We are back up singers， 我們全是

Access
  I think the most successful aspect of 「Twenty Feet from Stardom」 is its choice of subject: back-up singers. Like Morgan Neville said in class that there are so little was known about them, no books, no films. This film "is not the last word, it's the first word." The idea comes from producer of this terrific film, Gil Freisen, who used to be President of A&M Records. Gil went to see a Leonard Cohen concert in 2009 and was touched by the way Leonard Cohen let his back-up singer shine on stage. He ended up spend the whole concert watching these back-up singers and decided to make a film about them. Morgan Neville said: 「Gil was the ultimate back-up singer. He spent his career making people stars and never taking credit himself.」 It’s very said that Gil past away from complications due to leukemia before the film premiered. Morgan also identify with back-up singers. He said: 「I made films about other people forever and have labored for twenty years doing this」 (Comingsoon.com). Not only Gil and Morgan, lots of us are back-up singers. Finding a subject that is barely touched and is important to be covered is so hard nowadays.
        
Editing
   I love the opening animation where they covered the singer’s head with colorful dots letting us to notice that there are a lot more on stage besides them. The 紐約 Times named it 「A Dot Tribute for Singers of 『Doo do Doo』」 (紐約 Times).
   I feel that Morgan is more like an editor instead of a director. He had a few editors but the structure of the film is totally his idea. Managing such a large amount of interviews, archives must be hard but he presents us a clear thesis. Morgan said: 「I wanted to find a group of singers whose experiences echoed each other, but they came from different generations, they had different reactions to their experiences, and they connected with certain hit songs or certain big moments in music history.」 It only took him ten months to cut the film because he is an organized person. I remember him sharing his way of organizing and labeling materials in class. He sees those materials from a higher perspective.
   He is very focused. He mentioned: 「I made the decision that I wasn』t going to talk about girl groups and I wasn』t going to talk about Nashville, I wasn』t going to talk about the expatriated backup singers in England. I wanted it to be about these African-American voices that came into popular music and changed something」(Filmmaker Magazine). The film turned out to be exactly how he wanted it to be.
   He is very calm and he is not attached to footages or his subjects. He said: 「The hardest part of making this film was opening it and eliminating things from it that I thought couldn』t make the film and I had to come to a definition of what backup singers I was going to talk about in this film.」 It is hard to do but he did a wonderful job.
    I think he also balanced the stage scenes and real life scenes well. It’s not only a story about back-up singers because of the specific group he chooses 「African American women」. There is a scene when 麗莎 is driving. She starts to talk about family and relationship, imaging a different life with kids. It really hit me. It says a lot about these back-singers lives as woman.

Gift
  Morgan was asked about why didn』t he make a narrative film. He said: 「Non-fiction or documentaries can tell any kind of a story because they don』t have to adhere to the rules of what’s possible. When you』re making something up, you have to say, 「Well, this is what would happen here,」 but in reality, stuff happens that seems impossible. I feel like there’s randomness in real life that too many Hollywood movies just shave off」（Collider）.
   I really like what he said. He kept the randomness in his film, the randomness that makes the film authentic.