Documentary Question????

1. glasseye
   Member

   

   This has always bugged me? Do you write the story first and shoot video to the story or Shoot the video first and write the story to the video? Anyone have a workflow for docs? 

   Thanks, Harry

   Posted 3 years ago #

2. jburkhart
   

   

   Well, a little bit of both. I've always found that documentaries are made in the editing room, while narratives are made in the script.

   The best way to approach a documentary is to definately know the story that you want to tell before you shoot. While you obviously won't be able to write a script, you can prepare broad themes that you know will fit together nicely. You also have to be flexible as well, there are a lot of documentaries that started one way, but then the director found that the story took them somewhere else during the filming. Fight the urge to reel it in to your original plan, and follow the story wherever it seems to lead you. In the end a documentary is still a compelling story, just not a scripted one.

   The reason I say that the documentary is really made in the edit room, is because it is only at this point that the documentary film maker really has control of the project fully. Using editing techniques you want to pare away all the extreneous material that doesn't serve to move your story forward. This can be a tough thing to do. You may have a brilliant, creative and funny interview in the can, but if it turns out to only be tangential to your story, you need to cut it out.

   We have some articles about documentary film making online here, you may want to read these:

   http://www.videomaker.com/article/12546/

   http://www.videomaker.com/article/12547/

   http://www.videomaker.com/article/12719/

   John Burkhart
   Editor-in-Chief
   Videomaker

   Posted 3 years ago #

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