like father, like daughter: the documentary i made about my dad

a little look into the process

I’m actually very pissed off at my dad as I write this. But I’m going to write it anyways. Because I realized when I was editing the documentary, that it’s about my dad, but not really. It’s about me, because I have been the one impacted by his influence, and so the story of his influence tells the story of who I am.

If that makes any sense at all.

Like Father, Like Daughter came together very quickly. Two weeks ago, I discovered the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival for Young Creators. It’s simple. Your film can be about anything, it just needs to be under 18 minutes long, and the filmmaker needs to be between the ages of 14 and 26, and Canadian. And I figured I could do that. I don’t want to be a documentary filmmaker, but our camera has shitty video quality, and my writer’s block is becoming more like a sickness and few know me better than my father. I’d been toying with the idea for a while, anyways, so why not now?

My love of film is, perhaps, the greatest gift my father has ever given me.  The movies I’ve watched and come to love have shaped me an immeasurable amount, too large to put into words.  And now, I am here, with dreams of making a film that matters as much to people as some of the ones I love to.  It all leads back to my father.  This is why I’ve decided to make a short documentary about this.  This is meant to be an exploration of how film has come to bind us together, and how film can be a hereditary thing.  A reflection of the ties that bind a father and daughter.  I’ve been toying with an idea like this ever since the Toronto trip, and now, more than ever, I’d love to do it.  I know my dad as I do because of the films that we love.  And this is something I’d like to celebrate. My inheritance is not money or property; it is one of the greatest loves I’ve ever known: film.

If I’m being honest, I was embarrassed to tell my mother about my idea. I’ve written dead mothers, horrible mothers, mothers plauged with disease that passes onto their children, and I’d never written a good mother. And what does it say about who I value if I make a documentary about my father? It was silly to worry anyways, because she listened to me (very badly) explain the plot to her, and she smiled, and that was all there was to it.

I wanted, first, to go downtown to the film archive to knock out two birds with one stone. To, first, get footage for the documentary, and then also actually go to the film archive, because I very badly wanted to go. It’s closed on the weekends, and they didn’t reply to my email fast enough, so I scrapped it for another time. The film museum is Surrey is closed for the season, so just my luck, we go to the library instead. Which is fine, because then I can make it seem like a Criterion Closet video and then it’s not so bad.

The first interview I did with my dad the sound didn’t record. So we did it a second time, and this time the sound worked, but I didn’t bother getting video, since it was just going to be a voiceover anyways.

Editing was the most time consuming part of it all. When I did a film class last summer, I had Molly at my side and together we built a film and spent weeks editing it. But this time, it was just me, and I can’t stand the sound of my own voice, and it’s 10 pm and I’m trying to figure out if The Adults Are Talking by The Strokes is a good song choice. (It wasn’t - I left it out.) I had more footage than I thought, and I wanted to punch myself for cutting off a good clip too early and having only half of what my dad said. But somehow, even with all the schoolwork I needed to do, I managed to get it done on a 7 day free trial of Premiere Pro, and somehow, it didn’t turn out too bad.

I truly can’t understand how the Daniels edited Everything Everywhere All At Once on Adobe software. I can’t tell you how many times I had to close and reopen the program when my media wouldn’t load.

are you there god it's me august @tbhcfilm

"like father, like daughter" a documentary by yours truly

Funnily enough, The Kids in the Hall intros were my biggest inspiration. I don’t know how much of it you can see in the film anymore since I made some major changes to it last minute, but I watched it two, three, four, five times one might as I tried to get the title card font just right. Charlotte Wells Aftersun also served as major inspiration, the father/daughter relationship and her use of home videos. I wanted to do an intro sort of like The Bear does in the first episode, with the old photos to give a sense of history and connection, and I looked through old photos of my dad and I. I didn’t end up doing that, but I think that looking at the photos gave me a better sense of who we are, and who we are together.

Over the last few years, I’ve begun to view my love of film as my inheritance because I got it from my father. All the DVDs he has and will give me are all part of this. I’ve got so many bad parts of him in me, but I’m also very grateful to have one of my favourite parts of him be one of the best in me. Our relationship is not in a photo album, it is on a film reel and it ties us together like nothing else can. It’s all led me here, to this, and I’m high on it now, the feeling of making a movie, and I’ve already begun to look to my next one.

I can’t tell you home much this film means to me. If it gets picked, if it doesn’t, it won’t matter, because it exists and that is all I could’ve wished for. And I want to thank all of you for sticking by me, in my writing, and reading all my family and film related rambles. You all get front row seats to the premiere.

The announcement of who gets picked for the festival is on February 27th. If I don’t get picked, I’ll post the film that same day for any interested parties to see. If it, somehow gets picked, I’ll post it after the film festival. Either way, I want you all to see it, and you will all get to, I promise.