Filmmaker David Osit, a graduate of SVA’s MFA in Social Documentary Film, talks about mentors, classmates and how the program shaped his documentary work.
Did you have someone at SVA that you would consider a mentor?
David Osit: I’d count all of my professors as mentors, but I’d equally count all of my classmates in the same way. Admittedly, there probably isn’t a student, staff or faculty member that I didn’t complain to at one point or another. I really wanted positive feedback all the time, and now all I want is negative feedback – I want to know what I can do better, not what I’m competent at. My professors helped me learn to trust my instincts a lot more in school, which I think is a pretty natural fear starting out. Once, our editing professor, Ann Collins, told us to always find the beginning, middle and end of a story – simple advice that I’d heard plenty of times before – but for some reason I only really listened when Ann said it. It clicked for me then, and maybe that’s a component of finding good mentors or professors; if someone is a good fit for what you need and what you’re doing, you find yourself listening more. You should feel it instinctually. Did your training and experiences at SVA help you to meet challenges on recent projects that you’ve completed and current projects you’re working on now?
David Osit: It helped in some basic but very important ways, like being in the middle of a volcano and needing to fix a lavalier microphone yourself because there’s no one else who can do it for you for another two thousand miles. But it probably helped in even more broad ways that I can’t recall – and that’s the thing about my time at SocDoc really. Everything I learned there informed what kind of filmmaker I’ve become, so I don’t think I’d be able to differentiate between how what I learned has helped me with challenges. Everything I know I started learning when I came to school for the first time, so I’d imagine that every challenge I face is one I’m trying to diffuse with things I learned with the sum of all my experiences, and that definitely includes my time at school.
How did your experiences at SVA and the connections and relationships that you developed during your time at SVA help you in your career?
David Osit: I don’t think I could’ve found much success without SVA’s MFA Social Documentary program. The most important component of the program, by a thousand miles, was the network of industry professionals we were exposed to. The documentary film world is small, and it’s populated by people who you’ll see over and over again, and meeting these people in our formative professional years was very helpful in getting a sense of the world we were entering. Getting to know my fellow students was equally valuable – many of them are still my best friends and we’re frequent collaborators. Two feature documentaries I’m directing right now are with former classmates; there’s something very valuable in finding a creative partner that has grown together with you, someone who learned the same big lessons as you and maybe made the same big mistakes. My two years at SocDoc were a real crucible, and I’ll probably always enjoy working with people who made it through the same experience with me. We’ve just shared so much of our creative processes together.
I’m working on a bunch of projects at once right now, and they’re all in various stages of completion. One project that’s coming together nicely right now is a film I’m directing called, “Long Year Begin.” It’s a documentary film about preservation, and what it means for humans to choose what they lose and save. My thesis film in graduate school at the School of Visual Arts was a film called, “Building Babel,” which was about the real estate developer behind the so-called ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ project in New York. That film will be broadcasting on PBS this fall.
The Arctic Circle was probably the most challenging place I’ve ever filmed in. The cold was so severe that not only do you worry about equipment malfunctioning, but there are plenty of moments where your body starts malfunctioning as well. Mainly your fingers. I usually film either alone or with a very small team, no more than three people total, but recently I was filming alone in an Israeli desert. I’d broken my finger a few days before and that made for tremendously difficult shooting. It’s hard enough to be filming alone in a hot and open environment, but even more so when you can’t do routine things easily. I like working with small crews though; three is a really great number in my experience. It means that someone should always have their hands free to do something, or their mind free to interact with people.
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