Fascination and Delight: Q&A With Marsha Gordon, Co-Director of ‘Rendered Small’

想象一下北卡罗来纳州的一个小镇，家居，工厂，电影院，角落杂货和教堂。这是一个古怪的，偶尔的城堡或娱乐公园景点，但是，它分开的是这是一个真正的小的镇 - 建筑物以平方英寸，而不是平方英尺。

This collection of small structures, and its owners, are the focal point of a short documentary film by玛莎戈登, a professor of film studies at NC State University, and Louis Cherry, an architect based in Raleigh, N.C. (and an NC State alum).

这个电影，Rendered Small, first screened at the2018 Indy Festat the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and will screen May 11 at the North Carolina Museum of History as part of theLongleaf电影节.

We recently had an opportunity to ask Gordon about the film and what drew her to the scaled-down “American Folk Art Buildings” that Steven Burke and Randy Campbell have collected in their Hillsborough, N.C. home.

The Abstract:You’re a film studies scholar, and have written extensively about movies, movie-making, and movie-makers, but this is the first time you’ve actually made a movie yourself. What made you decide to move from studying films to making one?

Marsha Gordon：I’ve been studying, writing about and teaching documentary film for many years – but have never worked on the other side of the camera until very recently. I think it began with multi-media projects I started working on with my students at NC State, like “射门战,” which I did with my graduate class on war documentaries a few years ago.

While I’ve never had the desire to make a fiction film, I’ve considered documentary projects for many years. I guess I just never had the dedication, time or energy to see one of those ideas through until this project. It was a very steep learning curve, and I am really happy to have gone through the process now of seeing a documentary through from conception to existence.

TA：Making a documentary, even a short one, means devoting a lot of time to that particular subject – so it needs to be something you’re willing to immerse yourself in. What made you decide to make this movie in particular?

戈登：这是如此真实 - 比我想象的更容易！我们开始认为这将是一个小时长的纪录片，也可能需要一年时间和一半。

It actually it took four years – not of constant work, of course – but starting and stopping due to other commitments that often got in the way. But our love for the collection and the idea of sharing it with a larger audience kept us going. If we had not been so enamored with these small structures and with the way they are cared for by Steven and Randy, we certainly would never have finished. It really was our personal fascination and delight that made us want to do this documentary from start to finish.

TA：这部电影可能是一个关于广大巨大建筑的故事，或者可能是一个热情地收集它们的已婚夫妇。你是如何决定在讲故事中平衡这些东西的？你有没有进入这个过程认为这部电影大多数关于收集或主要是关于收藏家的过程？你的思考是否随着时间的推移而发展？

戈登：We always thought that this film was going to be both about the collection and the men who have put it together over the years and, most importantly, who live with it every day in their home. The two threads are inseparable and are equally interesting parts of the story, so those were there fromRendered Small开始了。收集始终是一个个人的东西。部分有趣的是这个系列的唯一性（就收集的物体的性质而言），这对夫妇谈判如何存在于他们所收集的内容的纯粹量。

TA：Burke已被从中接受采访的意见我们的州to theNew York Times，显然他很舒服地谈论该系列。但允许有人拍摄纪录片是比记者采访的更大的承诺。Burke和Campbell有没有愿意邀请你进入他们生命的这个方面？你是如何赢得信心的？

戈登：I was first introduced to Steven and Randy when I co-curated an exhibition at the Gallery of Art and Design at NC State (now格雷格博物馆）在2005年。所以我认识他们并在中间年内访问了他们的收藏。

当我第一次在2013年谈论这个项目时，他们已经知道我有多喜欢该系列，我立即被带走了。所以我想帮助。我认为它还帮助说，我的联合主任是一个真正理解的建筑师，可以阐明收集从该角度的重要性。

但毫无疑问：允许某人拍摄你并花时间拍摄你的家是一种令人难以置信的信任的姿态。我认为成品薄膜很好地反映了我们彼此拥有的相互尊重。

TA：Rendered Smallis a short film, coming in at 15 minutes, but that’s not necessarily an indication of how much time it takes to shoot. How many days did it take you to conduct the necessary interviews and shoot footage of the collection?

戈登：You can say that again! We shot two six-hour days of interviews with Steven, who is the primary driver of the collection, and maybe ninety minutes with Randy. Once we had transcriptions of those interviews, I did a paper edit that became the working script for the film, which, of course, constantly evolved during the editing process.

We filmed the buildings during four different shoots (including one day of drone work and footage taken with a stabilizing camera gimbal by NC State Film Studies alumnus David Hambridge, who is now a documentary filmmaker). These shoots had long gaps of time between them because we all had so many other projects going on in our professional lives, so sometimesRendered Smalljust sat for six to eight months until we could come back to it.

TA：做了your years of studying film prepare you for the editing process? I mean, that’s when you have to make key decisions about how to tell this story; which clips go in and which fall on the cutting room floor. Do you think your knowledge of film made that process any easier? Or more difficult?

戈登：什么使编辑更容易拥有一个非常有才华的经验丰富的编辑。Kevin Wells是一位电影制造商，他还在UNC Greensboro教授电影制作，凭借纪录片Methmaker Brett Ingram为我们的众多顾问提供的联系，借助于我们的众多顾问。凯文真的做了这份文件。

Louis and I were attached to parts of the story that Kevin helped us realize slowed its pacing down. It’s easy to lose sight of film as, first and foremost, storytelling when you get focused on all the amazing information you want to convey. But it’s essential not to lose sight of that.

The more we edited the documentary down the stronger it got as a story –Rendered Small’s total run time is around 15 minutes. I think that attending Full Frame Documentary Festival for almost 15 years has taught me to really appreciate the short form documentary, and I tried to remember those lessons during editing where the structure and duration really took place. You have to learn to let go of things in the editing process, and I think we benefit from the length of our editing process as it gave us distance and perspective. Sometimes when we sat down to edit it we could really watch it with fresh eyes because of the time that had passed.

TA：通常有很大的场景，因为他们只是不适合电影制作者试图告诉的故事。是否有一个场景或轶事，对你来说特别困难，但无论如何你都会削减？

戈登：在我们的案例中，有数十种场景和故事很棒，但没有做出最后的剪裁。

例如,史蒂文和兰迪有几百个楚rches in their collection and Steven spoke very eloquently about the array of architectural styles and religions represented in the collection, as well as about the richly detailed interiors in many of the churches they own. That segment – which ran about 3.5 minutes – was in the film until the last few weeks of editing when we got really aggressive about the edit. We decided to drastically shorten that discussion because it bogged down the pacing, even though it’s fascinating material.

许多经验丰富的纪录片电影制片人，这些电影制作者观看了这部电影的草案，建议我们留下想要更多地了解更多而不是看着他们的手表更好。我已经看到更多的纪录片，而不是我可以算上可能会受益于大量的编辑，所以我试图练习我的讲道。

TA：Last question, just for fun. Having spent hours looking at hundreds of these small structures, is there one that stands out to you as a favorite?

戈登：一？你一定在开玩笑！我要欺骗这个答案：我对阿斯特剧院，保龄球馆和艺术装饰风格的“快车”站有一个柔软的地方，即史蒂文实际上等待在我们在那里拍摄他这样做。我想这些都在电影中出现并不令人惊讶的是！

Editor’s Note:Interested in seeing Rendered Small? The film will be shown as part of the Longleaf Film Festival at 8:30 p.m. on Friday, May 11, at the NC Museum of History in downtown Raleigh.