Documentary Film Success

 Creating a documentary is no easy task, there is a lot that goes into it and a lot you should think about when creating one. Of course one of the important parts of making a documentary is deciding what you should make your documentary about. Having a topic that you're interested and invested is what you should go for so you feel inclined to work on it rather than seeing it as a chore. Another important point is what is available to you, if try to be too ambitious your going to have more struggles than successes. Try to make sure that your idea of what you want to create is possible with what you have available to you. When you figure out what is available to you, you should then figure out what would be most visually interesting. You should take a look of all your concepts for the documentary and see what "clicks".

    Now besides coming up with ideas for your documentary you need to gear up to create it. Thankfully, for this project the school provides the technology and accessories for us to use. For camera options we have the DSLRs and other high end camera. While the high end camera will most likely produce a better quality the DSLRs will most likely be the ones that are used just for more convenience. Besides what thinking about what you should record with there are two other things you should think about when recording, lighting and sound. For sound we have the options of a shotgun mic and a lavalier mic. Depending on the situation depends which microphone you should use. If you're just doing one on one interviews you should just use a lavalier since it will capture the best audio for things like that, while shotgun should really be used for general sounds that fill the whole room like a crowd or something like that. You could also use a boom mic but in my scenario I doubt that will be utilized much.

    After figuring out the ideas and tools you'll need for you documentary you will get to filming, and there are typically two sections to filming the interviews and the B-roll. Now the most important thing for filming interviews is actually be able to record them. Now that sounds redundant but if you don't plan accordingly and they are a busy person you could be wasting so much time just trying to be able to record this one person. Now when you do get to record them there are two things you should keep in mind is try to make sure your subject is comfortable and  to avoid yes and no questions. The importance of making the person you're filming comfortable is typically makes the whole thing easier. If you talk with them a bit before starting you can see what kind of person they are and think ahead to what kind of questions you should ask. On that topic when you do ask the questions, it's important to avoid just simple yes and no questions, nothing about questions like that is entertaining. You should treat it like a normal conversation and just ask questions that are open ended so it gives you something you can actually use. Now if you just had footage of interviews that wouldn't be that entertaining so you will also want to record some B-roll. If the viewers were just looking at the interviewers that could get kind of boring, which is where the B-roll footage comes in. Narrative shots a common B-roll footage used in documentaries and are shots that cover what the subject is talking about or the subject themselves in a scenario. Besides that you have exposition shots that can describe who/what/where/when of what the subject is talking about during the interview.

    Finally when you get through all these steps you'll have to go through editing all your footage together into one video. This will typically take the longest and there are some thing that you should keep in mind when you start editing all your footage together. With the sheer amount of footage you'll be gathering you will want to organize all of your footage and audio, if you don't you will most likely end up with a mess not being able to find what your looking for. You will also want to create sequences for each individual interview that have all the pertaining footage. That way you will have an easier time at putting them together on a longer timeline later. Another very important tip is to back up everything. If you don't and some kind of problem comes along which messes with your footage you'll have to start back from square one, which could but a loss of many spent hours you can't get back. Finally with editing another key thing you should think about is music. Music is very key to setting the tone of your documentary, when you think about what kind of tone you want your documentary to portray you should find music that complements your tone. However before you fill your entire documentary with music you can also have parts that just have no music at all. Depending on the situation it may be more impactful not have music included at all, but it depends on the situation in the film for you to decide. Overall these are the important tips you should keep in mind when you are creating a documentary as all of these ideas are key to creating a entertaining and fulfilling documentary.