How Did You... with Emma D. Miller (The School of Canine Massage)

On dogs and documentary shorts

In honor of the fact that today (April 11th) is National Pet Day, I am pleased to be sharing the Substack World Premiere of Emma D. Miller’s short documentary The School of Canine Massage. The film originally premiered at SXSW 2024 and has been traveling the festival circuit until its release today as a Vimeo Staff Pick. (You can also find it on American Airlines and Kanopy!)

I wanted to share the film — because it’s a very nice watch with some very good dogs — and also ask Emma a few questions about documentary film, the unique challenges and perks of working in nonfiction, transitioning from documentary producer to documentary director, and what’s next for her.

Full disclosure: I produced this film! My dog is in it! And Emma and I are married!

NEPOTISM ALERT!

See our FULL INTERVIEW RIGHT AFTER YOU WATCH THE 11MIN FILM.

At a unique training program in Southern California, people heal dogs and dogs heal people.

Directed by Emma D. Miller

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Emma D. Miller’s films have screened at dozens of festivals around the world, including Venice, Toronto, and SXSW, and have been supported by organizations including Sundance Institute, Impact Partners, Anonymous Content, Field of Vision, and Ford Foundation. Recent projects include MISTRESS DISPELLER (directed by Elizabeth Lo), nominated for three Cinema Eye Honors awards and winner of 15 festival prizes, which will be distributed by Oscilloscope later this year; and Gotham Award-nominated WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND (directed by Iliana Sosa), acquired by ARRAY Releasing and Netflix. Named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” and one of DOC NYC’s “40 Under 40,” Emma was a 2023 Sundance Producers Fellow and 2024 JFI Filmmaker in Residence.

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Can you give us the sort of "origin story" of The School of Canine Massage as a project? Where and when did it start?

I was itching to direct a short. And I wanted to make something that could have a sense of humor and playfulness to it, that would be fun to make and also contained enough to be feasible with my schedule given everything else I was working on. You and I were out to dinner with friends who were telling us how they were looking for an acupuncturist to help with their elderly dog’s joint pain, and they had found someone local who had trained at the Ojai School of Canine Massage.

[Shoutout to fellow substacker Kevin Lincoln of Good Moves]

I was surprised and delighted to learn that 1) dogs could get acupuncture and 2) there was a place where people could go to train to become dog masseuses.

I could instantly picture the visuals of what a short set in that space might look like, and I also had a bit of skepticism about what the program would entail (do dogs really need massage?!). That was enough of a question and curiosity to prompt me to reach out to the school, and thus begin! I’ll say that what I discovered at the school was that there was a real kind of exchange taking place, and I’m always interested in the ways people connect and make meaning in their lives.

When did you know you had a good idea worth putting the resources into making? How do you know something is a good idea in general?

There is a certain leap of faith that’s required with getting started on any creative project, particularly for documentary. In this case, we had some initial conversations with the owners of the school, which was as much us attempting to build trust and convince them that we might be good collaborators to document their work, as it was us feeling out what types of characters we might encounter, what we might actually be able to film taking place during the program, and what kind of tone we’d be able to bring out in this material. From there we did a series of casting calls with students, as initially we weren’t sure whether all of the participants in the class were going to want to be featured, and we wanted to learn more about each of their backstories and what drew them to want to enroll in this training.

It’s easier in some ways with a short documentary because a portrait of a place or a snapshot of a world can be sufficiently interesting to hold a viewer’s attention for 10 minutes or so. I think there’s a higher bar to clear in terms of narrative complexity, access, potential story beats, stakes, etc. when you’re trying to develop a feature — particularly if you’re thinking about a more narrative-driven (dare I say “commercial”) kind of approach. But you don’t always know until you get started, and sometimes you’re just moving on intuition, particularly in verite docs.

Run us through how you got into working in documentary film. What was your first paid job in the industry? Did you always know where you wanted to end up?

I grew up doing theater, so I’ve always been interested both in creative collaboration and storytelling. I ended up going to Duke for undergrad on a scholarship. Duke isn’t exactly known for its arts, at least not when I was there, but they had an amazing Center for Documentary Studies, which even coming in as a freshman was super interesting to me. I took a lot of classes in nonfiction writing, audio documentary, and fieldwork methods. I didn’t really do very much film production, but it was all about learning how to harness my innate curiosity about other people into something narratively cogent, and learning how to talk about, analyze, and speak to the ethics of documentary work. I actually was on a radio path for a while and did a bunch of internships at various public media radio shows (this was pre-podcasting boom) before ending up back in my college town where I got a job as a programmer at the amazing documentary festival Full Frame. That was my first film-related job out of college and I learned so much watching hundreds of new docs a year, corresponding with other filmmakers, executives, sales agents, and distributors, and thinking about how work can reach an audience. That crystallized in me an interest in actually working as an independent filmmaker myself.

I was lucky enough to build a ton of relationships during that time. So when I was thinking about making a pivot from programming to filmmaking, I remember I just cold emailed a few filmmakers I admired and asked to chat about their work. I’ve done that several times at key transitional moments in my career, and have always been blown away by the generosity and connections people are willing to make to help each other out. My first job as an associate producer on a documentary short (that went on to be Oscar-nominated) came through this kind of cold outreach.

Did you always want to be making your own films as the director, or was that a more recent change for you? What prompted you to recalibrate your career goals?

I think on some level I’ve always wanted to be a director. But I also have a bit of a personality where I feel like I need to be over-prepared, so I felt like for a long time I needed to learn more, have more experience, and frankly have more of a financial safety net before I could step into that role. In the meantime I did a ton of other roles in documentary: film festival programmer, casting associate, creative executive, producer. The reality is that all of that experience has ultimately informed my ability to start directing my own films, and maybe expedited the process of knowing how to get that work made and seen. In retrospect the only factor that was really legitimate in keeping me from taking the plunge into directing sooner was the feeling that I needed more of a financial safety net — that really has helped (thanks, Colby, for earning those Hollywood bucks), and is the not-so-secret secret of many directors!

You have a feature-length documentary, Father Figures, that’s currently in production. Can you tell us what that is, and how that came together?

A couple of years ago after retiring from his longtime job as a theater professor, my dad got really into ventriloquism. It pretty rapidly evolved from him having recorded conversations with one dummy that he’d occasionally email me with zero context, to him amassing a collection of two dozen dummies and recording and posting videos on a public instagram account where he has intimate conversations about things that he’s never discussed with me before.

I kept describing this to people, just as a funny story I would tell about my dad, and they would say “Oh my god, you need to make a film about that.” I would dismiss the idea because in my head there wasn’t a story there, it was just a fact that made me uncomfortable. But as his videos got more and more revealing, I started to think about why they were making me so uncomfortable. It was in part because these were things my dad and I hadn’t talked about before, and frankly, because there was so much that had been left unsaid in our relationship, which had been fractured after my parents’ acrimonious divorce.

I started to think maybe there was something to the idea of using film to examine our relationship as reflected and refracted through this new hobby of my dad’s. I wasn’t sure whether there really was a film there, but in some ways asking him to be on camera initially just gave us an excuse to connect, and it sort of evolved from there.

Starting out I thought this all might simply become another short, but as I discovered how the camera and the puppets catalyzed certain conversations and illuminated certain longstanding dynamics in our relationship — my dad’s performativity, my inability to tell him how I really feel, the way we’ve always bonded through a process of creative collaboration and play — all these new layers ended up getting introduced. And once we had dummies of ourselves made? LOTS of new narrative possibilities.

You are also IN the film. What has it been like making a documentary film as the director, producer, and one of the subjects?

Really terrible. No, that’s overstating it, but it’s very challenging. I think I have a hard time in general, just as a person, being in my body and feeling present. And in many ways having to be thinking about both allowing yourself to have an authentic emotional experience while simultaneously making sure we’re on schedule and getting the coverage we need is… uh… not easy. But that has also become part of the film. Me as a character and an artist grappling with my own instinct to put on a face, and to want to narrativize things neatly.

The process has also involved a lot of trust in collaborators. Having cinematographers who are also amazing directors in their own right, and have the understanding of the vision for the project and the instincts for what to shoot when I can’t be standing next to them directing. Working with my husband (you!) as a producer who is really tuned in to both what me and my dad are experiencing emotionally, and is willing to put up with all of my neuroses and needs for reassurance throughout the process, as well as our other producer Florrie Priest, who totally gets my creative vision and can pick up the ball when I need to slip more into the “protagonist” role. And the editing team that we’re going to be working with — I just know I’m going to feel both challenged and held by them. And that was really important to find.

It has to be uniquely challenging to switch back and forth.

Sometimes I’ll have a really emotional experience on camera and then the next day have a pitch meeting where I find myself being like “This hurtful thing that happened could totally be a powerful Act Two climax.” I’m still working on giving myself permission to feel and process everything fully, and recognize that sometimes I need to turn off the “Producer Brain” because it’s not always psychologically healthy to be thinking of every element of my life as story, or putting pressure on myself to know exactly what everything means. At the same time I’m well aware that my ability to be in that producer role and speak about the project the way that I have has also unlocked funding and support… so it’s a bit of a catch-22.

Everyone in Hollywood is bemoaning how hard it is to get something made right now. So how have you been able to make this film?

I think the fact that I have been a producer first has been really, really, really helpful. I’m a first-time feature director but I’m coming in with a decade of industry relationships and a track record of projects being produced and critically received at a high level. I also think from having worked as a creative exec I know how to talk to funders. I know the questions that they’re going to ask, and can come into pitch meetings knowing how to answer them and how to mitigate concerns they might have about making a strange personal film involving puppets that does not feature any celebrities or ripped-from-the headlines stories.

But I also think that I’ve really tried to have Father Figures feel unique. There’s a sense of playfulness to it that I think is true of the canine massage short, as well. We’re trying to do something that hasn’t been seen before by using these dummies in really visually (and psychologically) surprising ways. I think fundamentally I do want to make films that people want to watch, and that also feel meaningful. That, along with the relationships that I’ve spent a decade building up, has helped me to get support behind this project.

With The School of Canine Massage, for what it’s worth, it was an exercise in investing in myself, calling in favors, and making professional trades (“I’ll make you a budget and help write a deck and give you a list of potential funders in exchange for you shooting on my film”). In an economy of scarcer resources, I think we should have more of a barter system with our friends and collaborators.

One of the things I’ve really liked and found refreshing about documentary is that it sort of inverts the order in which the fiction film process happens, and you can just START. Can you talk about how the process and order of operations is different from fiction?

I think with documentary you can just start shooting and not really know what it’s going to be. That isn’t entirely the approach that I’ve wanted to take in my projects. Which is my producer brain speaking. But it is kind of the inverse of the fiction film approach — you amass a bunch of footage and material and then you sit down to say “great, now it’s time to write the movie.” There are a million different stories you can tell within the raw material.

There’s something exciting about that to me, but also I often feel envious of my fiction friends where once they have the greenlight to go make something, the process from shoot to edit to release seems impossibly streamlined compared to the typical doc process. Unless you’re in the increasingly infrequent position of having a doc project fully financed from the beginning, most of the time in nonfiction you are iteratively moving forward as you get a little bit more money, a little bit more support.

I will say that both Canine Massage and Father Figures gave me a lot of control over when we were shooting. Canine Massage was neatly contained to a five-day class, and with Father Figures, outside of a few time-sensitive events like an annual ventriloquist convention, I’ve mostly been in charge of when me and my dad are filming together, which has suited the intermittent nature of fundraising.

What do you wish you’d known earlier as a documentary filmmaker? Anything you wish someone had told you years ago that would have saved you a lot of trouble?

Where my brain goes is that I wish I’d started directing a few years earlier, before the documentary bubble had totally burst. I think directors that had successful indie films during a very particular period then became the names that ended up on every production company and streamer’s list of people to hire for jobs going forward. But I also feel like my path has been right for me, and I don’t know that I am the person who’d want to be directing true crime or true con anyway, so we’ll just have to see what happens.

I do wish I had invested in myself sooner though. Younger Emma, you don’t need to know everything to get started.

[Note from Colby: I think this is really great advice for all filmmakers! Nobody knows everything! Just get started!]

How would you describe your taste in documentary, and your goals as a documentary filmmaker?

I am drawn to films that reflect something back about who we are and how we connect with one another. There are a lot of really powerful social issue documentaries, but for me I mostly tend to want to watch and make the films where I feel like I’m being pulled into a world I haven’t gotten to experience before, where there’s some process of discovery happening, and I come out the other side feeling differently about what it means to be a human navigating all of the beauties and complexities of life. I also just love when docs have a sense of humor, which is less common than you’d think given how strange and funny life is.

I’m still working as a producer. And want to continue to collaborate with other filmmakers who have unique voices and ways of seeing the world. And where I feel like I’m going to learn something through our time together. I want to get to work with artists who have a lens into humanity, whose work makes me feel things, who look at the world and see things in ways that I can’t or don’t automatically.

How can readers help with Father Figures?

I mean, we’re still fundraising, if anyone wants to make a tax-deductible donation via our fiscal sponsor. Otherwise we’d love for you to follow us on Instagram, or be in touch if you have any interest in collaborating in an in-kind or discounted way as we move into post-production.

There’s a cool new initiative called The Nonfiction Hotlist, modeled after The Black List in the fiction world, and we were excited to be one of a couple dozen projects chosen to be featured on that list. If you check out their page here you can see a list of some of the very specific production and post needs we have, as well as ways you can help all these other amazing projects trying to make it over the finish line.

Filmmaking, it’s a team sport!