By Tessa Moran
One of the greatest challenges in making documentary films is establishing a story line. It’s what propels the film along and what keeps viewers interested. The easiest way to establish a story line is to film a character when he or she is involved in some sort of event or contest. That way there is already a pre-defined beginning, middle and end. Although you cannot predict the challenges the character will confront or even the outcome of their efforts, you can be fairly confident that you will capture the essential pieces of a story on film.
The story line in War/Dance — one of my favorite documentaries of all time — follows a group of children practicing to compete in a music competition in Uganda. The backdrop to the story is their every day lives in a refugee camp and the haunting tales of the violence they endured. Although this content was compelling enough to stand on its own, it was the story of their achievement at the music competition that really carried the story and delivered a message of hope that still resonates with me today.
The task of establishing a story line is made more difficult when you are producing a short documentary, and when there is a small time frame in which you need to complete the film. For the birth center doc, the ultimate story progression seemed obvious: pregnancy. Because of our time constraints, we couldn’t film a full-term pregnancy. We would , however, have the time to film the final trimester and the labor leading up to a birth.
By fortune, we met a young patient who agreed to let us to film her pregnancy and labor, one of the most personal and intimate moments of her life. She was planning to have a natural birth at the center instead of at the hospital. The prospect of filming a birth in the center setting was thrilling to us. It’s quiet, home-like and intimate. Not to mention filming in a hospital has its fair share of legal implications.
We got the call at 5:30 in the morning. She had been in labor since the previous afternoon, but had
only recently gone to the birth center. I was so overwhelmed, it took me at least ten minutes to stop pacing across the apartment and actually do something productive. So next I scrambled to charge batteries. Why hadn’t we prepared and packed the equipment ahead of time?!? It was a lesson we had learned the hard way before, but apparently it hadn’t stuck. Finally we arrived at the birth center — running no less — in anticipation of the baby coming at any moment.
Sixteen hours later, no baby. Just hours of shooting labor. In the bathtub, on the bed, down the hallway. My favorite footage was that of the robed woman and her boyfriend walking down the light-filled hallway as the sun was rising in the sky. 
Hours later, they walked the same route as the sun was setting. Cut together, the scenes serve as a tribute to the long and hard work of natural labor. For hours, she had the constant attention of a midwife, a midwife in training, and a doula (trained birthing assistant who provides emotional and physical support). African American women caring for an African American woman.
The midwife had told us the woman would give birth soon; she was dilated nine and half centimeters with closer, stronger contractions. But over time the contractions began to slow, and after several hours, she still wasn’t fully dilated. A decision had to made. After over 40 hours in labor, she needed to decide whether she would stay in the birth center and have a natural birth, with a greater risk that something might go wrong. Or, she could go to the hospital to be induced, which would mean stronger contractions that might necessitate an epidural. Though she had wanted a natural birth, the circumstances begged reconsideration. And so she was transferred to the hospital, where she finally gave birth at 3 am the next morning.
We decided not to go to the hospital. The legal implications of filming there was a beast we chose not to confront. And after nearly two days of working without sleep, the midwife we were following had to hand off the job to another midwife, who happened to be caucasion. This, inevitably, would throw us off of the film’s focus — African American women caring for their peers. So we handed off a small camera for the family to use, and decided to scrape any needed footage from that.
Clearly, our story line didn’t progress exactly as we expected. Life never does. But we were presented with an entirely different story line, in which a group of African American women worked together to make an important decision in the best interest of a woman and unborn child. The bonding that took place that evening was extremely moving, and we caught it all on film. We sought new opportunities that arose, made the quick decisions needed, and adapted to the new course of action. That is what makes the job as a documentary filmmaker so unique and exciting.
