“Cowboys: A Documentary Portrait”

 director’s statement: bud force

Bud Force: co director, producer, and director of cinematography for the documentary movie “Cowboys.”

“Cowboys: A Documentary Portrait” was a project created from the truest sense of passion and a need to tell a story I felt had not been told.

The term “cowboy” has been misunderstood and misrepresented throughout history and means many different things to many different people. In the words of Waddie Mitchell, the term is as much a verb as a noun, and its foundation refers to the rugged men and women who provide America’s beef in contemporary America. It is not a term of just who they are - but what they do. It is their entire lifestyle and identity. It’s more than their job; it is their existence.

Growing up in rural America, my family raised beef cattle and horses while I rodeoed and worked on various ranches and horse operations. After a catastrophic injury ended my bull riding career in my early twenties, I studied journalism at Texas A&M University and eventually entered the world of documentary filmmaking in 2006.

Because of my close history to the cowboy world and having never seen a documentary about the American Cowboy that I felt was both authentic AND cinematic in nature, I soon began dreaming about directing a feature length film about this subject I feel is so important. Although the film would hopefully resonate with a widespread crowd, the primary audience HAD to be the actual working cowboys. If the film was not deemed authentic by them, then the film did not matter otherwise.

The first step was to create a team of industry experts, cinematographers, editors, musicians, and others I believed could both convey the vision while also being able to operate in and around this world.

Therefore, extreme detail from start to finish was put into the foundation of this documentary’s crew and storyline, bringing in the likes of John Langmore, Western photographer and former working cowboy; Felicitas Funke, filmmaker and author who has produced both a book and another documentary on working cowboys; and Lucas J. Harger, an Emmy-award winning editor and master storyteller. This core team was rounded out with incredible talent across the board crafting everything from the custom music score to coloring to actual distribution.

With a uniquely authentic and foundational storyline in hand, It was very important to me that we also craft a visually and audibly cinematic experience from start to finish. Therefore, we utilized cutting edge camera and aerial drone technology to show this world as it has never been shown before. Excruciating effort was put into each and every composition and sound to create a visually stunning portrayal of a world that few get to see.

That stated, beautiful visuals and narrative only go so far, as a story without emotion is mute. I wanted to interview subjects in a fashion so the general public could realize that this small and often misrepresented culture is also comprised of human beings with the same empathetic thoughts and emotions we all have. My goal was to conduct very intimate interviews with the characters and explore not just what it is that they do for a living, but who they are as actual living and breathing people living in a contemporary and changing world. In short, I wanted to show the humanity of this culture that so few even know exists.