As part of the Industrial Media assignment on Documentary Storytelling;
This is a synopsis of an interesting part I personally chose to highlight in Documentary Storytelling for film and videographers by Curran Bernard
While Applying an idea to make a documentary, the approach should be as follows:
Start with your gut reaction to the subject: First ask yourself as an initial audience for your film, what is it about the topic, which grabs you.
We are surrounded by subject that offers potential for documentary storytelling. Current events may trigger ideas or an afternoon spent browsing the shelves of a library or bookstore may trigger ideas.
One can find stories within our families Example: Alan Berliner made Nobody’s business about his father, Oscar.
As a documentary maker, when you are close to a subject, you need to take an impartial view to determine whether it makes a film, which the audience want to see.This is also true when you adapt documentaries from printed sources. A story may read well on paper but may not play as well on the screen. Sometimes, it is a good idea to conduct a research to determine the best way to tell stories on film. Example: In the making of Cadillac Desert, drawn from Marc Reisner’s book of the same name, Producer John Else chose three of 40 stories in Reisner’s
Story Rights: Rights are needed when a film is indelibly linked to a book. One will need to come to a legal arrangement with the author or copy write holder. In order to do so, one should consult a good entertainment lawyer for exclusive access to material or an event. It’s good to retain creative control over your film while negotiating the rights to the story.
To make an extraordinary science documentary, one needs intelligence, curiosity, and ability to learn fast, readiness to consult with experts.
There must always be a positive collaboration between experts and filmmaker to enrich the film.Filmmakers find stories while the film is in the making. Over the course of the production or in the editing rooms, an experienced filmmaker always tends to alter the story focus or it’s structure during the production or postproduction to ensure it holds sufficient promise for the audience.
Find the right characters from research: example,Filmmaker Susan Froemke spent months on research to be sure that she had the characters and the story to explore the issue of poverty in Lalee’s Kin.
According to film maker like Gail Dolgin believe that “we’re also drawn to a film where we don’t know what’s going to happen.
Frederich Wiseman known for his exploration of American Institutions, namely hospital, basic training, welfare, Public housing, domestic violence and capturing rhythms of daily life and individual stories .He told interviewers that once he is given the permission to film, he mover quickly, spending weeks shooting and then finding his themes and point of view over the course of several months of editing.
As per Wiseman “I always want to make a movie which has to have dramatic sequences an structures and that has always lot of drama in ordinary experiences.
Wiseman’s style of shooting which relied on capturing drama out of ordinary experiences necessitated a high shooting rate with footage filmed versus footage that ends up on screen and a lengthy editing period.
Most importantly, knowing that this may happen, one should still approach a general idea by looking first for the best story you can, given the subject as you then understand it!
Knowing at least the base line story helps you anticipate, at mimimum, what you will need to make the film, including the characters and the location set ups.
As per Jon Else, one must head out with some bomb proof fall back plan so that if everything on the shoot goes wrong, they still come back with something.
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