Andrew Zuckerman:
The Wisdom Project
Filmmaker and photographer Andrew Zuckerman thinks hard-won insights should be shared. That’s why he’s releasing The Wisdom Project, a one-hour documentary film and companion book that share the collective experiences of 51 luminaries over age 65, including authors, artists, and world leaders from Willie Nelson to Nelson Mandela.
Inspired by the ancient African concept of ubuntu, which emphasizes human connectedness—I am what I am because of who we all are—Zuckerman set out to gather and communicate the lessons his extraordinary subjects have learned about love, work, the environment, and conflict resolution. “We live in a confusing and fast-changing world,” says the filmmaker. “It’s a great time to look to our elders, to see what they have to say that can help us.”
With a grueling production schedule and interviews conducted around the world, Zuckerman and his team needed the right tools to help bring everything together. An all-Mac studio and a fleet of Mac laptops on the road allowed them to plan, capture, review, and produce the project’s video and still images, and communicate easily with one another from New York to Los Angeles, Sydney, London, and beyond.
Because Zuckerman and his team all had the same Mac equipment, trading materials back and forth was seamless. The tight integration also meant that when Zuckerman returned to New York to begin the real editing, there were no surprises. “Final Cut Studio and the other Mac tools gave us a kind of insurance policy,” he says. “We knew we had what we needed to create the look I wanted in the final piece.”
Video Persuasion
The idea for The Wisdom Project came from conversations between Zuckerman and his publisher, Geoff Blackwell of PQ Blackwell, the New Zealand photography house. Blackwell hoped that his own connection to Archbishop Desmond Tutu would help persuade other accomplished elders to participate. Tutu agreed to send out a personal invitation, which initially brought about a dozen people on board.
Zuckerman conducted the first batch of interviews and used Final Cut Studio to edit the footage into a treatment. Then he invited the people who had not yet answered his letter to view these clips via a private website. “Using Final Cut to quickly edit the initial footage into compelling clips is what helped us convince the rest of the people to get involved,” Zuckerman says.
“Final Cut allowed us to show these people exactly what we were doing, and how we were handling the material with dignity and respect,” he adds. “If I had not been able to show it to them, there’s no way I would have gotten all those famous people to participate. As soon as they saw it, they got it. I didn’t have to sell them. The film itself became its own best advocate.”
Staying Focused with Final Cut Studio
Zuckerman’s all-Mac New York studio and road setup consists of two Mac Pro Quad Towers, eight Power Mac G5s, six MacBook Pros, four PowerBooks, eight 23-inch Cinema Displays, and two 30-inch Cinema Displays. An Xserve was essential for storage, file sharing, and archiving, and the crew kept in touch using iPhones. In addition to their extensive work with Final Cut Studio, Zuckerman and his team relied on the Mac for various aspects of planning and production, using Mac OS X Leopard tools such as iCal, Mail, Address Book, and QuickTime to help schedule projects and review clips.
Final Cut Studio was central to Zuckerman’s workflow from that first treatment to, well, the final cut. Pre-production in the studio involved test shots using staff as stand-ins. The crew experimented with lighting and sound, then loaded the video into Final Cut and reviewed it in HD. “On other systems,” says Zuckerman, “there’s no way you can look at your tests five minutes after you make them. Final Cut allowed our editor to immediately see whether we had it right and were good to go for the live shoot.”
On interview days, the crew used Final Cut Studio to run final checks on the accuracy of their lighting, color, and sound, comparing it to the template they had established. Knowing they had the right look allowed Zuckerman to proceed with the interviews, confident that his crew would capture exactly what he needed to weave the new material in with existing footage.
QuickTime Dailies
Zuckerman’s crew shot with two Panasonic HVX 200 HD video cameras, recording at 720p and 23.98 fps. They recorded sound directly into the video cameras, using two Audio-Technica shotgun microphones. The footage was captured on six 16GB Panasonic P2 cards, and converted on a MacBook Pro using a PCMCIA to ExpressCard adapter.
