school at Stanford.
What brought you to Stanford?
Well, it’s interesting. My father left the school system, and became the first director of education for the American Film Institute which was formed in the late sixties, in D.C. And then he wound up working for an organization called The Center for Understanding Media, back in New York. Ultimately, he formed his own company called Learning In Focus.
In the transition, he wound up executive producing a brilliant series for PBS called The American Short Story over a span of many years, and then adapting Saul Bellow’s “Seize the Day” and James Baldwin’s “Go Tell It on the Mountain”, and a bunch of Updike stories into a movie called “Too Far to Go”.
So I was exposed, really, in my teen years to a lot of interesting writers, directors, and actors, and that stayed with me. My dad’s experiences stayed with me—even though it was a struggle for him to get funding. It was all grant money, and though it was precarious to get the grants each year, I saw someone who was creatively fulfilled nonetheless.
From all that exposure, what I realized, I did want to get back into making movies again, that it seemed very appealing to me. My dad had produced several of the short stories in Northern California. [I] found that the crew—whether they were cinematographers, sound people—were incredibly smart, and also seemed to be documentary filmmakers, at the same time that they had used their craft skills to earn a living working in the fiction side. We’re talking John Else, Kris Samuelson.
And my father’s experience shooting those films up here was so fulfilling, so easy, and so many of these people came out of Stanford—this funny, little Stanford documentary graduate program—that was enough to catch my attention. I thought, ‘well, let’s give it a shot,’ and applied and got in.
Had your father moved here, to Northern California? Or did you travel with him and participate in the shoots?
We didn’t move here. When you shoot a short story like that, the production cycle might be anywhere from two to four weeks, tops. He shot at least two to four of the short stories in this area. I was a teenager, and I would go on location every once in awhile with my sister and mother. We came out here when John Korty was directing one of the shows which was an adaptation of Updike’s “The Music School”. And I remember completely falling in love with Northern California. I must’ve been all of twelve or thirteen, it didn’t matter. That was part of the Siren call for me.
So, this was the experience that crystallized your intention to become a filmmaker?
I would say it did. Because what was most intriguing to me was the way he described these people, like John Else. They were really smart, and had things they wanted to express through film, and were not particularly in it for fame, money, and the vagaries of Hollywood. And that had no appeal to me, either.
So you already had an intrinsic motivation to use film to make a difference?
‘Making a difference’ is not a determination that I can ever make. As far as I feel comfortable saying, it’s that I wanted to make films that were adult and intelligent, and had some real substance to them—contrasted with something that might be more, (pause, then laughing) let’s say commercially accessible.
So, it comes down to being entertained or being changed by what one sees?
I wouldn’t say that. I think our films are entertaining and I wouldn’t presume they were changing anybody. It’s up to the person, but it’s just that by taking an approach to filmmaking where one can take much more time with more sophisticated ideas, and deal with them in a more adult manner—that, to me, those are the kind of films I like to see, and films I’ve always thought that we would make. I would certainly hope that they are entertaining. Whether they change anybody is not for me to say, and it’s not even particularly the intention.
The films Dayna and I make—and Dayna can speak for herself—they’re processes of discovery for us, as much as anything. If we can relate the interest and excitement of the discovery through the film itself to other people, that’s fantastic. What they do with it is up to them. But if they can feel some of that excitement, you know, maybe something will come out of it.
So, getting back to your path to filmmaking, you were drawn to Northern California, and to Stanford. What did you do after receiving your Masters degree?
From there I also knew that, given that pattern that I’d been made aware of when I was a teenager that, generally, one does not make a living, comfortably, with documentary films, that there’s usually something else to help support—whether that’s teaching, for so many people, or crew positions, or, in my case I decided with a film school friend of mine to start right out of the gate with a corporate media company, and making corporate videos. We knew that if we could get that going we could support ourselves more comfortably while trying to make documentaries. And I could also see that grants were disappearing, getting harder to come by. So, it would be even more difficult than it has been to support ourselves just on grant income.
So, you and Dayna were together by that decision-making time. At what point did you two meet?
[laughter]
Dayna: Let’s see. Dan was actually at Stanford, and I went to Stanford as an undergrad. I had just graduated, Dan was at the documentary film program there, and he was editing his thesis film, and we met at a party—even though we both had Stanford connections, it wasn’t through Stanford that we met. So, we met kind of around the Bay Area.
Dan: It was a blind date, set up by a housemate of mine.
Dayna: Wellllll, actually, our first meeting was a not-quite blind date. I was invited to a dinner party that was at Dan’s house, after meeting one of his house mates. So, I guess it was kind of a blind date, except that there were other people there.
It was a set-up.
Dayna and Dan: It was a set-up. Yeah. Yeah.
Were both of you aware that this was a set-up?
Dan: One of us was. I was aware of it because my roommate was pushing me. She was saying, ‘Oh, you have to meet this amazing woman, Dayna.’ But I think Dayna was NOT made aware of it.
Dayna: I thought I was just going down to have dinner with a group of people.
Okay. You got hoodwinked.
Dayna: I got hoodwinked. And the rest is history.
So, Dayna, can we go back to [cinema] conception for you?
Dayna: Well, I don’t know about conception, not sure I can remember that. But, I was actually born in Philadelphia; but even though I was born there, and I spent my first couple of years there, I really, really, consider myself a Northern Californian. We arrived here as a family when I was four, and I kinda never left.
I’ve lived in a bunch of different places around Northern California. We started up around Palo Alto, spent a little bit of time in San Francisco, and then Davis, and I went to high school in Sacramento, and then once I got to Stanford as an undergrad I never really left the Bay Area. So, I feel like I might have been conceived in Philadelphia, but in my heart of hearts I’m really a Californian.
What kind of work did your father do?
He’s a doctor... a gastroenterologist. He retired a couple years ago.
Your mother?
She did a whole bunch of different things. She was a homemaker for a long time, and then she sort of dabbled. She sold real estate, worked in retail, ran a speakers series, she was an astrologer, I mean you name it, my mom probably did it.
Where did you graduate high school?
In Sacramento.
And then you got into Stanford.
I didn’t get in, actually, I snuck in, and after awhile they just ignored me. ([laughs] I’m kidding. No, they actually let me in. It was kind of shocking.
And then you graduated with...
A degree in Feminist Studies.
At what point in your college career did you and Dan connect?
I was already graduated. And I was in my first year out of school. I was just starting a new job, down in Palo Alto. The whole reason I went down to meet Dan was because I had met this woman at a party who I really liked, and she lived in Palo Alto. And I said I’m commuting down there from San Francisco, let’s have dinner some night. And so, lo and behold, I had dinner with her the first week that I was working there, and Dan and I got to be friends, and started dating pretty soon thereafter. That was in September of 1984.
To what extent were you involved with media before you met Dan?
You know, a little bit. I certainly thought of doing something in media, but I didn’t have anyone in my family, like Dan did, who worked in media. I didn’t really know what that meant. So, you know, when I was in college I definitely dabbled. Took some classes. I thought maybe I’d do something in news. Like Dan, I managed the college radio station, I was a program director and a DJ. I also took some broadcast news classes.
So I always had thought about being in media, but didn’t know what it meant. And then, ironically, my first job out of Stanford was working for a video post-production house in San Francisco, the sort of place that doesn’t exist anymore. In the old days, when you couldn’t just edit in your own house—like now, we can edit on Final Cut—you’d have to go to a post-production facility, and go online and finish your film that way.
That was my first job. I wasn’t that excited about it, mostly because at the time—this was the mid-eighties—there weren’t a lot of options for women in those kinds of facilities other than being secretarial. There were very few women editors. So, I sort-of watched this scenario for awhile, and left pretty quickly, did a bunch of other things. Ironically, when I met Dan the job I had just started was working for a financial consultant. So, it was pretty far removed from media.
Was there a moment where you decided to work together or did that evolve gradually?
Dan was working on his degree at Stanford when we met—editing his thesis film. Remember, I had just started a new job in a totally new field, and very quickly for me I had found it very boring, not up my alley, not doing anything in a creative direction. And then I’d go and look at Dan, and he was editing this really fantastic thesis film which was about Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute in its early days, and the filmmakers’ lab there.
And I’d come home having looked at pension funds all day, so pretty quickly I said to Dan, ‘You know, I think I want to do what you’re doing. Annnnnd, I think it would be fun to do it together.’ So, I sort of broached the subject. I don’t know that Dan had thought of that ahead of time.
Dan: You’re right. I hadn’t.
How did you take it?
Dan: I said I needed to think about it because it really was not anything I had imagined. And so I needed to imagine that for a moment, because it certainly could be wonderful, I knew that; but also it could be tremendously stressful, I knew that. And, actually, both turned out to be the case. But I felt that even though I hardly had a lot of experience under my belt, I certainly had a lot more than Dayna’s at that point. So, I did not want to wind up with Dayna in an apprentice position. I knew it would set a bad pattern that would be hard to break—on both of our sides.
I suggested that Dayna go off and acquire some of those skills on her own before we could work together. And I knew that several of the teaching assistants in the grad program at Stanford were also teaching classes at De Anza College which, at the time, had a really wonderful, wildly affordable film department.
Dayna: Yeah, and it was really amazing. Actually, I was just typing to see if it still exists. But, yeah, anyway, I went down there because Dan was spending Stanford dollars to become a documentary filmmaker, and as Dan has already hinted or alluded, you don’t really make money, it’s very difficult to make money as a documentary filmmaker. So, for me, at the time, the idea of accruing student loans was really terrifying. So, when he pointed out that there was this program at De Anza (http://www.deanza.edu/filmtv/) which was community college and inexpensive, I went over there and I really got a fabulous experience.
There was this guy named Zaki Lisha who, let’s see... yeah, he’s still there! And he founded this incredible—especially for a community college—film and television department. And what Dan would do, he would sort of tell me some of the early projects that they had to do at Stanford—like, and again, this was the 1980s, so I’m sure it wouldn’t necessarily be this today, but at the time, in the mid-eighties, at Stanford, the first couple projects that documentary students did were Super 8 projects.
So I borrowed a Super 8 camera, and went out and made these little Super 8 silent films that were similar to what Dan had done. And then, once I got to De Anza, I got access to 16mm equipment—again, it was all film then. But, anyway, it was great. I had access to really wonderful instructors for, you know, at the time it was fifty dollars a semester—including parking—I had access to all the equipment I wanted, had access to really, really strong people most of whom had been educated at Stanford.
So, I was a year into working my day job, and coming home at night and on weekends making these short films, and trying to catch up with Dan as much as possible, in terms of experience. And a friend of ours was studying in Paris, during this time, and she wrote us a letter saying:
‘You guys, I have a great idea for a film. I think you should make it, and it’s about Isadora Duncan. You have to do it. Dayna, it totally gets at all of your feminist studies. It’s a great Bay Area story because she was born in San Francisco, and I know a woman named Madeleine Lytton, she’s my landlord in Paris, she’s one of the early Isadora Duncan dancers, and I think you should do this film. And she’s coming to California for a big dance symposium next February, so you wouldn’t have to pay anything to get her out there.’
We didn’t know anything about Isadora Duncan. I was still making my little practice films. Dan was just finishing up his thesis film. We hadn’t even gotten married yet but I wrote back saying, ‘That sounds really interesting,’ not thinking anything would EVER happen. About three weeks later we got a letter from Madeleine Lytton herself. She was almost seventy at the time, and she wrote, ‘I’m so happy that you’re going to be making a documentary about Isadora Duncan featuring me. I’ll be there in six months. Thank you.’
[pause] So, that was really terrifying.
Dan: Well, we started. That was the commitment we made. We’re going to make a movie now. We better figure out how to do it.
Dayna: It was like, oh my god, sometimes when you say ‘yes’ things actually happen. At the time, it wasn’t like today when you have access to a relatively inexpensive video equipment, and just go off and start filming. We had to rent a very expensive camera, and really come up with some serious money—even to get stuff shot. And we sort of gulped, and looked at each other, and said, ‘okay, now what?’
And the first thing we did was call Gail Silva, who at the time was Director of a sadly no-longer existing organization, The Film Arts Foundation. And you know what? Much to our amazement and relief, Gail took us seriously even though we hadn’t done anything yet. We were living in Portola Valley then, and so came up to San Francisco, we met with Gail, and she gave us some really important advice like how to write a proposal.
She told us we needed a really great cinematographer, and she hooked us up with this guy named Ashley James who was kind-of like a generation ahead of us in terms of making and shooting documentaries. And luckily he agreed to be our cinematographer on the project. And then the next thing was ‘how do you pay for something like this when you haven’t ever made a film, and so don’t have a track record with which to raise funds?’
In documentary-land it’s always incredibly difficult to raise the funds needed to make your film, but at least if your project has an obvious social issue angle, then it’s a little bit easier. If you’re doing an arts-oriented project it’s nearly impossible to raise the funds.
Even though Isadora Duncan was truly a revolutionary, and a feminist, and really did break down a ton of social barriers, she was known mostly as a long-dead dancer—and so our documentary was still considered an art film. Plus, again, we were seriously hampered on the fund-raising front by the fact that we were first time filmmakers.
So we tried, tried, tried to raise money, and we couldn’t, and finally we looked at each other one day and said, ‘Y’know what? Let’s just use our honeymoon money.’ So, that’s what we did.
Dan: The other thing is that Dayna had recently been in a car accident as a passenger and there was a settlement. She broke her back.
Dayna: I like to say that I literally broke my back for our first film.
Dan: So we combined that settlement with our honeymoon money with a small amount of donations from friends and family, and we were off. Luckily we did end up raising a little bit of grant money based on a clip we were able to make after our first round of filming.
Dayna: And we just went out and shot. Initially we’d cobbled together enough to film for about a week. And I remember the first day that we went out shooting, and we looked at each other and said, ‘Okay, first day of our honeymoon.’ And I also felt like it was my first day of real film school.
I don’t think there’s any better way to learn to make a film than hiring a great crew, ‘cause once we got Ashley James as the cinematographer, then he said, ‘y’know, y’gotta hire a great gaffer,’ and he told us who to hire. And Ashley helped us surround ourselves with a really, really strong team so that we could go out and shoot. So, we went out and shot, and made our first film.
And so you’ve been going ever since, non-stop it seems.
Dan: Non-stop.
So, how do you two work together? Who does what?
Dayna: In terms of our working relationship, the only real separation is that Dan does camera and I do sound. After “Isadora Duncan” we decided to shoot everything ourselves. We each do whatever has to be done at any given moment. Because we’ve never gotten much in the way of outside funding, a big part of our survival technique has been to develop as many skills as possible ourselves.
So, both of us know how to edit, write, produce, direct and any of the other skills one needs to make our films happen. But we do also collaborate with outside editors and writers—we think it’s important sometimes, to get the necessary distance and perspective—and for our last two documentaries we’ve had a co-producer as well: Celeste Schaefer Snyder, who’s a trusted advisor, producer, and friend.
So, what’s on the horizon?
Dan: This is the first time since we began making movies together that we don’t have another documentary either in development, production or post. That could change within a day, if the right idea crosses the path, but I’m also looking forward to taking time to support the Galapagos movie as it moves into release—without worrying that we’re letting another movie languish.
I believe I speak for a lot of people when I say I look forward to seeing the Galapagos film—and to playing catch-up by seeing all your work. And by the way, I have a great idea for a documentary.