Project Category: Premium Content Streaming, Documentary
About: MasterClass offers members online courses taught by accomplished professionals in their field. This series, Talking Shop, is part of their first foray into entertainment media and features MasterClass teachers telling the stories of the visionaries who influenced them. This episode tells the story of politician Bella Abzug as recounted by activist Gloria Steinem.
Position: Producer - Story
I was brought onto this episode in the post production phase as the story producer. I reviewed the shoot footage and made story cut timelines in Premiere to hand off to the editor while I searched for archival and did some fact checking. As we moved through story, I wrote connecting VO lines for Gloria to record for story clarification, and directed her in the recording session.
Production Secret: Keep digging
Sometimes, the key to the story isn't in the footage shot, but in the archival yet to be found. Of course, in any doc project, the archival plays a really important role in telling the story and this episode was no exception. Sometimes Gloria would reference something that felt so obscure, and impossible to find, but persevering in the archive search and being really diligent about reviewing hours and hours of old footage or pages of seemingly unrelated search results provided us some gems that elevated the story telling.
