Pan Left Productions

Most of the time, Pan Left member projects are documentaries. This is what Pan Left Productions is known for. The desire to passionately present truths and true stories previously unheard or underheard has been the fundamental drive of the organization.

For the last six years of my filmmaking career that's been my priority as well, and I don't think I'll ever stop making non-fiction films. However, my experiences and
research has led me to want to explore other ways of telling truths, other avenues for telling stories to potentially different audiences. Two years ago I began to slowly develop an extensive hybrid fictional-documentary project. There are a few other Pan Left members (2 prominent examples being Oscar and Angela) who work in fiction, so my project has some company, but here on this blog there may be very little known about narrative efforts of Pan Left members.

My project is called Truth On The Line. It's a series, intended for web and TV, and it's primarily the story of people who work for a news program called News On The Line. The news stories on News On The Line will focus on the border and immigration, and they will all be real. The characters who work on the show will be fictional, and their larger lives and dramas will be as well.

Presently, I'm working on producing the pilot episode in this experiment, and with that in the can I will use it to get funding for a continuing series.

The big difference, in a nutshell, between documentary and narrative is where the thing really "comes together". In general, the documentary really takes shape in post-production. You shoot and shoot and shoot, and then you make sense of what you have later. In fiction, although a lot happens in post as well, the story takes shape in advance. So, there's a whole different set of tasks and weight of when lots of work happens.

I completed the first draft of the script in mid-April and began casting, which was challenging. There are 14 speaking parts, which has made scheduling meetings and rehearsals extremely difficult as well. Trying to arrive at times where even most of the cast can be there has been crazy, especially because this is a micro-budget project in which I can't pay people to show up.

We did have one meeting where we did a first read-through and I managed to have all but 2 or 3 actors there. That was impressive and it went really well. A photo from that is above. In directing the actors I have been extremely inspired by the methods of Mark Travis, author of "Directing Feature Films". I attended a 2-day workshop on directing that he taught here in Tucson back in March that blew my mind, and blew the minds of many other Tucson directors and actors. I'm lucky enough to have 3 of those actors on my cast, already familiar with Mark's ideas.

Coming next: the beginning of production! Our first shoot is this weekend, June 20-21. Stay tuned for a report on that.