Filmmaker Ido Weisman honed his craft in the world of reality TV, which he credits with helping him discover his role as a documentarian. His documentary short REQUIEM FOR A WHALE is a perfect example of when a filmmaker should trust their instincts.
The film, appearing on T-Port through our partners at Tel Aviv University, depicts the public reaction to a dead beached whale in Nitzanim Beach, South Israel, becoming a deeply personal musing on life and death. We caught up with Weisman to find out more about his unique filmmaking process.
The interview is a transcript, edited for brevity.
Hi Ido, could you introduce yourself?
Well, my name is Ido Weisman, and I’m the director and producer of the film “Requiem For A Whale.”
Tell us three things about yourself:
I usually start with the fact that I’m a cinematographer: That’s my professional skill. And I started as a documentary cinematographer, but also a reality TV show cinematographer and I’ve worked on quite a few TV reality shows like “Survivor”, “The Amazing Race”, all those kinds of shows.
It has had a huge effect on my documentary approach and hopefully my filmmaking, because there’s the reality going on, and you have to tell a story, I got a lot of skills from that.
Two, I started doing my studies of at Tel Aviv University and I think, like a typical filmmaking student, liking fiction filmmaking more than documentary.
I think most of the students were more exposed to fiction, but when i started working on the reality shows I realised that I was having fun: I love it. I love the interaction with reality.
And I started looking at this more like a high value artistic expression, you know, a documentary is in the field of artistic filmmaking.
And the third thing, “Requiem for a Whale” was probably the most spontaneous and intimate film that I’ve directed.
That’s how it started. I just went there and I thought, okay, that’s interesting, let’s do something. And it ended up being being shown to so many people and so many people have responded to it emotionally in a way I could never imagine.
So it was a huge lesson for me as a filmmaker.
Tell me about the production process?
It was like an expedition, the filmmaking itself, just going out there. I just had this immediate urge that I should go there – to the beach where the whale was beached – and document the event without even knowing exactly why, I just had to go there and document.
I had this feeling that the encounter between this mythological animal and the Israeli people, I had this feeling that something special will happen, that encounter will evoke something special.
I went there and I documented for the three days he was there until he was buried. And then I came back home I thought okay, I’ve experienced something and now I have to figure out what I have in my hand.
I started with this more critical point of view, that the people were disrespecting the animal by taking pictures of themselves next to the dead whale, maybe I could just show that, that’s powerful enough.
But, on the other hand, I thought that’s akin to playing one note on the piano, you know, there’s more to it. I had this emotional impact and you can see it in the film, so I thought that if I had some emotional impact then maybe other people had it as well. I should just dig in and call people and do research.
I recorded the conversations and I’ve gotten to all kinds of people, I’ve had maybe ten characters that have emerged. I think that after the first phone call to the photographer – who had been there when I was, taking pictures of the whale, I realised, okay, I’m going somewhere. I’m not totally out of control.
What was it like to make such an emotionally honest film?
I consider myself an emotional person, I liked having this conversation, I had this need to be open as well, you know, because I’m receiving this emotional experience from other people and I wanted to be there for them. I want to be a listener, so in a way documentary making is a two way direction. You’ve got to give something as well.
How do you feel about your film making the T-Port Lighthouse Selections?
It’s really something to be proud of. The amount of exposure that you get on your platform, that’s the core meaning of everything. The film’s just being shown to as many people as you can get it to, and they, in turn, get to have this emotional connection. So if it could get to 50 people and they all have that kind of exposure, then that’s amazing.
What did you learn from making your film?
I had people along the way, even smart people who didn’t quite get what I was doing or where I was going. It felt very lonely going the way I did and I had a lot of doubts. And in the end I think that I got to just listen to myself.
If you have this urge and vision, make it as complete as possible. Only then will people eventually understand where you were aiming for.
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