How to Make a Documentary

Video Transcript

"Okay folks, in this clip we're going to talk about how to make a documentary. Documentaries are supposed to be an expose into something real, an issue or a situation, a time period in history, an event of some kind. But it is all grounded in reality. So what you're going to want to do obviously is do a lot of research early on, before you actually start the filming process. Do as much research as necessary, and sort of build out a timeline of what it is you want to cover in this documentary, how you want to lay out the story as it played out in reality. Or how you want to present the subject that you're shooting. Once you've done that, essentially what you're going to be doing is shooting a lot of material. You need to get a lot of coverage with a documentary. Probably I would say more than if you were shooting a fictional film, simply because with a fictional film you have a script and you know exactly what it is you want to get and you know what's on the page and therefore you pretty much know how the story is going to play. You'll still have a lot of coverage in a fictional film, but it's not quite the same 'cause in a documentary there is a structure and there might even be a script in regard to narration, but you have absolutely no idea what kind of material you're going to get when you're out there in the field shooting. You're going to need to shoot a lot in order to put this together ultimately, so the next step is obviously shooting. Be there, be in - have the camera on your shoulder ready to shoot at all times. And get as much coverage as you possibly can. Then once it's all done, you're going to sit down, review it all, and this may take weeks sometimes. And find out exactly then how you want to piece the story together and how you want to present the documentary going back to what your original plan was, and now seeing what material you've gotten. Sometimes your plans change after you see, oh wow, now that we've got this, maybe we'll want to try something different now 'cause we didn't expect to shoot this and this and this. Piece it together in a way that's true to your vision and once it's done and you've gone through all that footage and somehow edited it down into a one to two hour presentation, you have successfully created a documentary."