Stan Woodward, Reflections on his filmmaking style
My Style of Filmmaking Using the Handheld Camera Technique
My style of filmmaking is derived from my film, “It’s Grits” which I shot between 1974 and 1978 while I served as Filmmaker in Residence at the South Carolina Arts Commission. I invented it based upon seeing the films of filmmakers Ricky Leacock and Don Pennebaker (“Primary”) and the makers of “Grey Gardens”, by Albert and David Maysles during the 1960’s. When I first saw these handheld documentaries, I knew the style of filmmaking I wanted to use if I ever got the opportunity to shoot my own film.
That opportunity came in 1974 when the Executive Director of the South Carolina Arts Commission called me into his office and told me that I had been hired to come from New York to South Carolina to make a film that would be an example of Independent Filmmaking that could teach everyone in the community, from housewives, to men working as farmers, doctors, lawyers, and government employees, the difference between what they were most familiar with - the commercial Hollywood films - and the works of the new American Independent Filmmakers who had sprung up all over the country with the coming of places like the South Carolina Arts Commission’s Regional Film Editing Studio, with it’s assortment of resources available for rent at low cost to Independent Filmmakers in the 10-state Southern region. With an array of items such as the eight plate Steenbeck editing machine, a multi-synch sound editing setup, an optical printer, and an array of 16mm cameras, tripods, and tools for filmmakers otherwise too expensive to rent elsewhere, Regional Independent Filmmakers flocked to the South Carolina Arts Commission.
In 1974, I was asked to put aside my work as director of the rapidly expanding Regional Film Editing Studio and concentrate on coming up with an idea for a film to shoot. So I handed over the work of running the Studio to my assistant, filmmaker Bill Olsen, while I concentrated on coming up with a film of my own. Fortunately I had a good friend who was working at the Arts Commission namedre morning Jay Williams who would help me in this effort. Jay and I would spend the time necessary for me to eventually come up with the idea for the film, “It’s Grits!” by my spending hours at a time traveling around to diners and breakfast nooks that served grits, until one morning when I decided I would spend the entire morning observing people eating breakfast. That morning I noticed a gentleman sitting at the black onyx-topped counter eating a huge order of eggs and grits that was covered with gravy. I sauntered up to him and sat down next to him and asked him how he liked to eat his grits. He never looked around and kept on eating, but reached around and grabbed a napkin out of the chrome napkin dispenser and started writing down the name of someone whom he said would tell me everything I wanted to know about grits.
I realized that this was the start of the grits film - a film that would pave the way for many more Independent films and would also carve out a place for other filmmakers who would take up the unusual technique of shooting a handheld style of filmmaking.
I ran back to the Arts Commission to get Jay and grab the Eclair camera and decided at that moment to use black and white film, for I did not want to have to haul lights everywhere and disrupt the naturalness of each scene. We then returned to the restaurant and I went to fetch the cook, Annie, and told her I wanted to film an interview with her for a film I had just started called “It’s Grits!” And that is how the film began.
Let me now share my method of handheld filmmaking with you. First I let the kind of camera I use determine how I go about filmmaking. I chose to use an Eclair ACL camera with a wide angle 5.7 to 57mm lens synched to a portable Nagra tape recorder. This enabled me to “wear” the camera like an extension of my body, carrying the camera on my shoulder so that I could wielding the image by the touch of my hand on the zoom lens according to what was going on with my subject. This might be the control of the visual composition as I interacted with my subject, or a wide angle shot of my subject that put him or her in context with their surroundings … but whatever I did was cerebrally connected and in flow with the ongoing action within the scene.
For example, while shooting the scene of the “Peanut Butter and Chow-Chow Pickle” grits cook describing his concoction and giving me a taste of it, I was fully conscious that I was in the midst of shooting with full control of the events of the scene. As the subject rarer back in his chair to enjoy a moment of thought as he reflected on what he had just said, he responded to my comment asking him for a taste of his concoction, and he immediately dipped up a spoonful of the grits from his plate and followed this action by moving the spoon straight over into my mouth, past the point of view of the camera, breaking the plane of my vision and moving back again. As I saw this action occur, it gave me a moment of time to think about what that bite of grits tasted like and - after thinking about it for a moment, saying to him, “could I have another bite?” - I thus invited him to repeat his action of dipping up another spoonful of grits and shoveling it into my mouth once again, hence completing the shot to end the sequence.
The result with the audience was exactly what I expected - a huge round of laughter from everyone. The indication that everyone enjoyed the sequence, and this at every showing.
This technique must be arrived at by earning your way. It can never be arrived at “cheaply”. You must be involved with the
camera cerebrally and with a state of love. I loved what I was doing, and did so throughout my career - from the “Grit’s” film all the way down through each film I shot - from the “Brunswick Stew” documentaries, the “Sheep Stew” film, the “Burgoo” film, the “Hallowed Ground” films, the “Southern Routes” films, and the final films I made, including “The Frank Wilson Family Shindig” film
Taking up a camera was, for me, a life-time experience that enfolded everything from my early days as editorial cartoonist for the Clemson Tiger Newspaper, to my days at Pratt Institute and starting the Fort Green Young Photographers and Filmmakers Association, to winning the Pratt Film Festival, going to work for Julien Bryan at the International Film Foundation, making my first award-winning film, “The American Super 8 Revolution”, being selected as “Filmmaker In Residence” at the South Carolina Arts Commission, and making my first handheld documentary, “It’s Grits”, while at the Arts Commission.
Altogether life has been one long and often challenging, but satisfying experience, all wrapped up in blessings from the One True God.
Stan Woodward (2025)
