ARCHIVE: Family
Editor Monique Zavistovski was 8 months pregnant with her first child when she innocently agreed to cut Circus Rosaire. Director Robyn Bliley wasn’t a mother, so couldn’t have known just how optimistic Zavistovski’s commitment really was, or how central the Baby Chloe would become to post production. You’ll hear filmmakers talk about family—that’s how close things sometimes get making some films. But among filmmaker family stories, the making of Circus Rosaire, stands out. First, the documentary (screening at Slamdance) is about a family—the Circus Rosaire family, both human and animal. The director and DP Chad Wilson have been married for 10 years, in business together as the LA-based Progressive Productions for six.
Bliley had known the Rosaire family since she was 6 years old, so her five years of access to the family was an act of trust.
And then there was the edit. Bliley changing diapers in Zavistovski’s small apartment while the editor worked. When Zavistovski nursed Chloe, Bliley looked at cuts, or the three of them sat in front of the computer, Zavistovksi’s left hand around Chloe, right hand on the mouse. “Chloe didn’t sleep,” Bliley says, “she maybe napped a half hour a day—and that was my job, soothing her, begging her to sleep. She was so steeped in the sounds of the circus, the lions and tigers, the elephants, the monkeys, that those were some of her first words.” At a year old, Chloe sat rapt through the first screening, lulled by the familiar sounds of her own infancy.
Wilson started shooting in 2002 with what the couple could afford: Mini DV. By 2003 Progressive Productions bought a Panasonic SDX900 for their work on the Sessions at AOL live music series. That camera also doubled on Circus Rosaire–Wilson liked the widescreen for his sprawling, theatrical subject.
With help from Aaron Linecker, late of Technicolor, now Apple, the couple got an uprez they were happy with, including decent intercutting with the mini DV and an array of archival footage—VHS, Super 8, etc—“a mosaic of textures”.
“This was a true independent,” Wilson says. “We made it with spare money on our days off.” They cut on Final Cut Pro with a not-ideal system of daisy chained drives (no failures). Bliley did all the logging, prepping and organizing herself—over 1000 clips from five years of footage. “Each of the characters could have been their own movie, but there was no clear narrative, we came into their life in progress and we left it in progress,” she says. “The challenge was picking the beautiful and authentic narrative out of the footage, finding the diamond in the rough.”
The Rosaire family saw the first frame of footage when a rough cut of the film won the audience award at the Sarasota Film Festival. Chloe had seen more of it than they had.
