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 create 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 make a documentary that casts 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.
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?"[4] X Research source
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.
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.
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.
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. [7] X Research source
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.
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 them 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 them. 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.
Once finished, do a paper edit viewing footage and making notes of shots to keep and others to discard.
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.
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.
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. "
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!
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.
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.
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.
