I think the arguments were very general, and I talked to a lot of really experienced sailors who encountered Laura during the trip. A lot of people would say, “You know, I’ve been sailing my whole life and when I heard about this in the news, I thought, ‘This is so irresponsible, it’s ridiculous, it shouldn’t happen,’” and then they met her and realized that she is an exceptional person. She is by no means an argument that anyone else should do this. She happens to be uniquely skilled and gifted as a sailor, and has an intense desire to do this. It enables her to do something that you should not ever try at home. There is no other Laura Dekker on Earth, and she’s exceptionally skilled at what she’s doing. In a sense, that doesn’t entirely come through in the film because it’s all told from her perspective. She’s not going to toot her own horn and be like, “Oh, I’m the Mozart of sailing.” But what she’s done is really remarkable. Particularly, to sail around the world with no significant incident, I think, is a testament both to her skill and preparedness as a sailor, and also her and her dad’s technical skill in preparing the voyage and the boat and keeping it safe. Usually things like this require a lot more people, and in this case it was really just her and her dad planning it, with some other support. Even that in and of itself is a remarkable accomplishment.

GALO: Did you have any misgivings about a film of this kind?

JS: I came from a writing background, but a lot of the writing I did in school was with found material. So, it bore a really strong connection to the documentary process. And I think what I found so exciting about this process was surrendering control to an extent during production, and then really finding the story in post [production]. Because so much of it was happening outside my presence and outside my control, I was obviously aware of everything that was happening as it was going on and tracing it all really closely, and thinking about what scenes or events I wanted to focus on, but it wasn’t really until we were fully in post — and the trip was over — that I was able to figure out what story was told in the footage. And that was really exciting, because it wasn’t necessarily exactly what I set out to tell. And in a lot of ways, I like it better for that. And I think there were a lot of interesting and unique aspects of it that came from the fact that the filming was all up to Laura — that I didn’t tell her what to film or how to film or how often to film. It was really between her and the camera, and that relationship was so pure and kept so unadulterated throughout the process. I felt like it was my role to sort of shepherd that, and then in post, to bring it to life and make it something that people can connect to and that told the story.

GALO: Much of the film was shot by Laura — did you ask her to do this for the documentary or was it something she wanted to chronicle on her own (you mention that the film is in the tradition of cinéma vérité)? Is it “found footage” or did you commission a large portion of the filming?

SJ: It is found footage. I reached out to Laura before she went on this trip — before she even had permission to do it. And the idea of the film was always collaborative. It was never the kind of thing where she was agreeing to do exactly what I told her to do to make the film a reality. For example, when we met, we talked a lot about how we wanted to work together and what the film was going to be like, and what the process would be like. I had equipment that I had intended to provide her with, and she was more comfortable using her own camcorder for most of the filming. I felt good about that. I didn’t want to interfere too much with what made her comfortable and what felt natural to her. So the process was not your traditional filmmaker-subject relationship, but it was very much like two friends and collaborators working on a project and talking about how we want to do this, what we want our process to be, etc. So yes, she used her own camera for the whole trip, and we gave her little mounted cameras to put on the boat and a voice recorder that she would record voice diaries into, which became the narration of the film — so all of that is unscripted reflections and her just sharing her thoughts with a little sound recorder.

GALO: The quality of the presentation is very impressive, given Laura’s limited resources.

SJ: Right — there were just small things that we adjusted and consulted on. Even though I came into the project before a lot of the filming happened, the footage from her camcorder essentially has the same sort of untouched purity as found footage, even though I came to the project before it was filmed.

GALO: Do you think the film highlights universal features of growing up? Or is it more of a case study of one exceptional individual?

SJ: There are definitely elements of both. I think the reason people show up is the latter. I think people show up because it’s a really exceptional case and extraordinary person, and I think what they find is a universal story about growing up.

GALO: Was there any specific narrative you were trying to convey with Maidentrip or was it intentionally random?

JS: I don’t see it as all that free-wheeling. It’s very intentional. In a way, that allows for the experience of it being free-wheeling. Each trip is sort of designed to represent some part of her evolution and also reveal more information about her background in strategic places, so that by the climactic moment in the film, you feel like you’ve gotten to know her and you observe her journey, but also become more intimate with her and intimate with the story as it goes — so all of that is intentional.

GALO: How would you say the journey changed Laura? How would she answer the same question?

JS: I would say, for Laura as for a lot of us — and this may not be true for everybody, but it’s certainly true for Laura and I know it’s true for me — there’s always this tension between wanting to be very independent and self-reliant, and also wanting to be around people and have that be a part of your life as well, while still maintaining your own independent identity. So I think that’s something she’s figuring out. And in the film, because she’s 14, 15, 16, she makes a lot of contradictory statements that I think a lot of people continue to feel and continue to make well into their 20s and 30s. I think she’s going through something pretty universal, even though she’s doing it in such an extreme environment. The changes and discoveries about herself and about the world and relationships, I think all of those things are pretty normal. I don’t know if it’s really easy to characterize the ways that she’s changing in the film. I think it’s the kind of thing where people will see it in a lot of different ways, and maybe project a few of their own experiences on it — maybe just take away different things about that. But I always find it really hard to answer that question because I think it’s hard to simplify what it means to grow up.

In the beginning of the film, she’s already on her way to being an adult, even though she’s very young; by the end of the film, she looks older but she’s also still very much on that journey. So, I don’t know if it’s easy to say, “at the beginning she’s A and at the end she’s B.” It’s a continuous spectrum and it continues even now in her life, and I think it continues for a lot of us throughout our lives. To me, that’s one of the interesting things about the film. What does it mean to be a kid and what does it mean to be an adult? In the film, she’s associated with being youthful and playing around and acting silly. Then there are times when she seems really serious and really adult. Those are also just things that are capable of being ascribed to different behaviors. What she shows and what her journey shows is that it’s not that simple.

GALO: The sequence about the French sailor and the affinity Laura feels with him is very suggestive. Would you consider it more indicative of youthful recklessness or the value of freedom? Might it be a veiled criticism of Laura?

JS: That’s interesting — I feel like I wouldn’t be able to answer that. I think Laura should answer that.

GALO: What are you currently working on and do you have any future projects planned?

JS: I’m thinking about some projects. I’m definitely eager to get started on something else, but resistant to making something that I’m not as passionate about as I was about this. Having seen how much time and energy it takes to bring a film from idea to reality, it’s really important to me that I feel equally committed to anything new.

For more information about the film, including screenings in your area, please visit http://firstrunfeatures.com/maidentrip/.

Cincopa WordPress plugin