Documentary

MarlonT · April 4, 2005

Will a production book for a documentary be somewhat different from one of a scripted show? What would i exactly need in it? I want to do things the right way the first time. If anyone could help me out with this, i'd appreciate it

drew_town · April 4, 2005

You would certainly need a log of what you've shot, broken down by timecode and descriptions. Contact information is very useful in a production book. You'd need an outline or script for the project as well as a schedule.

Bill Totolo · April 4, 2005

Also include your research, articles, track, elements reports, shot list, schedules all that fun stuff.

MarlonT · April 6, 2005

You would certainly need a log of what you've shot, broken down by timecode and descriptions. Contact information is very useful in a production book. You'd need an outline or script for the project as well as a schedule.

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Is it possible to script a documentary? How would you go about it? I was also wondering how many people are needed to make one. It seems that it can be done with as little as one person.

drew_town · April 6, 2005

Is it possible to script a documentary?

It depends really on the documentary. You should go into a doc with an idea of what the meat of the story is and how you want to represent that visually with your film. Ideas often change during the making of documentaries for one reason or another. For example you may discover that there's a different and more interesting story hidden within your first idea. See the doc "Sherman's March" by Ross McElwee for a good example. After you've shot a few things, start working on an outline to formulate your movie. Decide what you need, what you need but can't get, and how you're going to fix that. Often documentary filmmakers go into a project with a broad mission like "I'm going to make a movie that exposes the harsh conditions in this particular school system." So the filmmaker will shoot the poor facility, interview teachers to provoke support for this idea, and so on.

How many people you need also depends on the doc. If it's a touchy subject and requires the confidence of people involved, the fewer the people on the crew the better. And the less intrusive the equipment (i.e. camera, lights, mics, etc.) the better. So if you're doing the school system doc, you wouldn't want to haul in a big high-def camera, set up 3 point lighting, and have a bunch of people around because your subjects will be hesitant around them. One person often works best in documentaries. Sometimes two is a good number (one camera person and one interviewer).

Bill Totolo · April 6, 2005

Just to add to those great comments you may want to consider just how much footage you really want to shoot as it's more than likely you'll be the person stuck logging the tapes.