Democracy in Action-An Interview with Director Jerreth Merz

I want to take a break from retro lovin’ to share with you an interview that I had the privilege of conducting with a filmmaker, Jerreth Merz. Merz recently filmed “An African Election”, a touching documentary that follows the trials and tribulations of the 2008 Elections in Ghana, from the campaigns to the polling process, to the final decision. It is a must see for any American who may take for granted our everyday comforts, especially when watching the candidates promise to deliver very basic needs  for their people-like clean water or adequate shelter.

 Trailer for "An African Election" by Jerreth Merz

As a Television Production major I am interested in learning first hand about any aspect of production. I was first exposed to Jerreth Merz after viewing his very inspirational TED Talks presentation, so imagine how excited I was when I was selected to bombard him with my many questions, which he was ever so gracious to answer.

Here are a few:

Q : First of all thanks for giving us the privilege of speaking with you. I’m a television production student and one of the first questions I would like for you to do is to give us some insight on your career path. How did you get started in filmmaking?

Merz: My beginning, let’s see… my beginning was a coincidence. I wanted to go into medicine and become a doctor, but I for some reason decided that I wanted to stall a little, after high school. But while I was contemplating- not knowing what I really going to do,-heard about an acting school in Switzerland. I actually enrolled there and I got in. So I started acting, and that was the beginning. At some point I decided that that was the path for me, that was the way I wanted to express myself. Then I discovered directing, so I was doing theater… then moved into television acting and film acting and moved into the documentary-“An African Election”whole documentary process. So it was coincidence but I have come to find out that it wasn’t a coincidence. It was meant to be.

Q. Could you tell us about the pre production process you had to go through to make a documentary where you are filming it as it happens?

One of the key factors of course was financing-how do you get the money together to support your idea, because it’s crucial. (Factors like) what kind of cameras will you be using, what kind of sound equipment are you going to be using, what kind of people do you want to hire? What’s the post-production process going to look like? Are we going to take this digital format and transfer it onto film? So

the whole pre production process was the idea of  trying to figuring out what exactly you are going to do. Once we had that established we could start.

Q. One thing that I really did like about the movie is that you really did get a sense of the emotional chords…the tension building, the happiness, at some points the anger. How did easy or difficult for you to go about capturing that?

A. Well the story was linear-it was the elections from beginning to end. And filming in Ghana was such a treat because people were so excited. I think if I had been filming the elections in the U.S. , or say Switzerland, people would not have been so excited. But there it was a party on the street, people were dancing, people were screaming, so when you see that you’re like, “Oh my goodness, this is a gift.” So you have to capture it and we did…

Q. What’s next for Jerreth Merz?

A. Well, “An African Election” is the first of a trilogy. We intend on filming the upcoming election this year as the second installment…you know their elections come at the same time as U.S. elections, just a month afterwards. We want to possibly touch on women’s role in the political process.

Q. That sounds fantastic. I wish you well. Again, thanks so much for joining us at SCAD today. It was a pleasure!

A. Same here…and good luck in your endeavors.