Guide on Making a Documentary

Opinions from Experts and a Fresh Filmmaker.

What the Experts Say?

Tips and Tricks From The Best in The Field.

Dylan Pank:

University of Portsmouth:

School of Creative Arts, Film and Media Tutor

Nail your narrative down as much as possible

Make sure your showing something new or unusual.

Every year at least one group of students want to make a film about a student who is also a DJ, as if that was something new and revolutionary that had never happened before.

Pre Interview!

Decide whether you want your questions to be heard in the soundtrack or not.

Write a script, even if you don't know all the subjects answers yet, imagine what they might be, research with pre-interviews would help you here.

The script should contain visual as well as verbal information

Transcripts and Paper Edits

Once you've done your interviews, do a transcript and then a paper edit.

Don’t waste your time (let alone your editor’s!) while you wallow in all that footage as you search for a story.

You can always improve on the paper edit, but it gives you the equivalent of a script to work on when you go into the edit room.

It seems like a drag (the transcript and paper edit) but it will save you loads of time. You can always improve upon the paper edit, but it gives you a map to work with.

And finally, the above is, as the man said "more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules."

Except the bit about paper edits.

That's a rule.

Richard P. Alvarez

Screenwriter - ISA

How and What do I Write?

I like to write out the script, including what I expect the interviewees to say. Then, when I am conducting the interviews, I ask questions that will result in the sorts of answers I am looking for.

Is this 'objective'? It is as objective as your advocacy is. You still have to be flexible enough to follow the answers wherever they might lead.

The term ‘Documentary’ is a Generic label for anything that’s not narrative.

Within that label are investigative reports, issue docs, advocacy docs, expose's, biographies, etc. etc. Each of these subsets has a specific point of view going in.

Michael Plunkett

Photo Plunkett – Owner

What to Shoot?

A beginning, a middle and an end is a noble starting point and it should be no different for any film regardless of size.

Barry Hampe

Author - Making Documentary Films and Videos

The Process?

From the very start of the scripting process, your research, planning, organization, and writing must be pointed toward answering the question, What will the audience see?

As writer of the script, you have to show to the client, the director, the camera operator, and the video editor—and through them the audience for the video—the images that make up the story you want to tell.

You do this with a well-visualized, coherent script which clearly communicates your intentions to the people who will read it.

o The more specifically you can describe your script in terms of concrete images, the better your chance of communicating through video.

o Similarly, the more abstract or interpretive your idea is, the more important it becomes to build up evidence for the idea through concrete images.

o To be recorded on video, an image has to be solid, tangible.

o Images are described with concrete nouns and action verbs.

o A concrete image can be understood in a single shot

o Field research is so important to a scriptwriter.

o You can't describe what you haven't seen.

o And you can't use as visual evidence what you don't even know exists.

o As a scriptwriter, you not only have to think in pictures, you have to learn to see like a camera.

o When you are out scouting a scene, a setting, or a location, you have to learn to see what is actually there.

o Otherwise your brain may instruct your eye to filter out whatever the brain considers unimportant.

Documentary Script FormatEase to use.

Time Video Audio

0:00:00 Black Screen.Fade in Title Credits.Title Credit: BERT WALL AND THE GHOST STORIES OF THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE

Fade In:Background music – Title Music. Rousing but a bit mystical.

0:00:20 Camera Wide on an open 2-lane Texas Highway as the headlights of a car pierce through the fog and mist.Images of Spirits, an Indian on horseback, a Woman sitting by a fire in a rocking chair, a road sign that reads: “Purgatory Road”, a white stag deer, a white owl flies by, another road sign that reads “Texas Highway 32”, and a lone Indian with a flat brimmed hat and an eagle feather appear in the distance.

A rushing sound should accompany each image as it appears and floats towards the car windshield then fly off left and right. A background sound of the tires of a car on the tarmac of a Texas Highway.

Final Thoughts?

Field Research Before You Write.

Write Before You Shoot.

Paper Edit Before You Video Edit.

Made By: Omar Magdi

In Association With: Old Dominion University, The Film Studies Program,

Contact:

omarmagdifl@gmail.com

+20 102 335 4466

Gplus.to/OmarMagdi

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@OmarsUniverse

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