My Filmviews interviews… Tom Putnam & Brenna Sanchez

Tom Putnam & Brenna Sanchez are the directors/producers of the feature documentary Burn, told through the eyes of Detroit firefighters, who are charged with the thankless task of saving a city that many have written off as dead.

What made you decide to make a documentary about the Detroit Fire Department?
The film is dedicated to a Detroit firefighter named Walter Harris. In late 2008 I read a news story about Walter, who was killed fighting a fire in an abandoned building in Detroit. I called Brenna Sanchez, who is a filmmaker friend from Detroit, and she called me about an hour later from a Detroit firehouse. We started by asking ourselves why someone would risk their lives fighting a fire in an abandoned building in a city that has over 80,000 abandoned structures, and the answers turned out to be much more nuanced than we thought. Then in 2009 we went out with a small film crew and filmed two 24-hour shifts with Engine Company 50, which is the jumping off point for our film. We went to 21 structure fires with them, which is more fires than some suburban firefighters will see in their entire career. After that we knew we had to stick with this and tell their story.

What specific challenges did filming fires bring and what kind of equipment was used?
No one had ever filmed fires in a meaningful way before. No one had sent cameras into fires. So we tried a number of different cameras and techniques to capture it since we knew we wanted to show firefighting from the point of view of the guys running into the burning buildings. We ultimately ended up using Contour HD helmet cameras to go into the buildings, and Canon 5d and 7d DSLR cameras to film the more traditional documentary footage. We approached the fires like a sporting event, and used a combination of action sports camerapeople and traditional documentary shooters to cover the scenes.

What was your goal with this documentary?
We wanted viewers to experience what it was like to spend a year embedded with these guys. Their jobs are so much more dangerous, and so much different, than what we all see on the news or in fiction films and tv shows. We want the audience to get to know these brave people and think twice the next time a ballot measure or millage is proposed to cut funding for first responders. We didn’t start with that agenda, but you can’t spend a year showing what these guys are up against and not feel that way.

Burn was shot over the period of the year, which must have resulted in a lot of footage. How did you decide what to use and create a story out of it?
We filmed over a thousand hours of footage, and began by filming a huge number of characters since we didn’t know who would have something meaningful or dramatic happen to them over the course of the year. We were probably half-way through filming before the “main” characters began rising to the surface. The film ultimately had three primary editors and three additional editors, and we cut for over a year. We took the 30 or 40 people we filmed extensively and boiled it down to three main characters whose stories intertwine and tell the story of the department. And we found that these individuals, the fire department, and the city as a whole all have a common theme: Change. That became the central theme of our film: how do you adapt to change in order to survive and move forward?

Detroit has the image of being quite a violent city, where there are a lot of abondoned buildings (as Burn also shows) and through the years there were some movies shot making use of that image. Burn shows part of the issues that the city is struggling with (like insufficient funding). A few years ago Johny Knoxville presented a documentary called Detroit Lives which shows the enterpreneurship within the city. What is your experience of those two sides? Is there a balance?
Detroit’s a tough town. We certainly saw our share of violence and despair. There are positive changes and businesses moving into the city, but to be honest it’s a drop in the bucket, and it’s happening in a very small section of a sprawling city. The money that’s been coming in isn’t trickling down to most of the residents. For us, the firefighters represent the truly hopeful side of the city. They’re the ones who see the city’s darkest corners and still come back, day after day, resolved that they can make a difference. It’s a complicated issue, and one that many people are trying to solve. It’s more complicated than trying to entice businesses to relocate to the city. It took 60+ years to create the situation in Detroit today, and it’s going to take a tremendous amount of money, time, and willpower to work through it.

The firefighters have a very tough job and they must have been cautious about filming, what were their thoughts once they saw Burn?
When we first showed up they were very cautious. Detroit can be a magnet for bad press, and for some reason the fire department itself often receives bad press. But after a while they heard the questions we were asking, saw where our cameras were pointed, and figured that this was an opportunity to share their story and show the world what they do. It became a true collaboration. They’re our cameramen inside the fires, they’re our narrators and our stars. We sometime joke with them that it’s their movie, we were just making it. And, like us, they’ve been amazed at the outpouring they’ve seen now that the film’s been released. We’ve played BURN all around the world, and people everywhere respond to it and ask what they can do to help.

You also got access to Fire Commissioner Donald Austin, who had to make some very tough decisions with his limited budget while keeping his workforce believing in him. It is clear that he faces a huge challenge. Do you think he will be able to make the necessary changes to battle the problems he faces?
We went through four fire commissioners making this film before Commissioner Austin was hired. As you see in the film, his relationship with the fire department can be very contentious. But on the flip side, he gave us access that no one before would ever agree to. He let us come home with him and film him during his toughest moments. He never asked us to take anything out of the film, even if it made him look like “the bad guy.” And he’s been incredibly supportive of the film because he feels it can do good for the department. I don’t think anyone, including the commissioner, knows if he’ll be able to turn things around. There’s simply no money. But he’s still there and he’s still working every day to try and find new ways to make this department survive.

What have you learned about firefighting that you didn’t know before?
Everything. Neither one of us had any experience with the fire service before making this film. And now, five years later, we’ve been to hundreds of fire calls and some our best friends are firefighters! As civilians, we all assume that our first responders are taken care of, that they have the training and infrastructure to do their jobs. But it turns out that’s not always the case. Ultimately, BURN isn’t a film about Detroit. It’s a film about the people you want to come to YOUR house when there’s a fire, the challenges they face, and what they need to do their jobs effectively.

If there is anything else you want people to know about the documentary?
A portion of all our proceeds go to purchasing new equipment for Detroit firefighters. You can view the trailer of Burn and buy copies of the film at detroitfirefilm.org

You can read my review of Burn here.