Low Budgets and High Hopes
Great advice on how to make a low budget documentary.For trivia buffs (and moving picture historians) the unofficial birthday of the motion picture is considered to be December 28, 1895. On that date, people paid to watch a movie for the first time. And what was the audience watching as they sat in the basement of a Paris café? They saw a series of images not much longer than a minute each that included a group of workers walking out of a factory, a train coming into a station, and a baby eating. They were watching documentaries.
Fast-forward 102 years and you'll find audiences just as eager to watch real life on a screen. Some television documentaries have become major events--witness The Civil War on PBS--and their producers have become household names. Although you may not aspire to national fame, every time you turn your camcorder on to record real events you're making a documentary. In this article, we'll explain how anyone who captures real life on videotapes can benefit by following the fundamentals of documentary videom…
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