(25 minutes – 8 week production)

This is a personal account of the making of a 25 minute documentary film. It is presented as a novice associate producer’s informal diary. The term ‘associate producer’ can mean many things. In this production it meant that I was the joint recipient of the commission to make the film. I was responsible for coming up with the basic idea and working closely with the director, executive producers and researcher to try to turn my fantasies into broadcast ‘reality’.

14 February 1996 At Channel 4 headquarters sitting in front of Jacquie Lawrence, Deputy Commissioning Editor for Independent Film and Video, wondering if I am having an amazing dream.

I was just an innocent freelance still photographer with a nagging curiosity about film-making when Dominique Harvey, a young relatively inexperienced director/producer with info. about Channel 4’s film budgets generously suggested that if I came up with a good idea for a film, we could make a joint proposal to Channel 4. Six weeks later, against all expectations, Jacquie Lawrence was casually offering us a commission to make Black Divas, a 25 minute documentary about black divas and their queer fans, one of four films in the Celluloid Icons series.

Dominique and I stumbled out of the building towards the nearest pub in deep shock. My mind raced through endless half formed ideas about what the next couple of months were going to be like.

There were suddenly lots of things to sort out. There had to be properly worked out treatment/plan for the film. We had to get a tight team together. Whilst much of this would be sorted out with the help of a production company, there still seemed to be no end of decisions looming. I looked across the table at Dominique, and in the midst of all the hysteria, I reflected for the first time that I hardly knew her. And now we were to be locked together in a creative clinch for the next two or three months.
4 March 1000 At Dominique’s flat, frantically finalising priorities for the first big meeting with Inge Blackman and Heather McAdam at Cultural Partnerships (CPL), the production company chosen by Dominique and approved by Channel 4 for the task of implementing our efforts.

As a complete ‘virgin’ in film I had to take a lot on trust from Dominique about what would happen and what things really meant. Her energy and creativity seemed ample compensation for the fact that this was to be a departure from her more usual magazine format, and her first film of longer than 10 minutes!

4 March 1400 At the office of (CPL). The primary purposes of this meeting were for Dominique and me to deliver an outline treatment and explain what we thought the film was about. CPL had to begin to explain to us how this might be achieved with £60,000 and an 8 week production schedule. The nominal 8 weeks were to be divided into pre-production (research, tightening up the shape of the film, and organising 1001 things), the filming week, and post production (editing, and delivering the finished product to Channel4).

At about the same time as all this new experience I was invited to dine at my partner’s Oxford University college. I found myself being introduced to the guest of honour Sir David Puttnam. I asked him what he was up to. He said that he had just got his first Channel 4 film commission. To my great delight I was able to say “so had I”. He advised me not to make too much of being a newcomer, as bulshitting and incompetence were quite normal in the industry, and one might just as well get on with trying to achieve one’s goals without taking too much notice of what people were telling you could not do.

As I understood it Dominique and I were – in our very different ways – responsible for the creative direction of the film. It was agreed that however much she and I might function as a team informally, in strict professional terms, come shooting week, Dominique would be in absolute control and free to be ‘pragmatic’ if necessary. This was going to be nothing like still photography. Praise, blame, decision-making and the determination of any strong sense of direction were all to be shared.

The notion that I was to be the respected guardian of the ‘soul’ of the film proved to be rather naive. It was a much more crude and competitive process in which Dominique and I joked, slugged and manipulated our way towards our often quite different goals. Sadly there is nothing unusual about this in the film world.

There were some quite deep rooted tensions between us. As director, Dominique had overall responsibility for the creative element of the project. I was less than confident that some of the issues arising in a film about black women and their relationship with a predominantly gay male audience were going to be properly grasped by a relatively young and inexperienced woman who was neither black gay nor – it has to be said – very sensitive to some of the things going on around her. As a late thirties black gay man I felt very close to the film’s subject matter. We had some fabulously furious arguments - something I had never experienced before in a professional environment - mostly over matters of ‘taste’, but occasionally and more depressingly, over who’s identity politics were more impeccably and compellingly relevant to the particular issue in hand.

To Domonique’s credit, there was always a smile and fresh energy for the next task, no matter how grim the last row had been.

CPL meanwhile were to oversee the myriad strategic and practical tasks. CPL were also to try encourage us - without actually taking over – to keep our creative ambitions clear and realistic. They were executive producers, as opposed to just producers. As I understood, it the addition of ‘executive’ meant that they were less directly involved in the creative aspects of the film, and more concerned with guidance and supervision.

It had not occurred to me that there were going to be so many meetings, phone calls and decisions.

We took a small separate office at CPL’s premises. It was hard to imagine that we would create a film in this bare lonely little space. I plastered the walls with large photographs of my more exotic and charismatic photographic portrait subjects in an attempt to create some atmosphere. It worked to the extent that people liked them, and they made the space ours for the duration of the production.

I was shocked to learn how easily £60,000 could be gobbled up. In theory Dominique and I were getting £60,000 - what seemed like a huge lump of money – to go and make a film. In practice she and I were to be paid salaries for our work over 8 weeks (in reality spread over 14 weeks). In addition, a proportion of the total budget, called the production fee (15% of the total budget) was to be divided between Dominic, me and CPL. The remaining 85% of the money would be paid to CPL in instalments to cover:

artists and interviewees fees
film crew (camera, sound and lighting) fees and equipment hire
art director’s fees and materials
wardrobe/make-up/hair etc. fees and materials
editing fees and edit suite hire
studio hire
film/stock
archive material
rostrum shots of still images and graphics
music (copyright and performance)
transport
subsistence
finance/legal costs
miscellaneous overheads (inc.office, telephone etc

Whilst these items all cost more than I had expected, in my personal opinion, the prohibitive cost of music and footage were to have a particular and profound effect on the quality of the finished product. We ended up not being able to afford to properly illustrate the extraordinary qualities of the women the film was about! Dominique made brave attempts to create the essence of a black diva by other means. Principle amongst the devices was the creation of a character known to the crew – if not a wider public - as Miss Dubois; a sort of every woman black drag diva played with great flair by Alan Jarman. His performance, whilst fabulous as a spectacle in itself, could not really conjure up the essence of all the ‘real’ black divas that we could not afford to buy into the production.

Alan’s roles included punctuating the film with a series of rhetorical questions about ‘divaness’, strutting up and down Old Compton Street (the supposed heart of young gay London) in a shimmering full length evening dress, and preening and pouting in various diva guises to the soundtrack of ‘experts’ reflecting on the key ingredients of a classic black diva.

7 March At WKD night-club in Camden. This was the first of many meetings between Dominique me and third parties to check out or procure people and locations for the film. In this particular case we were considering the club as the venue for a party scene that was to feature Chaka Khan. (she wAs a personal friend of the club-owner) Neither the venue or the artist came off in the end. Ms Khan’s concert commitments clashed with our filming schedule. However, there were many fruitful outings and surprises such as a delightful and fascinating lunch with George Melly reminiscing about the early divas. Other great moments included winning David McAlmont over to the project and witnessing his Shirley Bassey ‘impression’, complete with flying dreadlocks, learning some of the finer points of what it means to be Lawrence Armatrading (cousin of Joan), and being treated to a spontaneous rendition of ‘Stormy Weather’ from the fabulous 92 year old Elisabeth Welch in her nursing home for retired stars.

W/C 11 March Several long meetings over 2 weeks with Dominic to work on the treatment for the film. This was crucial for lots of reasons chief among them being that CPL could not settle the details for the final budget until they could be reasonably certain of what Dominic and I wanted the film to be like in its content/scope and style,. They could then work out what could be afforded on a number of fiercely expensive competing items such as footage, music copyright, artists fees, studio sets, location fees, lighting equipment etc.

25 March The honeymoon was suddenly over. That feeling of fun and discovery had all but evaporated to be replaced by the constant worry that one could not do this or that because of lack of funds or time or agreement from other people.

On the other hand there was the pleasure of meeting and briefing our researcher Joy Russell (JR). She turned out to be a treasure with a real feel for the subject matter, and a knack of finding and getting the best out of juicy potential contributors to the film. She worked her magic on Elizabeth Welch, Paul Burston, Stephen Bourne, Tina c (aka Chris Green) and Carol Leeming to great effect, eliciting all sorts of intimate revelations about the role that divas and their music played in their lives. All of our contributors came up with wonderful material. However, we were shooting on a ratio of about 25:1 (i.e. shooting approximately 650 minutes of material for a 25 minute film).This meant lots of agonising decisions about what had to be left out. Quite apart from her specifically filmic contributions, she was a lovely presence on the production; I found her ever patient, sensitive and fun.

Production manager Marisa Guagenti (MG) came on board a couple of weeks later. She had the huge and seemingly rather dull job of carrying out the bulk of the very detailed administration required to make a very complicated set of events happen smoothly. It proved wise to listen to her advice and – on administrative matters – do her bidding. She usually managed to inject a lot of humour and drama into what could have been some otherwise pretty grim moments. Sophia Mesphin, a recent graduate in communication studies, was brought in by CPL as a trainee, as part of their On-Line Productions Scheme. She seemed happy to put in several weeks of hard work for nothing more than expenses and the experience. I began to realise just how ridiculously easy my glide into TV had been. Most people have to work long and hard just to get a small taste of the action, and here I was being paid to hang out in the circles of real power.

Having decided – more or less – how the shooting week was to be carved up, studios, equipment, props locations, miscellaneous clearances and personnel had to be organised, and fast. Paradoxically, the night-club scene - one of the shortest parts of the finished film – was turning out to be one of the most complicated to arrange. We envisaged a party atmosphere with lots of energetic black diva fans dancing, lip-synching and being generally gorgeous, more or less to order, and - on our sad little budget – for no fee.

After a long hunt we settled for the Africa Centre in Covent Garden as a location. There were problems with the terms for hiring the space, the power supply for the huge lighting rig that our camerawoman Nuala Campbell was insisting on, bar opening times and permission to provide our own food for the revellers. If it had not been such a highly publicised and integral part of the film, by the time we came to actually shooting it, I and the executive producers would have had no hesitation in ditching it!

1 April Another fairly taxing meeting with CPL after yet more reworking of the treatment in a vain attempt to convince them that our ideas would work. I am becoming more and more aware that Dominique and I are very different people with strong personal feelings about the subject matter of the film that make us as much adversaries as allies.

W/C 15 April Joy’s extensive round of informal interviews draws to a close with the hand-over of detailed notes about each potential contributor. Dominique Joy and I start a series of meetings with them to work out which 5 of the 15 interviewed were actually going to be filmed. More arguments and agonising decisions.

W/C 22 April suddenly only 2 weeks before shooting and still lots of things for the production manager to finalise. I was becoming aware of the strange sensation of feeling excited that the film was starting to take shape, whilst mildly depressed that it was so far from what I had originally envisaged. This was perhaps best illustrated by the fact that whilst the original idea for the film had flowed from my adoration for Chaka Khan, a prime example of the sort of woman the film was about, it was beginning to look as though she might not feature in it in any way!

W/C 13 May Shooting week. The old hands were at pains to point out that this would be the point at which all the aggravation and hard work would be repaid with a lots of excitement and fun as the product took shape. There were to be three days on location around London and two studio days, all
carefully organised like a nervously stacked house of cards. The first two location days went well. The first studio day came a very close second to the Africa Centre in terms of the complexity and hassle. We had a very tight programme: five monologues delivered from a specially constructed set consisting of a 7ft wide sofa shaped as a pair of bright red lips, beneath a 9ft wide pair of sparkling eyelashes. Disaster struck early with the literally last minute withdrawal of the first of the five contributors due to a serious back injury. Delicate negotiations with a previously discarded potential contributor solved the immediate problem (though led to big strategic difficulties later). The second studio day centred on various performances by Alan Jarman, who performed and interpreted with great style and intelligence.

Whilst there was much to celebrate in the relationship between divas and their fans, we wanted to look at the problems as well. We had wanted to look at the phenomenon of divas making offensive comments about gay lifestyles and describing AIDS as the wrath of a vengeful God, but we were warned that we could be sued if we named names. I wrote a poem instead which Alan delivered to camera brilliantly:

A Message To All My Wonderful Gay Fans
I used to be a diva
the queen of funky nights
the soundtrack as you satisfied your sexual appetites
but now all that’s behind me, I have come to see the light!
So what about the mess of AIDS your lifestyle’s gotya in,
the pain and grief and waste, the hefty price of all that sin?
Me?, I say “read the Bible, let the good Lord enter in”.
I’ve sold a lodda recurds, made big bucks ouda all you queers,
but please, I’ve never harboured any hate fer y’all my dears,
I’ll always love you people, let those royalties role for years and years... (to fade)

17 May Got the first of the rushes back from the process house. It was very exciting to see some results after all that work. I was pleasantly surprised by the quantity of good material in amongst all the padding.

19 May Sadly the last filming day at the Africa centre was the fiasco that it had always threatened to be, with disappointing attendance for the crowd scenes, serious delays (on our part) and a general feeling of chaos and anti-climax. This was all rather dispiriting, particularly in the light of the transformation of the space by Tricia Boulter, the Art Director for the film who repeatedly worked minor miracles on a very small budget, never mind the everyone else’s hard work.

27 May The rest of the stock was processed and full transcripts were made of all the material we shot. Dominique and I then settled into the paper edit. This involved attempting to construct a rough but coherent verbal version of the film from the ‘best’ bits of the transcript that would form the basis of the next stage.

3 June Off-line edit. This was for me one of the most fascinating parts of the whole exercise. I was finally getting a first crude glimpse of what the finished product could look like. No matter what the quality of the rushes, choosing the ‘right’ 10% of the material in the ideal combination was going to determine the perceived quality of our film. All of the rushes were copied into a very sophisticated computer (Avid) that could store moving images and sound digitally. This enabled our editor Simon to try out infinite combinations of bits of footage and soundtrack to create whatever composition of elements we wanted. I was often left marvelling at what could be achieved with the combination of an editor’s eye and memory for detail, allied to the capacity of the machine to move and manipulate images. I was advised by a senior TV person to adopt a ‘fresh eye’ role in the editing process. I understood this to mean taking a less involved role in the day to day stuff, and coming in from time to time to comment on what Simon and Dominique had come up with. This proved dangerously close to sitting in judgement, but we survived without delicate sensibilities being completely trampled.

The process of constructing and refining the various combinations of images went on for another couple of weeks until we were ready to show the first rough cut to Jacquie Lawrence at Channel 4. Although she offered a general thumbs up to the glamour glitz and camp of it all, she had several suggestions for structural changes for clarity’s sake. We complied.

I thought it would be plain sailing from then on not having bargained on the tricky business of getting the final credits sorted out to everyone’s satisfaction. Refreshingly, good will prevailed and we eventually found forms and sequences of words that stroked all the egos involved.

28 June All that was left was for Simon to hand over the record of the final combination of images to the on-line editor, who then more or less copied Simon’s edit of the film, working from the much higher quality original video film as the source (rather than the rough copy stored in the Avid machine). The final stage was a similar process with the soundtrack called the dub. Black Divas was then ready to be delivered to Channel 4 for transmission at their convenience.

September 1996 The film has been broadcast. Whilst the concept seemed to have great appeal, the film itself had a very mixed reception. We managed to be too esoteric about queer things for the straight part of the audience, and insufficiently informative about the divas and their music for just about everyone. There was a fairly depressing connection between the harshest criticisms of the film and the predictable problems we encountered on the production related to lack of funds and experience.

I found the overall process fascinating and made some delightful new relationships. I would very much like to do it again, but with a lot more control of the creative process. I regret that the finished product had so little to do with the original inspiring ideas, and with hindsight, I could have done a lot more to put that right.

Despite all the reservations, when I look at the film I get a good feeling. I am reminded of the heart-warming enthusiasm and co-operation from the team, stars and contributors who, like Dominique and me – in our very different ways – loved its subject matter.
Robert Taylor 1 October 1996