In your pursuit to tell a story through documentary, it’s likely that at some point you will need to interview people involved with the issue you’re documenting. An interview can be rather harrowing for a person who isn’t used to being in front of the camera. Helping your subject feel at ease can greatly improve the quality of their answers.

As a documentarian there are several ways you can pull great answers from your subject. First, resist the urge to jump head first into the interview. Give your subject some time to mentally prepare for the questions that lay ahead. You can help by informing your subject what the general focus of your documentary is, and by giving them a vague idea of what kind of questions you’ll be asking them. However, avoid giving your subject a list of questions ahead of time. By withholding the questions until the time of the interview, your subject’s answers will be more spontaneous and sound less rehearsed.

Often your subject will freeze up once they see the camera’s tally light turn on. By turning off that little red light prior to the interview starting (or covering it with gaffer’s tape), you’ll remove the constant reminder that everything they say is being recorded. Once you do hit the record button, begin with the easy questions. This allows your subject enough time to become comfortable answering questions in front of the lights, camera and crew. Once you sense your subject relax a bit, ease into the more hard-hitting questions.

Most importantly, listen. Nothing says, “I couldn’t care less,” than simply waiting for your subject to finish talking so you can ask them the next question. If your subject senses you don’t care, they will be less likely to open up. Additionally, your subject will often drop clues in their answers that point to deeper issues. If you’re listening carefully, you can ask questions based on those clues, and further reveal some truths.

By making your subject feel comfortable, they will feel they can be honest and forthcoming. You’ll be able to reach the heart of the issue with ease, and your audience will be able to connect with the subject on a much deeper level.

For more tips on how to conduct an interview, check out Directing: Documentary Interview Tips.

Interested in more tips on Documentary Production? Sign up for Videomaker’s free Documentary Course. This free tip series is designed to help you improve your video production skills, fast. Learn More.

Every story needs a character. Good character development can help the viewer relate to your subject and the issues being presented in your documentary. The most important part of character development is to form an emotional connection between the viewer and your character.

By nature, people want to connect with others on some level or another. If you give the viewer a reason to empathize with your subject they’ll want to stick around to see what happens to them. Establishing this connection should be done at the beginning of your documentary, as you introduce the character. Within a few scenes you should be able to show your character’s personality traits, and gain the viewer’s empathy.

Once the viewer cares what happens to your character, identify your character’s motivation for the goal they are trying to reach. Show your audience the obstacles that the character must overcome to reach those goals, and any barriers that may hold them back. This can help build conflict and shape the development of your character as they struggle in their journey. Interviewing your subject is helpful as well, because it allows your subject to voice their thoughts and emotions.

In the end, it doesn’t matter if your character is successful at reaching their goal or not. If you create an emotional connection between the viewer and the character, the viewer will be able to empathize with the character no matter the outcome. The character is a very powerful tool in the documentary genre. If you are successful in the development of your subject, you will be able to create a more compelling story, and add to the overall emotional impact of your documentary.

From the editors of Videomaker, the Documentary Production DVD contains some of our best documentary tips and techniques.

Interested in more tips on documentary production? Sign up for Videomaker’s free Documentary Course. This free tip series is designed to help you improve your video production skills, fast. Learn More.

If you could capture a single day of your life, would you? If you could capture a single day in the lives of people all around the world, could you? Producer Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Alien) and Director Kevin Macdonald (Touching the Void) will soon find out. Their newest project, Life In A Day, attempts to capture a single day on earth. What makes this project unique is they want you to shoot it.

The goal of the project is to get people to submit raw footage of the things that make up their day. From the average ho-hum events to the wild and unusual; they want it all. The catch? Whatever you decide to shoot, it has to be shot on one day, specifically July 24 (between 12:01AM and 11:59PM in your local time zone), then uploaded to the Life In A Day channel on YouTube for it to be considered for the documentary. The “most compelling and distinctive footage” will be used in the final documentary, and the producer of the submitted footage will receive a co-director credit.

“It is gonna be something unusual and it is gonna be something which has, I think, a kind of social value to it. It’s a unique kind of documentary,” says Macdonald. “It’ll be kind of like a time capsule, which people in the future, maybe in twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred, two hundred years could look at that and say, ‘oh my God, that’s what it was like.’ A portrait of the world in a day.”

If you’re thinking about submitting a video, it is stressed that you capture quality audio and follow the YouTube community guidelines. Not to mention, there are a couple of questions they’d like you to answer in your video. Be sure to check out the Life In A Day channel on YouTube for details. As for content, Ridley Scott suggests “It should be personal. It must be personal. That’s what we’re looking for. The key of course is what appeals to you, as the author.”

The film will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2011.

Gerard Ungerman, recognized by AFI, the American Film Institute, among others, for outstanding work in the world of documentary production, will be teaching the upcoming Documentary Production workshop for Videomaker at our headquarters in Chico California this March.

Pulling in such high-profile narrators such as John Hurt, Dustin Hoffman and Edward Asner, Ungerman’s films have been featured in many international festivals and have been broadcast all around the world.

Ungerman does his own fund-raising, allowing him to be completely free of outside influence in telling the stories.

Ungerman’s bio states: His belief is that true democratic media should not be controlled or filtered by powerful interest groups, be them commercial or political. Determination and skills learned along the way have allowed him to give high production value to otherwise low-budget projects and to bring international visibility and recognition to controversial stories that commercial news and entertainment would not touch.

Ungerman created his production company, Free Will Productions, in New York  in 1995.  Formerly a print-media journalist with a  military background, Ungerman’s global travels have taken him to such places as the jungles of Peru and the oilfields of Iraq to find the truth about conditions in areas that aren’t covered by the mainstream media.

Among his recognitions are Sony “Visions of the U.S”. in 1996, Grand Prize at Cine Eco in Portugul in 2000 and “Best Enviro Feature” at ARTIVIST in 2009.

Ungerman’s Filmography:

Belonging (2008) [read more about "Belonging" here]

The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror (2004)

Plan Colombia: Cashing in on the Drug War Failure (2002) [Read more about "Plan Colombia" here]

Sex, Ties & Lots of Video-Tape (2001)

Hidden Wars of Desert Storm (2000)

Confessions of a New York Call-Girl (1998)

Peru: Between the Hammer & The Anvil (1996)

Find out more about Ungerman’s production company Free Will Productions at www.freewillprod.com

There is still time to sign up for this 3-day extensive class on Documentary Production taking place March 19-21, 2010, but this class will be limited to just a few, due to the content size.  Check out the details at: http://events.videomaker.com/

For the first time in history a documentary was filmed entirely by chimpanzees. It aired last night on the British Broadcasting Channel (BBC). Though this was a great idea for a nature documentary (and an even better idea in regards to budget since the crew worked for free), it kind of made me sad for the following reasons:

1. According to chimpcam.com, the idea came to producer John Capener as he was watching a documentary. The documentary was filmed so poorly that he thought, “a chimp could have shot this!” It was at this point he began to research how to go about using chimpanzees for the crew of his next documentary.

2. If you’ve seen the teaser for Natural World: The Chimpcam Project, you may agree: humans have shot footage more poorly composed and less compelling than the footage the chimps managed to capture.

3. We’re one step closer to realizing that the movie Planet of the Apes is actually not that far-fetched.

All kidding aside, it is a creative approach to the typical nature documentary. And, in all fairness, the chimps did get some instruction prior to their attempt at being videographers. It’s a nice reminder, however, that if we don’t continue to learn and perfect our craft, someone, someday may replace us with our budget-friendly, water-fearing friend, the chimp.

Check out our tips on basic video production and how to make a video better than a chimp.

Reprinted from an International Documentary Association press release

From the astonishing stories of starvation, persecution, and escape from the world’s worst human rights violator to the surprising inside story of an iconic cult, the International Documentary Association (IDA) presents this year’s DocuWeeks™ Theatrical Documentary Showcase.

Screening in Los Angeles and New York City July 31st through August 20th, 2009, IDA’s 13th Annual DocuWeeks™ Theatrical Documentary Showcase will present 18 feature films and 10 short films, a collection of some of the best groundbreaking documentary films from around the world. DocuWeeks™ returns to the ArcLight Hollywood (6360 W. Sunset Blvd in Los Angeles) and the IFC Center (323 Sixth Avenue at West Third Street in New York City) for this annual showcase of documentary films qualifying for Oscar® consideration.

A complete schedule and additional information about each film can be found on the International Documentary Association’s website at www.documentary.org