Digital SLR Video and Filmmaking For Dummies

24

Ten Tips for Creating a Documentary

In This Chapter

Planning your project

Shooting more than you’ll use

Learning from watching other documentaries

Oscar-winning films like Taxi to the Dark Side (2007) and March of the Penguins (2005), are clearly documentaries, but so is the video you made commemorating your mother’s 60th birthday or your son’s first haircut. (Put them together and you get Taxi to Your Mom’s 60th Birthday, or March of the Barbers, but I digress.)

By definition, a documentary is a non-fiction account of a topic. They include the long-form feature-length movies, multi-part television series like Ken Burns’ Jazz, Baseball, and The Civil War, as well as news segments that range from one minute to one hour. The duration doesn’t matter as long as you grab the attention of your audience.

To make your documentary of any length and subject matter into something that people will find interesting, consider these ten tips.

Know the Topic You’re Going to Cover

Whether you’re ...