Making a Documentary

Since we have just finished the making of a documentary I thought that I would write a piece on some of the things that you need to be aware of when recording your documentary. Firstly its important to come up with an idea that has a catch or an interesting point to it, otherwise people will struggle to engage with it so it s a good idea to find something an audience can relate to, making it personal can really attract an audience.

Secondly once you have come up with an idea its good to do lots of research so that you know nearly all there is to know about the subject, don’t just use the internet for research, read papers, go to libraries and watch other documentaries for inspiration.


Once the research is done is time to plan the making of the documentary, i suggest you sit down with your team with a calendar in front of you and mark out the dates of post and pre production, this doesn't have to be set in stone but it gives you something to work to and is a great help for making sure the project runs smoothly.

Now its planned out you need to find contributors this can be easy in some cases but also extremely hard in other cases, once you have a proposed list of possible contributors its time to phone them, this is a good idea because you need to hear how they speak so that you can check if they will be interesting in front of the camera. Also if you phone them you can really sell the documentary to them, contributors can go off the boil quickly if you don’t keep them up to date with what is going on so keep in touch.


Now the contributors are sorted out arrange the filming dates and make sure you have all the equipment ready and sorted before hand, blacking the tapes is a good plan to make sure you don’t loose the time code on the tape. When you arrive for filming be very friendly and polite to the contributors have a chat with them before this will help to relax them for the camera. make sure you shoot 15-20 seconds of room sound before you start this allows a nice handle at the beginning, at this stage you could also rewind the tape and watch it back to see if the sound and image are sticking to the tape, you don’t want to film an interview and then realise you didn’t capture any of it. Now you’ve got the interview what can you do to make it visually interesting, well firstly you can film a few different shots of the interview such as an over the shoulder of the interviewer and the contributor, you can film the interviewer asking some of the questions, you can include shots of the interviewer and the contributor nodding (known as noddies) and finally you can include a shot of both the interviewer and the contributor on a wide angle shot. Now you have the interview sorted out what else can be added to spice it up, because we don’t just want to see a boring interview, well I suggest adding cutaways to relevant stuff for example if they are talking about restaurants get footage of people eating in restaurants, remember you can never have enough cut aways so if something is slightly related to the subject matter, film it because you might use it.

Now the filming is over its time to edit, I recommend firstly log and capture the spills and watch through them noting down any good points or parts you’d like to include, then make a plan in order of how you want the story to be told and add these clips to a timeline at this stage its not important to worry about how the image looks just the sound, to see if it is telling the intended story this is known as a sync pull (remember to make sure the levels are peaking at -3db) Once the sound is down its time to make it look pretty firstly listen to it through and add the cutaways made to relevant points, when you feel its getting boring change what is on the screen, make sure you cover over any harsh edits you have made, this will make it run smoothly. The documentary is now pretty much finished so have a last watch through and make any adjustments to be made, its a good idea to get someone else to watch it and pick out any points that can be improved on. Well thats pretty much it!!!!!!!!