Reflections From Hope You Fail 

Introduction

One of my favorite documentaries is Winnebago Man. It’s got it all – it’s amusing, it’s funny, it’s riddled with some of the most poetic vulgarities ever uttered. It’s tender and kind, it highlights the absurdity of advertising and salesmanship. It revels in the challenge of making a film, but even moreso, the challenge of breaking through to another person. I wanted to make a film like that. But where would I begin? Where would I find a character and a challenge like that, in a place where I knew almost no one? Well, the internet of course.

I was browsing social media and doing lots of googling to try and find something that might suit my needs. I tried to think of unorthodox subjects or hobbies that would have quirky participants. I went down YouTube rabbitholes on pigeon racing and dialect coaching. Both interesting, but well trodden. Randomly, a tweet popped up in my feed about “this bakery in Leeds having an absolute ‘mare” over something to do with illegal sprinkles. It already had hundreds of thousands of likes.

I dug deeper into the story via the mentioned bakery’s social media handles. I was months late to this viral moment, so had plenty to catch up on. Essentially, a bakery in Leeds had been busted for using “illegal” American sprinkles on their most popular cookie, and thus, would have to stop selling them. The sprinkles were illegal due to a food coloring – E127 (aka RED 3) – that’s banned in the UK. The owner of the bakery made a huge stink about the inconvenience (predictably dubbed #Sprinklegate) to his large social media following, thus creating an even bigger stink as the controversy was engaged with and shared. It got big enough that it was covered by global media outlets in the breakfast telly / lighthearted news space. I had to find out if the man championing the banned food coloring in his beloved rainbow sprinkles via vulgar (but eloquent) social media posts was the unicorn I needed at that very moment. 

I emailed the bakery requesting contact with the owner. I received a response almost immediately and set up a zoom interview for the following day. And this is how I met my subject, Rich Myers. He was sat in a dark room in what appeared to be sweats, with headphones on, and said, “What do you wanna know?” in the most flat, disinterested affect to ever cross a video call. Trying to seem fun, legitimate, and proactive, I carried the interview in my overly bubbly advertising persona, hoping against hope that he wasn’t truly as boring as he seemed, there really was a story here, and I’d be able to count on this perfect stranger not to ruin my life.

As I floundered through that video call, struggling to get Rich to warm up to me, he mentioned that his dying father was a big motivation for his relentless pursuit of success in his business. I mentioned that my father had just passed away about six weeks ago. We had that in common – two people in different stages of grief, trying to make sense of what you’re supposed to do with your life when the most important person in the world goes and dies on you.

Pre-Production

I spent some time after our initial meeting looking into food regulations in the UK vs the US, and even interviewed a Trading Standards agent via zoom to learn more about the UK’s attitude toward potentially dubious food additives. I thought perhaps this would be a bigger part of the story, but our conversation revealed nothing too surprising. I emailed sprinkle manufacturers, hoping to get a sprinkle scientist on board, but (perhaps unsurprisingly) received no responses. I was trying to dig into the subject as deeply as possible, and also, concoct a plan B that would provide me with enough contributors and content to come at the story from a different angle in case Rich dropped out on me.

My fear that this total stranger would be unreliable was being realized early on. Rich was flaky and unpredictable, spelling trouble for the future of my film. He would not reply to messages for days, and considering that the bakery was in Leeds and required two hours of travel (plus the cost of a train ticket and accommodation) I couldn’t really gamble on getting shooting time with him. While I waited anxiously for him to commit to shooting dates, I wrote up a long list of interview questions, and stayed up late shooting slow-motion, stylized sprinkle footage. I was ready to abandon the whole idea after he’d been ignoring me for days, but in a last Hail Mary I sent him a teaser I’d made out of news footage I stole from the internet and some epic sprinkle footage I shot at my dining room table. That got his attention – now he was taking me seriously. 

We arranged that I’d come to shoot in Leeds the week of February 21st. My intention was that this visit would function mostly as research and for getting to know my subject so that I could effectively grasp his story and his persona, and potentially use this footage to sketch out the film. I had initially intended to get some friends on board as producer and DoP, but, it was proving difficult to get our schedules to line up. Fortunately, that footage and audio I captured in February looked and sounded pretty good, as Rich’s unpredictability continued and scheduling issues (in addition to travel) made production more of a challenge than I’d really hoped for.

Pre-production continued on a rolling basis as I continued planning and preparing for shoots more sporadically than I would’ve liked. Rich’s busy schedule made it difficult to get time with him, and the circumstances of my family life required me to be in the U.S. for an extended period in Spring. I was tackling my film the way that the makers of Winnebago Man tackled theirs: figuring it out as I went along, both on purpose and because I had no other choice.

Production

Because of the logistics of the story, pre-production, production, and post-production were all happening at the same time. Every time I shot footage, I dumped the media onto my drive, transcoded to proxies, and began reviewing / syncing / selecting / marking footage to better identify what else I needed to shoot or what themes and ideas needed support. 

In the first interview in Leeds in February, I shot Rich in a wide shot and covered most of the questions I had written for him. I chose this framing for the shot to show Rich in his environment, and to give myself the most possible latitude for repositioning / blowing up in post, if I needed it, since I only had one camera to shoot the interview. As a solo director and camera operator, I wanted the frame to look good and purposeful but also afford me the freedom to focus on interviewing Rich as I let the camera roll. 

He wasn’t shy about expanding on topics like his anxiety, stress, motivations, and feelings of all kinds. I didn’t end up capturing the Sprinklegate story in this setup because earlier in the day, I filmed him recording a podcast in which he explained the entire story and got into great detail about his social media strategy. Rather than make him repeat all these bullet points, I figured I’d use the podcast setup as a device that functioned even more organically than a planned out interview, if I needed it. My time with him was limited, and as much as he was willing to talk in front of the camera, it was very difficult to get and keep his attention.

After shooting at Get Baked in February, Rich convinced me to follow him to Houston, Texas for a pop-up he was doing at Fluff Bake Bar with fellow chef, Rebecca Masson. As much as I didn’t want to spend money on the airfare, and worried that this diversion had nothing to do with Sprinklegate or my character study, I didn’t want to miss out on what might be some great moments, and figured this sort of access would only benefit me. This was Rich’s first trip to the USA, and so I figured that at least was worth documenting. 

I put together a rough shot list of what I hoped to capture. Rich offered me accommodation (on an air mattress in Becky’s living room) and I booked and paid for a rental car. He offered to offset some of my airfare costs, but, I chose not to accept, as I didn’t want there to be any confusion about my purpose. I was there to document him and the pop-up, not to create social media content for his business (which he did ask me to do on occasion.) I was happy to capture and send him stills as a favor, to stay in his good graces, and because it troubled me very little to do so.

Shooting in the kitchen presented many challenges, primarily, staying out of the way and protecting my gear as Rich, Becky, and their team went about their work of preparing for and running the pop-up. I clearly posted signs on the premises to alert customers that I was filming, but tried to avoid them as much as possible on prep days, children in particular. My goal was to be as minimal a distraction as possible, both because I didn’t want to disrupt the regular course of business and because I hoped to capture observational b-roll that I knew I would need in the edit. At times I did encourage Rich to talk to me as I operated handheld, to situate what he was doing and why. Everything in the kitchen was shot handheld because the space was tight, all targets (the human subjects and the food) were constantly moving, and I wanted the film to reflect this energetic atmosphere.

The day before the pop-up, Becky fell and broke her arm. I wasn’t there when it happened, but the next day, Rich was despondent without her guidance and help. There was a lot of work to be done, and I was wracked by guilt, feeling like I should put down my camera and help to build cakes, make pies, etc., even though I’m not a paid employee and the success of the pop-up was not my responsibility. Spending as much time with Rich and Becky as I did, I consider them friends and to see them in need and not being able to help them was harder than I would’ve expected. At this point in production, I was also unsure as to what role (if any) this footage would have in the film. I knew I wanted it to look good and be dynamic. I interviewed both Rich and Becky in static, seated setups to capture clear audio, but by the time I was conducting these interviews, Becky’s broken arm catastrophe was dominating all our conversations, taking the Houston content further away from the initial intention of the film. 

After the week shooting in Houston, the next time Rich and I were able to coordinate our schedules was May. This timing overlapped with the food photography for his upcoming cookbook. I had hoped this would be a good thing and I could piggyback off what they were shooting, but instead, they were very protective and didn’t want me pointing my camera in their direction at all. They were occupying much of the kitchen and Rich’s attention, leaving me with very little to work with. I respected their request to not be filmed, but it made my week in the kitchen in Leeds extremely challenging.

I was able to interview Rich’s wife, Amy, during the May shoot. She was an invaluable contributor and answered questions candidly, offering lots of context to Rich as a person and also the events surrounding Sprinklegate and Get Baked. I also used the time that Rich was distracted to interview his staff about him and Sprinklegate, which proved very useful. In addition, I had arranged to shoot a simple reenactment of the Trading Standards visit to Get Baked, in order to have something to cut away to during the podcast interview explaining the incident. Taira Akbar connected me with Huw Jones, one of the subjects from her film, and he was willing and available to play the Trading Standards agent. Joe Meegan also volunteered to come to Leeds and help me shoot and direct the scene, which was a massive help. The other reason I chose to do a reenactment was to underscore the absurdity of the situation, and ideally, create some light humor by illustrating the event. I also wanted to poke fun at the true crime genre and the seriousness of the typical documentary that would employ a reenactment for dramatic effect.

The other goal for the May shoot was to film the much-anticipated arrival of Rich’s proprietary sprinkles. I had intended for this to book end the film – we begin with a problem (the sprinkles are taken away!) and end with the solution (he’s made his own.) I was able to film plenty of the new sprinkles, but it took some prodding to get Rich’s attention to give me even a few minutes talking to me about them. 

After the May shoot, I was sure I’d captured enough to tell the story, but in post, something was still missing. I booked another few days in June to interview Rich and capture back story about the business that was needed to add gravity to the film. I interviewed him in the car driving, since he was admittedly much more comfortable there than in a seated interview. We covered the evolution of Get Baked in great detail, though Rich often rambled and even confused himself (confirming that this story was indeed as confusing as it seemed.) Fortunately, I had enough to stitch together the most important bullet points of the story.

Post Production

I have spent my career as an editor working in short-form advertising, and very little of that experience (beyond technical know-how) translated to this project. Sure, I was very skilled at ingesting, binning, syncing, stringing, and selecting my footage. I knocked together quite a few scenes fairly quickly and easily. But when it came to piecing the whole thing together, and finding the ideal structure, flow, and story beats for the film, I found it far more challenging than I expected. Part of what was the most difficult thing about it was working alone. Filmmaking is a collaborative medium for good reason. I found that being the only person who knew what I had shot (and therefore what was available to go into the edit) left me with no one to consult on how best to move forward when I got stuck. I was fortunate to have many friends who watched cuts with me and made suggestions, but ultimately, as the producer / director / DP / editor, only I had the knowledge to solve the edit’s problems. Often, the problems themselves were hard to identify.

At first, I waffled about how much of myself to include in the story. Winnebago Man features quite a lot of the filmmaker. And when I watch documentaries, I often find myself preferring films that include a very explicit presence from behind the camera. I wanted to lean into the quick friendship that Rich and I developed in the course of filming, because I was finding the moments of us interacting to be among the most engaging, funny, and charming. I also wanted to include the commonality about our father’s deaths, because I think it’s a big part of why we connected so well. We did discuss grief at times, but based on the feedback I got after our industry pitch, I decided that it was too heavy and out of line with the Sprinklegate story that most people latched onto.

The Houston footage presented a problem. I had 5 days worth, but in the grand scheme of the Sprinklegate story and the character study of Rich, it was hard to make sense of. I had tons of great scenes and moments, but they needed to remain situated in Houston geographically and chronologically, otherwise it was seriously confusing. I went through the effort of cutting a whole version that centered on the Houston story, and used observational moments in Becky’s kitchen to unfold the same information as in my “main cut”. Again I screened for people and the feedback helped me abandon the idea and forge ahead with what was becoming the main structure of the film.

I considered more issues of ethics in editing than in shooting. Would I edit this film to make Rich out to be a workaholic, someone who is desperately addicted to their phone, and in the process of acting on his digital obsession, ignoring his family? I had plenty of clips where Amy, tone visibly changing, describes how Rich’s attachment to his phone is a problem. I had numerous instances of Rich himself saying it’s not healthy and it makes him miserable. I did cuts where I tried including these moments, in an attempt to raise the stakes as if our “hero” had to overcome this insidious problem within himself, but, in the end it struck me as a common issue. And if my goal was to paint social media as a double edged sword, I hope I was successful in doing so in a more suggested, indirect way. It seemed easy and perhaps lazy even to use the most damning admissions a person makes about themselves or their loved one, the sort of thing that would happen in reality TV. It felt important to me to extend grace to my subjects, and also to depict them as complicated. When you consider that a film, like anything that exists digitally, may outlast a person’s memory, I felt a great responsibility to create a multi-dimensional portrait of this person that they would not feel regret or shame about. This is a film, but it’s also a record of who this person was at this point in their life, and it’s important to me that they are represented fairly.

Ultimately, my difficulty in the edit was the hardest thing about making this film. I could forgive errors or struggles in shooting, prepping, directing, etc…. after all, I’m an editor. So to be sitting there in what is supposed to be my element, and running out of ideas and feeling utterly hopeless that I’d ever figure out what was wrong and how to fix it was inexcusable. I was a total fraud. If I couldn’t edit my own film, well then, I might as well just hang it up.

Conclusion

This year was probably the hardest of my life. And making this film was a big part of that. In retrospect, I don’t think there’s much I would do differently. In a perfect world, I would’ve had more time to shoot and edit, and in truth, I will probably make some more changes before I am completely done with the film. To reflect upon what I learned – I think I got much better at taking notes and reaching out for help / feedback, I learned about planning and ideating for a project (and that I’d like to improve on both), and I learned that editing, even if you’re good at it, is really really hard. Through the course of this year I was reminded that the whole point of practice is to challenge yourself, and that sometimes you’re supposed to struggle and feel like you’re failing. As much as it was hard, and I did struggle, I’m pretty happy with how the project turned out, and proud that I did overcome the many challenges I set before myself.

It’s like my dad used to say, “if you’re going through hell, keep going.”