Documentaries

Hey guys, Princess was asking about documentary style filmmaking in class today, so I thought I would share some things with you that we spoke about.

First rule when you are making a documentary is that you must shoot shoot shoot as much footage as possible. It's always better to have more. When you are filming real life, you come to realize that it can be kind of mundane so you must shoot as much video as possible so that you can use the few golden moments that will make your movie effective.

Another thing about documentaries is that often times, the story you tell emerges from the footage. Perhaps you thought going into a project that it will turn out one way, but then the footage ends up taking you in another direction. Since it is unscripted the aforementioned golden moments become the focal point.

Some things that you can control are the interviews you set up and the questions you ask. It can be great fun to find or create an interesting location to interview your subjects. The audio you collect from these interviews can then be used to lay over some of your B-Roll (B-Roll is a term for the extraneous shots in a movie that you can use to cut into voice over so that your movie is not just talking heads). Likewise you can also record your own voice over, or have someone with a voice that you like read a script you have prepared. Think Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption, as one example.

You can also go the other way and do a mockumentary a la Christopher Guest, who has created such fine works as Waiting For Guffman, Spinal Tap, and Best in Show(currently on Netflix instant). See a clip below:



Or you can go super serious and take inspiration from the divine Werner Herzog who made Encounters at the End of the World(currently on Netflix instant), Grizzly Man(currently on Netflix instant), and Burden of Dreams. A little back story on Burden of Dreams: Werner was making a film called Fitzcarraldo in South America, and this is the documentary of the making of said film. It was a pretty difficult process as you will see in this clip: