Stan was in New York during the 1960’s working for the International Film Foundation when Richard Leacock and Donn Pennebaker “freed the camera from the tripod” by inventing the crystal synch device that enabled a portable Nagra taperecorder to operate free from connections to the 16mm camera used in that day. (We call this "wireless" today.) Stan's hand-held, spontaneous, "you-are-there" style of "first person singular" filmmaking was greatly influenced by these experimental filmmakers, as well as the Maysles brothers and other pioneers with the hand-held camera.
Stan took this style of 16mm documentary filmmaking to South Carolina and introduced it in 1973, and began a career of documenting Southern life. He at the same time began a program supporting the work of young filmmakers working with Super 8mm cameras - a lifelong interest that accompanied the Media Literacy efforts in public schools.
   His style of filmmaking has the viewer behind the lens as the story unfolds on location - unrehearsed, unflinching in it's reality and naturalism, and unadorned with "TV lighting" and other production methods that Stan felt intruded on the naturalism he prefers in the documentary process. "I do not like the artifice that the tyranny of lighting brings to film," he would say.
   Using a low-profile mini-DV professional camera with a wide angle zoom lens, the filmmaker is able to move easily and intimately and in-close to remote folklife settings and communities to capture story elements in the "voice" of the practitioners themselves as they are working and interacting. “Stan becomes one of us", as one stewmaster put it.

This ability to immerse the viewer directly into the culture is what distinguishes this filmmaker's work, going all the way back to the Southern film classic, IT'S GRITS!

Call: 1-864-284-6422

Fax: 1-864-284-6423

Email:woodwardstudio@charter.net