On looking, and being looked at
we need to talk...
I've been hesitant to write about the work lately.
Partly because I'm busy, and every day making a documentary is a different task; and partly because the work, in some ways, has gotten harder to talk about.
A day's work is emails, casting calls, research, scanning and logging receipts, planning a future shoot, getting release forms, transcoding footage, negotiating rights and sensitivities around filming in a place, saying hello to someone, reminding them you're making a film about them, finding out if there's an update.
Sometimes you're actually filming (less frequently than you’d think).
Sometimes zooming out and taking the big-picture look on a storyboard. Sometimes the funder wants to see clips of progress, so you edit those.
Sometimes you're folding laundry while listening to the interview you just did, just to hear it fresh.
Other times you're high on a person and their energy.
They're excited you're there to listen, to see their life. They welcome you in, introduce you to their families, feed you their family recipes, show you photos of themselves as kids. Honestly, most of the time if you get to the stage of filming someone, this is usually the reality.
Other times you’re low.
The people you’re filming aren’t really that into it and it feels like a relationship none of you should have entered; you try to go on in the most ethical way while they push you away or slip out of agreed-upon plans. They don't really want you in the space. So many things are off limits you feel like you're invading their privacy. You're not sure why you're there.
Sometimes people speak poorly about you in a language you don’t know (which you get translated later), or cancel on the filming plans after you've taken a flight out to document them.
Sometimes they call you names. Like when you ask them what chopped means because you're a millennial who hates the world of the internet and all the mean kids, and they tell you look in the mirror, and you know it's a joke because they're in their early 20s and being dumb, but you feel old and want to go home.
Over a decade ago, when I started making films, I don’t remember the assumptions that get made now.
Smartphones weren’t widespread, social media was slim, people were skeptical about the media, yes — when I was making Hollow in 2012 — but once they met me, they realized I wasn’t the boogey-woman Media. I was Elaine, and we put away the assumptions and met each other anew.
Now I observe more hostility and overplaying.
Checking if they did it “right.” Performance, because we live in a world that is performative. I don’t remember this kind of performing among common folks in 2012.
Some people were more comfortable than others, kids would be silly and look into the camera — but I don’t remember the group of people who didn’t want to be on camera, agreed anyway, and then were nervous or kinda rude the whole time.
Back then, they used to just say “no thanks.” I much prefer that.
Maybe it's also the landscape. A lot of the nonfiction people consume now is mostly about high-profile true crime cases, or famous people. Marie Claire's most-anticipated documentaries of 2026 list runs sixteen films — Marc Jacobs, Billie Eilish, Earth Wind & Fire, Louis Theroux, David Attenborough, the making of The Wizard of Oz, Elizabeth Smart, Lucy Letby, Star Trek, BTS…
The seven exceptions - one being an awesome film about a small Mississippi tourist town, and one being a very important film about AI…are truly exceptions.
If the documentary you've seen is mostly about people who are already public, of course you brace like a public person when the camera shows up.
And our social media presence has to play a role too, right? Everyone's been running their own little channel for years now. By the time an indie documentary camera shows up, the muscle memory is already there. People want final cut of their own lives.
I also notice that the younger generations — up through their early 40s — sometimes forget they aren’t on the internet, but instead they’re in a room with a real person. The defenses they’ve built for one don’t quite fit the other, and the camera is there to catch the mismatch.
And honestly, I get it.
Folks with cameras have abused their access and they’ve broken trust. The wariness isn’t unearned.
Documentary filmmakers don’t talk about this sea change enough.
Maybe because it sounds like failure, or like blaming the people we film. But I think it has to be said: the filmmaker-and-participant model needs to evolve. We are not documenting people who aren’t, in some way, also documenting themselves nearly daily. That hasn’t always been true.
So how do we respond?
While I usually write about the people I film with all the love in the world, because I usually do fall in love with parts of them, something feels different in today’s landscape.
I love humans and all their quirks. But meanness and performing-for-gain make me shut down. I have to catch myself. I want to disassemble the camera and walk away.
But the truth is, engaging with other people and their stories is my oxygen.
I’m not looking for sympathy, or to blame or complain; I’m looking for a conversation with other makers.
Are you seeing this too?
Alas…
I was carrying all of this when my neighbor - she’s a fellow storyteller, in her 70s and lived abroad for years and has since come home - said something like:
Can you imagine a richer life than getting to do what we do? Witnessing and asking people questions about the deepest, most personal moments of their lives.
We talked about how much we’ve learned - good and bad - from the people we’ve filmed and how enriching and valuable that has been.
I told her I used to be a closed-off and private person. Happy to hide behind the camera. This work has taught me to appreciate vulnerability and openness in a way I don’t think I would have found otherwise.
The Elaine of a decade ago would never have written a rambling piece like this — one that admits, out loud, that she has doubts, and doesn’t have answers.
No chance.
The work I’ve spent my life doing is harder than it used to be, and the world I’m doing it in is more allergic to it.
But my neighbor is right.
There isn’t a richer life than spending your days listening, observing, and reflecting back the lives that surround you.
And I have the people who I’ve filmed - even the ones who maybe decided they didn’t actually want me around - to thank for leading me here.