Directing the Documentary, 7th Edition

P A R T 7

ADVANCED PRODUCTION ISSUES

Sustaining an audience’s interest through the extended and complicated issues found in longer participatory documentaries takes imagination, planning, and much experimentation at the editing stage. Story lines in longer films become more convoluted as you organize what an extended chain of participants might say and do, something you can only guess at during research.

For observational documentaries, the same concerns exist. The difference is that you have little or no influence over what happens. You do, however, have absolute say about what, when and who you choose to film, and how you film it. Thus, your research and foreknowledge, your sense of the processes your principal characters will go through, ...