Howard Weinberg on Indpendent Documentaries and Film

Howard Weinberg is an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker who has produced several seminal films, a three-part series for the Public Broadcasting System on early childhood education and a 27-part series covering the 1992 election year, entitled "Listening to America."

Weinberg, executive director of the New York Film/Video Council, a New York City based non-profit organization that serves as a networking system for independent filmmakers, got his start in the independent documentary genre while traveling through the former Soviet Union as a college student at Dartmouth University.

Weinberg returned to the area nine months later with a camera and shot a 30-minute documentary entitled "The Russians," using 1,300 feet of film. After graduating from the School of Journalism at Columbia University, Weinberg ended up in Milwaukee, Wis. After a few false starts, Weinberg eventually made it back to New York where he made a name for himself in the industry and with news programs such as "60 Minutes" and "Sunday Morning."

We talked to Weinberg about the challenges facing filmmakers and the way the field has changed.

Q: What advice would you give to someone starting out?
A: You need to get a low job starting out, something to get an overview of the field. You need to find a place where you can make the decisions for yourself, where you can report on the stories, where you can make the film and get a complete rounding of things. That usually has to be done outside of the major centers. Most people don't do that because they are afraid of getting lost and not making it back to New York City.

Q: What are the biggest challenges facing someone?
A: For anyone, the hardest aspect of the field is getting enough capital to make a film. Before, you used to put together a group of people and then decided what you wanted to do. Now, you need to have a project put together, ask for the money and then get the group together. Another challenge is being versatile enough in all the aspects of the craft. There is a lot to learn and that requires discipline and learning all of the tools of the trade.

Q: How is the field changing?
A: At the moment, we are not in a great place. There are many outlets and opportunities, but the funding is getting harder and harder. There is also the pressure for the big idea and the pressure to do things in a formulaic way. Ideally, what you want is something that works on many different levels - something that appeals to the masses, the intellectual elite and everywhere in between. These days people are just opting for sameness.