Six Parts: Documentary Film Help Writing and Developing an
Idea Staff, Techniques and Scheduling Shooting a Documentary Assembling and
Sharing Your Film Testing, Marketing and Screening
A documentary is any non-fiction video or film that informs
viewers about a real-life topic, person, event, or issue. Some documentary
films provide us with educational information about things that aren't
well-known. Others tell detailed stories about important people and/or events.
Still others try to persuade the audience to agree with a certain viewpoint.
Whatever subject you choose, filming a documentary can be a serious
undertaking. Follow this tutorial for some tips on creating a documentary film
you can be proud of.
Part 1 of 5: Writing and Developing an Idea
1Choose a worthy topic. What will your film be about? Your
documentary should be worthy of your audience's time (not to mention your own).
Make sure your topic isn't something mundane or universally agreed-upon. Try
instead to focus on subjects that are controversial or not-well known, or try
to shed new light on a person, issue, or event that the public has largely made
its mind up about. In simplest terms, try to film things that are interesting
and to avoid things that are boring or ordinary. This doesn't mean your
documentary has to be huge or grandiose - smaller-scale, more intimate
documentaries have just as much of an opportunity to resonate with an audience
if the story they tell is captivating.
2Find a topic you are interested in that will also be
engaging and enlightening for your audience.
Try out your ideas in verbal form first. Start telling your
documentary idea in story form to your family and friends. Based on their
reaction, you may do one of two things; scrap the idea completely or revise it
and move forward.
Though documentaries are educational, they still have to
hold the audience's attention. Here, a good topic can do wonders. Many
documentaries are about controversial social issues. Others are about past
events that stir up strong emotions. Some challenge the things that society
views as normal. Some tell the story of individual people or events to make
conclusions about larger trends or issues. Whether you choose one of these
approaches or not, make sure you pick a subject with the potential to hold an
audience's attention.
For instance, it would be a bad idea to make a documentary
about everyday life in a random small town unless you're really confident you
can make the lives of ordinary people interesting and meaningful in some way. A
better idea would be to cast the daily life of this small town against the
story of a grisly murder that took place there, showing how the town's
inhabitants were affected by the crime.
3Give your film a purpose. Good documentaries almost always
have a point - a good documentary may ask a question about the way our society
operates, attempt to prove or disprove the validity of a certain point of view,
or cast light on an event or phenomenon unknown to the general public in hopes
of spurring action.Even documentaries about events that happened far in the
past can draw connections to the world today. Despite its name, the purpose of
a documentary isn't just to document something that occurred. The objective of
a documentary shouldn't just be to show that something interesting occurred - a
really good documentary should persuade, surprise, question, and/or challenge
the audience. Try to show why an audience should feel a certain way about the
people and things you're filming.
Acclaimed director Col Spector says that, along with not
choosing a worthy subject, not asking any serious questions and not choosing an
overriding theme are two of the most serious mistakes a documentary filmmaker
can make. Says Spector: "Before filming, ask yourself, what question am I
asking and how does this film express my worldview?"[1]
4Research your topic. Even if you're familiar with your
topic it's still a very smart idea to research it extensively before you begin
filming. Read about your topic as much as you can. Watch films about your topic
that already exist. Use the Internet and any library you have access to to find
information. Most importantly, talk to people who know about or are interested
in your subject - the stories and details that these people provide will guide
the plan for your film.
Once you've decided on a general topic you are interested
in, use your research to help you narrow your topic down. If, for instance, you
are interested in cars, pinpoint people, events, processes, and facts relating
to cars that you come across in your research that specifically interest you.
For example, your may narrow down a documentary about cars to one about a
specific group of people who work on classic cars and gather to show them off
and talk about them. Narrowly-focused documentaries are often easier to film
and sometimes easier to make compelling to an audience.
Learn as much as you can about the subject and scope out the
landscape to see if there is already a documentary or media project out there.
Wherever possible, you want your documentary and approach to the subject to be
different than anything that might also be out there.
Do a few pre-interviews based on your research. This allows
you the opportunity to start developing a story idea with main subject
perspectives.
5Write an outline. This is very handy for project direction
and possible funders. The outline also gives you an idea of story, as your
project must be story-driven with all the elements of a good story. In the
outline process, you should also explore the conflict and drama that you will
need to keep the story alive as it unspools.
Part 2 of 5: Staff, Techniques and Scheduling
1Recruit a staff, if necessary. It's entirely possible for
one person to research, plan, shoot, and edit a documentary by his or herself,
especially if the documentary's scope is relatively small or intimate. However,
many may find this "one person, one camera" approach to be
exceedingly difficult or to result in amateurish, unpolished footage. Consider
hiring or recruiting experienced help for your documentary, especially if
you're tackling an ambitious topic or you want your film to have a polished,
professional quality.
To get help, you may try recruiting qualified friends and
acquaintances, advertising your project via flyers or online postings, or
contacting a talent agency. Here are just a few types of professionals you
might consider employing:
Cameramen
Lighting riggers
Writers
Researchers
Editors
Actors (for scripted sequences/recreations)
Audio recorders/editors
Technical consultants.
2When hiring or recruiting your team, look for people who
share similar values when it comes to the subject matter of the documentary.
Also consider hiring young up-and-coming crew who are inspired and in touch
with markets and audiences you may have overlooked.
Always confer with your camera op and other creative folks
involved in the documentary. This helps make your docs a collaborative effort,
with a shared vision. Working in a collaborative environment means that you'll
often find your crew seeing something and contributing to the project in ways
you may have overlooked.
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3Learn basic film making techniques. Serious documentary
film makers should, at the very least, understand how films are produced, staged,
shot, and edited, even if they can't do all of these things by themselves. If
you're unaware of the technical process behind making films, you may find it
worthwhile to study film making before shooting your documentary. Many colleges
and universities offer film making courses, but you can also get practical
experience by working around film sets either in front of or behind the camera.
Though many directors have a film school background,
practical knowledge can trump a formal film making education. For instance,
comedian Louis C.K., who has worked as a director in film and television, got
early film making experience by working at a local public access station.[2]
4Get equipment. Try to use the best quality media available
(high end cams etc.). Beg or borrow equipment you can't otherwise afford, and
use your contacts to get access to subjects and equipment.
5Organize, outline, and schedule your shooting. You don't
necessarily need to know exactly how your documentary is going to come together
before you start shooting - you may discover things during the process of
filming that change your plans or offer new avenues of investigation. However,
you should definitely have a plan before you start shooting, including an
outline of specific footage you want to shoot. Having a plan ahead of time will
give you extra time to schedule interviews, work around scheduling conflicts,
etc. Your plan for shooting should include:
Specific people you want to interview - make contact with
these people as early as possible to schedule interviews.
Specific events you want to record as they occur - arrange
travel to and from these events, buy tickets if necessary, and get permission
from the event's planners to be able to shoot at the event.
Specific writings, pictures, drawings, music, and/or other
documents you want to use. Get permission to use these from the creator(s)
before you add them to your documentary.
Any dramatic recreations you want to shoot. Search for
actors, props, and shooting locations well ahead of time.
Part 3 of 5: Shooting a Documentary
1Interview relevant people. Many documentaries devote much
of their running time to one-on-one interviews with people who are
knowledgeable about the subject of the documentary. Pick a selection of
relevant people to interview and collect as much footage as you can from these
interviews. You'll be able to splice this footage throughout your documentary
to help prove your point or convey your message. Interviews can be "news
style" - in other words, simply sticking a microphone in someone's face -
but you'll probably want want to rely more on one-on-one sit-down interviews,
as these give you a chance to control the lighting, staging, and sound quality
of your footage while also allowing your subject to relax, take his or her time,
tell stories, etc.
These people may be famous or important - well-known authors
who have written about your subject, for instance, or professors who have
studied it extensively. However, many of these people may not be famous or
important. They may be ordinary people whose work has given them a familiarity
of your subject or people who simply witnessed an important event firsthand.
They can, in certain situations, even be completely ignorant of your subject -
it can even be enlightening (and entertaining) for the audience to hear the
difference between a knowledgeable person's opinion and an ignorant person's
opinion.
Let's say our car documentary is on classic car aficionados
in Austin, Texas. Here are just a few ideas for people to interview: members of
classic car clubs in and around Austin, wealthy car collectors, cranky old
people who have complained to the city about the noise from these cars,
first-time visitors to a classic car show, and mechanics who work on the cars.
If you're stumped for interview questions, brainstorm
questions based on the basic queries "who?" "what?"
"why?" "when?" "where?" and "how?"
Often, asking someone these basic questions about your subject will be enough
to get him or her to relate an interesting story or some enlightening details.
Remember––a good interview should be more like a
conversation. As the interviewer, you must be prepared, having done your
research and informed yourself to glean the most information from the interview
subject.
Grab B-roll whenever possible. Get shots of your interview
subject after the formal interview. This allows you to cutaway from the talking
head shot.
2Get live footage of relevant events. One of the main
advantages of documentary films (as opposed to dramatic films) is that they
allow the director to show the audience real footage of actual real-life
events. Provided you don't break any privacy laws, get as much real-world
footage as you can. Film events that support your documentary's viewpoint, or,
if the subject of your documentary happened in the past, get in touch with
agencies or people who have historical footage to get permission to use it. For
instance, if you're making a documentary on police brutality during the Occupy
Wall Street protests, you may want to contact people who participated in the
protests and collected hand-held footage.
In our car documentary, we'd obviously want lots of footage
of classic car expos taking place in and around Austin. If we're creative,
though, there are plenty of other things we might want to film: a town hall
discussion on a proposed car show ban, for instance, might provide some
thrilling dramatic tension.
3Film establishing shots. If you've watched a documentary
before, you've surely noticed that the entire movie isn't just footage of
interviews and of live events with nothing in between. For instance, there are
often shots leading into interviews that establish a mood or show where the
interview is taking place by showing the outside of the building, the city
skyline, etc. These are called "establishing shots," and they're a
small but important part of your documentary.
In our car documentary, we'd want to film establishing shots
at the locations where our interviews took place: in this case, classic car
museums, chop shops, etc. We might also want to get some footage of downtown
Austin or of distinct Austin landmarks to give the audience a sense of the
locale.
Always collect audio from the shoot including room tone and
sound effects unique to that location.
4Film B-roll. In addition to establishing shots, you'll also
want to get secondary footage called "B-roll" - this can be footage
of important objects, interesting processes, or stock footage of historical
events. B-roll is important for maintaining the visual fluidity of your documentary
and ensuring a brisk pace, as it allows you to keep the film visually active
even as the audio lingers on one person's speech.
In our documentary, we'd want to collect as much car-related
B-roll as possible - glamorous close-ups of shiny car bodies, headlights, etc.,
as well as footage of the cars in motion.
B-roll is especially important if your documentary will make
use of extensive voiceover narration. Since you can't play the narration over
interview footage without keeping the audience from hearing what your subject
is saying, you'll usually lay the voiceover over short stretches of B-roll. You
can also use B-roll to mask the flaws in interviews that didn't go perfectly.
For instance, if your subject had a coughing fit in the middle of an otherwise
great interview, during the editing process, you can cut the coughing fit out,
then set the audio of the interview to B-roll footage, masking the cut.
5Shoot dramatic recreations. If there's no real-life footage
of an event your documentary discusses, it's acceptable to use actors to
re-create the event for your camera, provided the recreation is informed by
real-world fact and it's perfectly clear to the audience that the footage is a
recreation. Be reasonable with what you film as a dramatic recreation - make sure
that whatever you commit to film is grounded in reality.
Sometimes, dramatic recreations will obscure the actors'
faces. This is because it can be jarring for an audience to see an actor
portray a real-world person in a film that also contains real footage of him or
her.
You may want to film or edit this footage in a way that
gives it a visual style distinct from the rest of your film (for instance, by
muting the color palette). This way, it's easy for your audience to tell which
footage is "real" and which is a recreation.
6Keep a diary. As you film your documentary, keep a diary of
how the filming went each day. Include any mistakes you made as well as any
unexpected surprises you encountered. Also consider writing a brief outline for
the next day of shooting. If an interview subject said something that makes you
want to pursue a new angle for your film, note this. By keeping track of each
day's events, you have a better chance of keeping on track and on schedule.
Once finished, do a paper edit viewing footage and making
notes of shots to keep and others to discard.
Part 4 of 5: Assembling and Sharing Your Film
1Make a new outline for your finished film. Now that you've
collected all the footage for your documentary, you need to organize it in an
order that is interesting, coherent, and will keep the viewers' attention. Make
a detailed shot-by-shot outline to guide the editing process. Provide a
coherent narrative for the audience to follow that proves your viewpoint.
Decide which footage will go at the beginning, which will go in the middle,
which will go at the end, and which won't go in the film at all. Showcase the
most interesting footage, while cutting anything that seems meandering, boring,
or pointless.
In our classic car documentary, we might start with exciting
or amusing ride-along footage to ease the viewers into the world of classic car
aficionados. We'd then dive into the opening credits, followed by interview
footage, clips from car shows, etc.
The end of your documentary should be something that ties
the film's information together in an interesting way and reinforces your key
theme - this can be a striking final image or a great, memorable comment from
an interview. In our car documentary, we might choose to end on footage of a
beautiful classic car being scrapped for parts - a commentary on the fact that
appreciation for classic cars is dying.
2Record a voiceover. Many documentaries use audio narration
as a running thread throughout the film, linking the film's interview and real-life
footage in a coherent narrative. You can record a voiceover yourself, enlist
the help of a friend, or even hire a professional voice actor. Make sure your
narration is clear, concise, and understandable.
Generally, an audio voiceover should play over footage where
the audio isn't important - you don't want the audience to miss anything. Lay
your voiceover over establishing shots, B-roll, or real-life footage where the
audio isn't necessary to grasp the importance of what's going on.
3Create graphical/animated inserts. Some documentaries use
static or animated graphics to convey facts, figures, and statistics directly
to the viewer in the form of text. If your documentary is trying to prove a
certain argument, you may want to make use of these to relay facts that prove
your argument.
In our car documentary, we might want to use on-screen text
to convey specific statistics about, for instance, declining membership in
classic car clubs in Austin and nationwide.
Use these with restraint - don't constantly bombard your
audience with textual and numerical data. It can be exhausting for the audience
to have to read mountains of text, so use this direct method only for the most
important information. A good rule of thumb is to, whenever possible,
"show, not tell."
4Think music (original) as you are in production. Try to
employ local musicians and musical talent in your projects. Avoid copyrighted
music by creating your own. Or, you can find music on a public domain site or
from a musician willing to share their talents.
5Edit your film. You have all the pieces - now it's time to
put them all together! Use a commercial editing program to assemble your
footage into a coherent film on your computer (many computers are now sold with
basic video editing software.). Remove everything that doesn't logically fit
into the theme of your film - for instance, you might remove the parts of your
interviews that don't directly deal with your film's topic. Take your time
during the editing process - allow yourself plenty of time to get it just
right. When you think you're done, sleep on it, then watch the entire film
again and make any other edits you think are necessary. Remember Ernest
Hemingway's thoughts on first drafts.
Make your film as lean as possible, but be a reasonable and
ethical editor. For instance, if, while filming, you encountered strong
evidence that goes against your film's viewpoint, it's a little disingenuous to
pretend it doesn't exist. Instead, modify the message of your film or, better
yet, find a new counter-argument!
Part 5 of 5: Testing, Marketing and Screening
1Do a screening. After you've edited your film, you'll
probably want to share it. After all, films were meant to be watched! Show your
movie to someone you know - this can be a parent, a friend, or someone else
whose opinion you trust. Then market your project as broadly as possible. Have
a public screening rent, beg or borrow a venue to allow audiences to enjoy your
work.
Get as many people involved as possible. For every person
involved in your project, it translates to two people in the audience for the
screening or to buy your documentary.
Send your documentary out to festivals but choose fests
carefully. Pick ones that screen projects similar to yours.
Be prepared to get honest feedback. Ask your viewer(s) to
review your movie. Tell them not to sugarcoat it - you want to know exactly
what they liked and what they didn't like. According to what they tell you, you
may choose go back to editing and fix what needs to be fixed. This can
potentially (but not necessarily) mean re-shooting footage or adding new
scenes.
Get used to rejection and toughen up. After investing
countless hours in your documentary, you expect audiences to react and respond.
Don't be disappointed if they aren't "over the moon" about your
project; we tend live in a media-consumptive world today and audiences have
high expectations and low tolerance.
2Spread the word! When your film is finally exactly how you
want it and as good as you think it can possibly be, it's time to show it off.
Invite your friends and family over to watch the final cut and "meet the
director." If you're bold, you can even upload your movie to a free
streaming site (like YouTube) and share it via social media or other online
means of distribution.
3Take your documentary on the road. If you think you have a
top notch documentary on your hands, you should try to give it a theatrical
release. Often, the first place a new independent film will be screened is at a
film festival. Look for festivals near where you live. Often, these will be in
large cities, but some are occasionally held in smaller towns. Enter your film
in a festival for a chance at getting it shown. Usually, you will have to
provide a copy of your film and pay a small fee. If your film is selected out
of the pool of applicants, it will be shown at the festival. Films with good
"festival buzz" - that is, festival films that are particularly
well-received - are sometimes bought by film distribution companies for a wider
release!
Film festivals also offer a chance for you to gain
visibility as a director. At film festivals, directors often are asked to talk
about themselves and their film in panel discussions and Q&A sessions.
4Get inspired! Making a documentary can be a long, arduous
process, but it can also be an immensely rewarding one. Shooting a documentary
film gives you the chance to entertain and captivate an audience while
simultaneously educating it. Moreover, documentaries offer filmmakers a rare
chance to change the world in a very real way. A great documentary can
illuminate an oft-ignored societal problem, change the way certain people and
events are perceived, and even lead to changes in the way society operates. If
you're having difficulty finding the motivation or inspiration to make your own
documentary, consider watching and/or researching any of the influential
documentaries listed below. Some of these were (and still are) seen as divisive
and/or highly controversial - a good documentary film maker welcomes
controversy!
Zana Briski & Ross Kauffman's Born Into Brothels
Steve James' Hoop Dreams
Lauren Lazin's Tupac: Resurrection
Morgan Spurlock's Supersize Me
Errol Morris' Thin Blue Line
Errol Morris' Vernon, Florida
Barbara Kopple's American Dream
Michael Moore's "Roger & me"
Jeffrey Blitz's Spellbound
Barbara Kopple's Harlan County U.S.A
Les Blank's Burden of Dreams
Peter Joseph's Zeitgeist: Moving Forward.
We could really use your help!
Can you tell us about
Vans shoes?
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success hacks?
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hairstyling?
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mousetrap cars?
Learn to edit. This will save you hours of time wasted on
something that is difficult to edit together.
If you present multiple perspectives, then you will create a
fairer, more objective film.
Get yourself a YouTube channel and post your film online for
the whole world to see. Don't use copyrighted music though.
After burning a DVD of your movie, try to get a license to
sell your film.
You can also use Sony Vegas. It's a bit more complicated,
however it makes better movies and even comes with a training DVD. It's great
for any kind of film.
For more complex productions on a Mac, try Final Cut Pro, or
Adobe Premiere.
Windows Movie Maker is great to use! Its simple and makes
great movies.
Try iMovie if you're on a Mac. It's similar to Movie Maker
in that it's simple and makes great movies, and comes with a number of
templates to add polish to your project.
Warnings
If you include music in your film, be sure to get permission
to use the music.
Be sure to include informative interviews, re-creations of
events (or actual footage if possible) and factual documentation supporting all
sides of the story. A documentary is meant to simply present the facts and
allow the viewer to decide for themselves. Above all else, be sure you do not
editorialize or impress your own, personal opinion, into the documentary. Once
that takes place your work ceases to be a documentary and becomes propaganda.
A documentary, like all film, is storytelling. Most documentary
film makers bend rules, reorder material to change context of interviews, etc.
Don't be afraid to make your story more interesting.
Source: wikihow.com
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