Documentary Making as Storytelling: An Interview with Danielle Wirsansky, Ph.D. candidate

Danielle Wirsansky, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the History department is writing her dissertation on the experiences of women spies during World War II. On top of being a historian, Danielle is also an award-winning dramatist, photographer, and videographer. This year, she has included documentary-making in her storytelling repertoire. In this interview, she takes us through her professional journey.

What drew you to documentary making?

Storytelling has always been important to me. It has shaped my choice of dissertation research. I ask myself: what stories do I want to tell, and how do I want to tell them?

Videography has been a tempting option for a long time. After theater and photography, it seemed the natural next step. Way back in eighth grade, I made my first documentary. It was a behind-the-scenes account of a play that I was acting in, “Chamber Music” by Arthur Kopit. The play features eight women from different historical periods interned together in a lunatic asylum. I played a woman who thought she was Osa Johnson, the American explorer and documentary maker.

I did the next documentary in 11th and 12th grade. I created it for my Gold Award project in the Girl Scouts. It was a historical documentary about Jewish World War II veterans in Jacksonville, Florida. I was able to tell my late grandfather’s story as well as those of other veterans in the community. I received the Scout of the Year Award for the state of Florida for that documentary. This project cemented my love for the histories of World War II.

Yet, when you came to FSU for undergrad, you studied Theater – not film making. Why?

I had already switched to theater in high school. The oral histories I had collected for the documentary, I turned those into a play. As my play also won awards, I felt that I was successful in that genre. I was unsure about the quality of my work in the realms of photography and videography, and it took me several years until I thought of myself as good enough to be a professional photographer. Videography is a whole different ball game again, and I just did not think I had the skill set to produce work to the caliber that I aspired to.

When I started my photography business and had studio space to work in and conduct interviews, I felt more secure to tackle documentary-making and videography as well. I had a lot of ideas for making films, but it wasn’t until last December when I won an oral history grant from the History department to interview Margot Graebert, a Holocaust survivor, that I decided to tell her story in documentary format. Graebert had never been interviewed before.

Is that the only documentary you are working on?

No, I am also completing two others. One is a short documentary on the Haserot Angel in Cleveland’s Lakeview Cemetery. The angel is a gravestone sculpture on the plot of the Haserot family. When I travelled to Cleveland to interview Graebert, I had time at the end of each day to explore the city, and I fell in love with this sculpture. It is famous because the angel has a chemical reaction with snow in the winter which makes it look like it is weeping. I was intrigued by the history of the statue, and since I could not find anything scholarly on it, I decided to tell the story of the family and the sculptor.

The third documentary is a behind-the-scenes account of the making of my musical "The Hock-Cock-A-Mook Islands" which I wrote, directed, and produced last year. It was a queer musical, and I had a lot of archival footage, interviews with the cast and crew, and so I thought – why not make a documentary out of it?

I am fortunate that most of the actual filming for the three projects is complete. It is my job to develop an outline of the documentaries and collate the rough cuts of the films based on the outlines. I’ll splice the different footages together to tell the story I want. Nothing is perfectly crafted at this point – it is more an approximation of my plan. My partner in 3 Muses Photography, Donald, adds the special effects; he color corrects the film, he makes sure the audio is crystal clear. So, he takes my rough cut and makes it perfect. We repeat this process for every documentary.

The documentary on the Haserot angel will be short-form content, ca. 30 minutes in length. I am doing the voiceover but will not appear in the film. The interview with Graebert will be a long-form documentary. We are aiming at 60 to 90 minutes. I will include experts on the Rosenstrasse and the Holocaust alongside her filmed testimony. I am not sure yet how much of me there will be in that film.

How did you improve your documentary making skill set?

I studied filmmaking through different courses, for example LinkedIn courses. I had to learn video-specific editing software, which took me a moment, but it was a worthwhile investment.

I also spent some time watching documentaries. My philosophy is that if you want to get better at something, you need to immerse yourself in it. If you want to make documentaries, you need to watch a lot of documentaries to see what kind of narration appeals to you and establish what you can film with the equipment you have available.

I also did oral history training through the History department’s graduate program. It taught me how to interview people and how to lead conversations in the desired direction. Because when filming an interview, I need my interviewee to tell the story, which is not always easy.

What is it like to interview a person over multiple days on an emotionally charged topic?

I really enjoyed the experience of talking with Margot Graebert. She reminded me of my grandmother, and I think the longer we were with her, the deeper our bond grew. Listening to her stories, I was able to make a lot of connections to things I knew about. I did not just go through a written list of questions, I was listening and responding to her talking.

At the end of the interview process, Graebert said that although it was hard for her to share her story, she was very grateful that we had come to speak with her. That even if we did not finish the documentary, she was glad that she could revisit her memories, think of details about her parents, for example, that she hadn’t thought of for decades. Even though there were bad memories, there were a lot of good ones too.

Our bond grew really strong. I have remained in contact; we speak on the phone every month. She asks me: “When is that documentary going to be done? I am going to die soon, you know.”

I will be depositing the interview recordings with the Rosenstrasse Foundation.

What advice would you give to others about storytelling and documentary making?

Don’t wait for someone else to tell the story. Take a shot at it yourself. While it helps to have special training and equipment, sometimes you just have to do it, and you can’t wait until everything is perfect. If there's a story that interests you, that you think is important to be told, then don't wait for somebody else to tell it.

When I study the Holocaust, I know that the survivors will not be around for much longer. If I want to have them tell their stories in their own words, there is only a limited time to do that. I want to do so many different documentaries about World War II and the Holocaust, and if I wait too much longer, I will have to rely on archival footage only. Sometimes it is better to do it, even if it isn’t the best thing ever – because that way it exists.