Documentary is the process of recording actual people, places and events, events on video or film to educate, inform, or change them. While there are plenty of fictional movies that people love to watch, documentaries regale the audience with real-life stories and explore critical social issues, the untold stories of marginalized communities, and incredible life stories.
Documentary filmmaker with your camera you are actually changing people’s lives and their stories can influence the society in real as it is. However, it is important to state that the process of becoming a powerful director of documentary is not as easy as it may seem and it indeed requires creativity, planning, as well as the knowledge of several key strategies.
Define Your Story
To be more precise, the beginning of any outstanding documentary is based on promising narrative. When devising your concept remember to outline with precision the key event(s) and character(s) within the film. Construct a coherent and comprehensible storyline that will help create anticipation and pertinent curiosity in the target viewer.
Real stories do not always progress dramatically, but a storyline with the use of PRO and WOO helps maintain important themes. Create a storyboard and sketch main scenes you clearly envision for your film. Make sure to collect important, more natural and genuine for that moment, episodes and be ready to change the plan.
Conduct Pre-Production Research
Hoping and praying that you are not making a documentary on a subject that you have little or no knowledge of, the first rule of engagement is that if you are serious about your documentary, you better invest considerable time doing your homework before the shooting starts. Background material – Interview your characters or use books and news sources to find out more about the characters and events in the story.
By expanding the cast beyond the main protagonists, include secondary narrators such as friends, witnesses, or professionals who might provide different viewpoints. The more you have at your fingertips, the better you will be able to ask the right questions and can be able to get into the events or even make creative shooting decisions.
Master Shooting Techniques
For effective documentary production, it is crucial to master the basic skills and processes that involve shooting lighting, camerawork, and angles, shot phasing and sequencing, composition, and movement of the camera. Some key tips include:
- Employ the use of cinema verité style. When shooting handheld, do not add too much light to give the footage a more personal, natural feel.
- Document an event without directing how it is to unfold and what is happening since it is a form of reality shows.
- Report and do “on the fly” interviewing, using good audio and optimizing the angles. Each object should be placed at an off-center position to make it appear more eye-catching.
- Slow motion footages, close-ups and dramatizations to incorporate the additional informative and appealing background footage during post-production.
- Capture action and reaction sounds, not just spoken words, to build a more immersive scene later on.
- More specifically, skilled shooting goes even farther in placing viewers into the scenes and including every detail of realism.
Ask Impactful Interview Questions
Thus, interviews are an essential component of documentaries, including one-on-one interviews and interviews in the form of panels. To do this, use design questions that do not just get from your subjects mere answers but also feelings and truths.
Stay away from questions that require only yes or no answer. Use questions that are aimed at getting as much information as possible related to how and why the experience occurred. Make sure that you respect the rights of the individuals you are interviewing or the audience you are writing to when dealing with sensitive areas uncovered by your research. It can also be useful to probe further with follow-up questions, as frequently the silver can lie in the banter that is spoken on the spur of the moment.
Listen closely during interviews. The biggest influence is when subjects share their own opinions, when things are said that no one could really expect to be funny and when subjects are given a chance to let out their feelings. Stay open for anger, confessions, paradoxes and fascinating twists.
Master Editing Techniques
A good shooting is the first step to achieving the goal. Effective editing produces usable footage out of raw material, giving viewers the spectacle they desire. Refresh your understanding of various editing techniques such as montage, continuity, rhetoric, and so much more. Some key editing tips include:Some key editing tips include:
- Jump cuts means joining two shots of the scene together to increase the sense of urgent and fast pace.
- Use photo, document or film clips to overlay on top of the content to give the viewers an idea of the context.
- While playing an interlocutor from another group, switch between different interviews on the same issues to regain speed.
- For instance, emotionally relevant music should be used to enhance moods.
- Assembling clips in a sequence towards progressively achieving resolution and humanisation scenes.
Well, I think the very carefully performed documentaries are too capable of altering an audience’s view of life in its entirety.
Even though as a genre, documentaries are less fictionalized than real movies, the creation of a documentary is as much creative and skillful as the creation of a fictional movie. The decision involves the commitment of the individual to continue learning about the theory and practice of documentary filmmaking as well as the equipment used in the field. If you have to study, study to the maximum of your abilities in every discipline. And remain flexible to be able to turn real-life unpredictability into cinema coherence.
One wonders why some documentaries are made when those that stir the pot and bring about change can be made. To those who are willing to commit to the art of documentary filmmaking, you stand the chance to create such documentaries that will foster change in the world.
