Mn Dialog Blog (MN Film & Televsion Board)

We were blogged again and we like it. Here's a sneak preview - RC is Rebecca Collins from the MN Film & Television Board.


Local documentary filmmaker Susan Marks is nearing completion on her feature-length doc Our Wildest Dreams: A True Crime Documentary of Dolls & Murder. The film is about the use of dollhouses during the 1930s and 40s to dissect and analyze crime scenes but also delves into our culture’s frenzy over forensics. I recently exchanged questions and answers with Susan about the project and her plans for it.

RC: Could you talk a little bit about the process of making this film?

SM: We knew that access would be a major consideration for this film because we wanted to shoot in places that the public doesn’t normally get to see. So we had to do a lot research to become as knowledgeable as possible. This also helped us to build trust with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Maryland, the Baltimore City Police Department, the National Library of Medicine, The Body Farm, the Glessner Museum (the childhood home of the woman who created the dollhouses) and the executive producer of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

But before we shot, we chose our director of photography carefully. Besides shooting interviews and b-roll - typical for documentary films, we knew that these elaborate dollhouse crime scenes would factor heavily into the film, so we had to find a director of photography who could skillfully do it all. So we approached documentary filmmaker, Matt Ehling to serve as director of photography because we knew he had the shooting and filmmaking experience needed for this project, along with the collaborative spirit we were looking for. Luck for us, he said yes! And he truly went above and beyond anything we expected.

I should also add that we threw a fundraising party before we shot anything, which is pretty unusual for filmmakers to do without a trailer or any footage to screen. But I guess people liked the concept of the film enough show their support and learn more about the project. We raised enough money to go out to Baltimore to shoot a detective training, a morgue, the dollhouse crime scenes and several key interviews. From three days of shooting I created a 10 minute fundraising program. I submitted it to the Jerome Foundation and was generously awarded a grant the allowed me to finish the bulk of the shooting.

We are currently editing a rough cut and just recently, we recorded an opera singer, Joe Carl, who donated his haunting vocals for our soundtrack. But we haven’t raised finishing funds yet, so this is preventing us from moving along quicker.

Check the whole thing:

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