Hoffman on his “Documentaries in the early days…”

It was a time not so long ago really, but it seems like a long time ago, when everything that you saw on television was new to you. During the late 1960s, audiences looked with fascination at how a house was built, how the garbage was collected, what a stockbroker or a fireman did on the job. Audiences stuck with 30-60 minute TV programs on each of these subjects, because they had never seen them before.

People had never been filmed before and most people didn’t really know what they looked like on film. I took my 49 pound Auricon 16mm camera, outfitted with my special homemade shoulder brace, and went into the streets to do something called “man on the street interviews,” a technique where you approached people, ask questions on film, then carefully edited the results. Editing was (and still is) very important because most people either had nothing to say or too much to say. Man on the street interviews are still widely used on TV today.

During this time, there was a PBS series called The American Dream Machine that presented films about real people. These documentaries, if well produced, were very interesting because they depended on the people in front of the camera to be dramatic, to hold the audience. These ordinary/extraordinary people became known to millions of viewers who went out of their way to see them.

I made several shows for The American Dream Machine. One was called The Piano Movers, a short film about guys who move grand pianos into and out of small apartments in New York City. In this film, I employed a technique that I have used many times - using sync sound to add drama in unusual ways.