So you want to make a documentary? We’ve all heard that before.  Just as we know that all the greatest writers are supposedly too busy hanging out in coffee shops and bemoaning the difficulties of writing to actually write, all the greatest documentarians are too busy worrying about where to start to actually, well, start.  When I was a kid, I used to love watching nature documentaries on PBS, all about the ocean floor or the rain forest or, especially, dinosaurs.  For years, though, I thought that a documentary HAD to be about some exotic faraway locale, that you had to travel to, say, the Gobi Desert or the Marianas trench, and that they always had to be about weird animals.  You might have the same problem, you’re too convinced that documentaries have to be sprawling, complicated affairs to realize that they’re actually pretty simple.  All you have to do it break it down!

Yup, it’s simple if you just break down the documentary process.  For example, take a look at Videomaker’s premium documentary series, now available to buy as one complete set at a $60 discount.  This DVD series divides up the daunting documentary process into four tidy little segments, so that you won’t get too overwhelmed.   All you need to worry about are four little things:

1) Documentary Storytelling: There’s good fodder for a stellar documentary anywhere.  Maybe you know a person with an unusual story to tell or maybe there’s a local landmark that you’ve always been curious about. Some of the most compelling documentaries come from personal stories or family histories, or dramas that, in the grand scheme of things, might not really be that dramatic. The incidents might be small or mundane, but if they communicate bigger, universal themes, they can touch people in ways that more polished but less intimate documentaries fail to do. For example, “The King of Kong” is a documentary about one man’s fight to become the world champion at the video game Donkey Kong. Most people would dismiss that as a silly goal, but the filmmakers were able to use his quest to tell a universal story about every man’s desire to leave his mark on the world.  This DVD shows you how to find the deeper meaning in even ordinary events and how to determine whether there’s enough meat in a story to be worth your time as a documentarian.

2) Documentary Funding: Yeah, so we’ve already established that you don’t have the budget to go down the Amazon. Unfortunately, even a modest documentary needs some budget and you don’t want to be stuck spinning your wheels because you can’t think of a way to get your hands on some cash.  Well, before you resort to robbing a bank, pulling off a daring international diamond heist, or something equally drastic (Pro tip: Don’t do that!), you should probably take a look at this DVD. Documentary Funding gives you helpful, practical and, above all, proven suggestions to get some cold hard cash to back up your documentary dreams. This feature looks at finding sources for funds, writing a thorough prospectus, knowing the details of an accurate budget sheet, organizing a successful fundraiser, editing a demo reel that impresses, and presenting the techniques of an effective pitch.

3) Documentary Equipment and Crew: Remember how we said you’d need money to shoot your documentary? Well, here’s where that comes into play. You may be able to cajole some friends into helping you out and you may be able to borrow your neighbor’s old camcorder for free… but let’s face it. You know you get what you pay for when you rely on the kindness of strangers (and friends).  If you’re going to make a documentary, make it good.  Cutting on necessary expenses always impacts the result and not in a good way. This DVD offers you tips on how to choose cameras, audio gear, lighting gear and accessories, and tips to finding and working with a professional crew. These tips will get you on your way to making a great documentary.

4) The Documentary  Shoot: And now that you’ve got all that preliminary planning and pre-planning and pre-pre-planning out of the way, it’s time to go out on the actual shoot.  This is where it all counts. The shoot is probably the most fun part of making the documentary, because this is where you really get to see your vision come together.  If you picked a good subject, you should feel re-newed excitement when you revisit the stories that originally sold you on it.  Conducting insightful interviews, setting up good lighting and audio, and getting location access are all part of the process here!

So there you go, the entire documentary process, all in four easy-to-digest chunks.  Now you better start filming, because, when you watch these DVDs,  you’ll no longer  have the excuse that you don’t know how to start.

As good as we are, Murphy’s Law can choose the most inopportune times to stop our recording – when a performer collapses, the bouquet is tossed, or the final score is made. That’s when working with a photographer becomes invaluable. If you secure the rights, you can use their defining image in your production. As videographers we often rely on freeze frames to cover such moments, but another angle and a well trained eye should always be welcome. Still photography and film certainly have a new level of integration with DSLRs shooting video, and inherently, video involves pictures, so adding stills to video should be natural.

The most famous method for using stills in video is the found in historical documentaries via the Ken Burns effect, aptly named for the extensive use of zooming in and adding motion to stills throughout his films. This allows for the direction of viewer attention to specific subjects and can provide a close up instead of an otherwise stagnant shot. Depending on the subject, you may need to exercise the same practice as historical documentaries if no footage is available, as if we produced a biography of Benjamin Franklin during the 1770s.

Another common, though less conventional way to use stills is to split up the screen with two, four or a montage of photos. In this case, black space around the photo isn’t necessarily bad. More films are using techniques that freeze moving video and add graphics to a still, then return to the regular motion of the video. Combine these with the creative tools found in photo editing programs, and stills can become the highlight of a production. Even titles and behind the scenes extras are excellent areas of production to make use of stills, so take the camera out and get 30 or 120 frames per second, but don’t underestimate the power of one frame.

For most of us, the documentary genre is a very real and raw form of story telling that is based on true-life emotion. We watch as our main character struggles with issues, narrates the frustration and we patiently wait for the resolution. As a matter of fact, for most documentary movie buffs out there you may notice that the honest non-subjective documentary you love took just as much planning as the latest big summer blockbuster.

This is because documentary films tell the same character-driven stories that contain a beginning, middle and end, with an issue at hand to keep viewers interested just like any other Hollywood film. The idea that a documentary is “real” and a mainstream release isn’t is wrong.
All documentary films are subjective, no matter how they are put together. There is a storyteller, who may be using real events to tell the story, but they are still telling the story that they want the viewer to see. It does not matter how neutral a stance on the subject they take, or how objective the documentary may seem. In the end there is always the filmmaker, who chooses what story should be told and how they are going to tell it. It is up to the filmmaker to edit out information that may show another side to the story. If three documentary purists were put in a room and asked to film the same story, each story would end up different. Because every filmmaker tells the story that they find the most interesting. If the art of making a documentary film was indeed “real” every documentary would be a lot less entertaining and probably only contain one static shot. Therefore, in my opinion documentary film is not objective, and is not as “real” as people tend to think it is.

I want to present this issue and see what some of our readers think. Are documentary films “real”? Are they subjective? Are they just as phony as the last Indiana Jones movie? Let us know what you think.