Common Documentary Filmmaking Mistakes

Mistakes can happen at just about any step in the filmmaking process. Some of these mistakes are big and some are small, but all of them can be avoided if you are careful.

Mistake #1: Forgetting to get release forms signed

Depending on what type of distribution you eventually get for your documentary, you’ll probably need signed release forms from all the people who play meaningful roles in the film. Download and print a stack of release forms for documentary filmmaking before you even start shooting and you’ll be covered. Even if you think you’ll just wind up putting a short documentary on YouTube, it’s still a good idea to get release forms signed (partially to protect yourself and partially because you might wind up with an exciting distribution opportunity later on that requires them).

Mistake #2: Not shooting enough b-roll footage for interviews

Picture this: You’re in the editing suite, possibly paying an editor thousands of dollars a week (or even editing yourself) and you realize you don’t have enough b-roll to cover the cuts you’ve made within an interview. This is a common dilemma and can be avoided beforehand if you plan ahead and brainstorm creative b-roll ideas to capture on location.

If it’s too late to shoot more footage and you’re deep in post-production, you might be able to use archival still photographs or archival footage or stock footage instead of original b-roll. Depending on what you need, licensing it could be expensive however and finding it may be difficult. The best possible solution is to plan properly to shoot more b-roll than you think you’ll ever need– it might just barely be enough!

Mistake #3: Not planning early for how you’ll eventually distribute the film

Distribution is one of the most challenging phases for filmmakers who would often rather be making films than distributing the one they just finished. But planning ahead, ideally in the pre-production phase, can reduce some distribution headaches. Having a distribution plan in mind for your film may give you guidelines for how to make choices about things like:

• Runtime of the film – If you’re planning for broadcast you’ll need to fit within certain standard time-slots
• The style & content of the film – Again, if you’re aiming for broadcast that may end up with a different shape and structure and content concerns than theatrical or web distribution
• Shooting format – Depending on where you see the film eventually ending up you may need to shoot in certain formats and resolutions, otherwise, you might see your distribution options slimmer than they might otherwise have been

Mistake #4: Not taking enough great still photographs while you’re in production

Even experienced documentarians sometimes make this mistake. It’s always useful to get a wide variety of still photographs while you’re making your film, that’s why major Hollywood movies even have still photographers on set to take pictures of both behind the scenes snapshots of the director and crew but also stills of the actors doing key moments in the film. Both types of photos are extremely useful for marketing documentaries later too.

Yes, it’s true that you can pull still frames from your video but they won’t be as crisp and high resolution as photographs taken by a proper DSLR. A failure in foresight to collect enough imagery on location often leads to a scramble in post-production to figure out what to use as key art for the project. Take lots of photos on set! Even if this means just handing a DSLR to a crew member to take a few snapshots. Make sure you also get a few photos of yourself on set (both you with a camera and also headshots) because you’ll find uses for them later too.

Mistake #5: Not building an audience while you make the documentary

From the start of your documentary filmmaking process to the end you’ll probably come into contact with hundreds or even thousands of people who are interested in what you’re doing. Each time you leave them behind without getting their contact information to add to your mailing list is a mistake. Your release forms should collect people’s email addresses too. Marketing your film doesn’t start when it’s finished– it starts when it begins!

Start a free email mailing list with a great free service like MailChimp to organize your list and send emails to them for fundraising or to offer them a chance to buy the film when it’s finished.

Mistake #6: Asking for the wrong amount in a crowd-funding campaign

If you’re doing a Kickstarter or other crowd-funding campaign, asking for too little money could get your project funded fast but eliminate the urgency of meeting the goal so other people won’t donate to it. On the other hand, asking for too much money (or a round number that can seem arbitrary like exactly $10,000) can mean you don’t reach your goal. Be realistic– both about how much you want to raise and also how much you and your social circle can raise.

Mistake #7: Not getting enough feedback on your rough cut

Locking your film at picture lock before you’ve gotten enough feedback can result in a weaker documentary. If viewers are left scratching their head struggling to understand a concept in your film or if the ending is unclear or the beginning is boring, you haven’t done your job collecting as much feedback as you needed. We recommend getting feedback from a variety of people including A) subject matter experts who know about what your film is about, B) other filmmakers and storytellers, and C) general audience members.

Mistake #8: Not getting clean interview soundbites

Inexperienced documentary producers and interviewers can fail to get clean soundbites from their interviewees by interrupting them or forgetting to get a version of the answer in a complete sentence. Later on, in the editing suite, you may realize that the answers from your interviewees are missing key context that would make them a complete standalone sentence (“Yeah, he was” rather than “I tried to my uncle up and realized that he was dead”). If your voice as the interviewer isn’t going to be heard in the finished film, your interviewee’s statements need to stand alone without a questioner adding context.

For more on this, read our companion article: Documentary Film Interview Technique: Should the Questions be Heard on Screen?

Mistake #9: Including too much text on screen

A documentary should above all else be a movie, not a magazine article. If you find yourself putting a lot of text on screen it can slow the film down quite a bit and lose your audience. Look for creative ways to get your point across, either through a narrator or getting the people who appear in your film to explain things. Don’t make your audience read too much or do too much math either. They’re there to watch a movie!

Mistake #10: Not starting the film off with a good enough “hook”

Film festival programmers are usually inundated with films from all over the country or even the world. They have to choose a small number of the films submitted– perhaps 1%– to show at that year’s fest. If your film doesn’t start with a bang, it may get tossed aside before a fest volunteer even finishes the first ten minutes. Give the film a sense of urgency and momentum and intrigue at the beginning and you’ll have a much better chance of being selected for film festivals.

Related:
How to write a script for a documentary film

How to boost film production values

Download documentary film release forms

What are the steps to make a documentary film? How to make documentaries

The post 10 Common Documentary Filmmaking Mistakes & How to Avoid Them appeared first on Documentary Film Cameras.

The steps to make a documentary film:

No two documentaries follow the exact same path from conception to completion but what follows below is a rough guide for the process by which many documentary films are made. Not every filmmaking process will include every step, and many films will include additional steps beyond the basic ones listed here.

Phase 1: Documentary Film Pre-production

Research & Writing – Every film starts with an idea. Sometimes for a documentary film, this might end up being quite different from the eventual finished product but documentaries often times start with a fair amount of research. That might including writing a documentary script or treatment for what you expect the film may include, and it may involve approximate hypothetical lines that you expect the people in your film to say. Many documentary filmmakers do all sorts of extensive research, much of which doesn’t actually make it into the film itself.

Pre-interviews and interviewee selection – Unless you’ve already decided to make a documentary about a specific historical or living individual, you’ll probably need to do some “casting,” or deciding who will be in your film. If it’s a doc about a particular issue, say, climate change, you might need to choose which scientists or experts you want to interview. Most documentary filmmakers end up talking with many more people than actually end up in their film. You might conduct pre-interviews where you’re doing research into both who will be enough of an expert to be in your film, but also who seems like they can talk in an engaging manner.

Simply being a subject expert is not enough to be “cast” in a documentary– you also need to be good on camera and able to speak in an understandable and engaging way that won’t confuse or put your audience to sleep. As the filmmaker or documentary film producer, you need to vet your film’s subjects and decide whether or not they’ll be good on film for the “role” you need them for. Sometimes even experts who aren’t well suited to speaking on camera (perhaps they have a stutter or they’re located in a remote location you can’t afford to travel to) can still sign on as advisors to your project which can help inform your process and answer subject area questions you encounter or give you feedback on rough cuts of the film later on.

Fundraising & building a team – Next the filmmaker will create a rough budget for what it will cost to make the film. On a super low budget doc you might be able to self-fund it, but often times you’ll need to do some documentary fundraising either through a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign or applying for media grants. There are many documentary film grant-makers but there’s also plenty of competition for their funds. Depending on the type of film you’re making you may also need to start building a team at this phase (hiring camera and sound technicians, an editor, etc). You’ll also want to secure any filming access you will need, like getting permission to film in a government building or confirming with your film’s interviewees or subjects that they’re willing to be part of your project.

Phase 2: Documentary Production Phase

Shoot interviews & follow your subjects – Depending on the type of documentary you’re doing, you may be shooting a variety of material. For a historical documentary, you might be filming re-enactments and collecting interviews with historians. For a documentary film that follows a modern day living person as they try to accomplish a goal (run a marathon for instance), you might be filming them as they train and work to accomplish their goal. Of course, you’ll want to get documentary film release forms signed from all your participants so you can legally use the footage you shoot with them.

Collect b-roll – B-Roll is the material that isn’t interviews in your film. If you’re making a film about woodworking you might want to collect lots of cool footage of people sawing wood or fitting joints into grooves or sanding rough edges or staining finished chairs. This footage will come in handy later when it’s time to piece together your interviews and other footage into telling a story. The b-roll can cover up edits that you make in your interviews and help you stitch together a visually compelling story. See our related article Creative B-Roll Ideas for Documentary Filmmakers.

Find archival materials – Not every documentary film relies on old photos or archival video but many do. If your film does, you’ll want to find, collect and digitize those materials so they’re ready for you to use in the editing process. You’ll also need to get permissions and documentation that you have those permissions from the rights holders or creators of this imagery if it’s not in the public domain or covered under the fair use loophole.

Phase 3: Documentary Post-Production

Editing – Depending on the length of your film (feature or short) your editing process might be quite long and complex or simpler. Feature length documentaries often start with a paper edit or a compilation of interview transcripts that roughly sketch out the structure of the film before any footage is actually edited. Shorter documentaries might just leap into the editing phase, making adjustments where the plan from pre-production didn’t quite match the finished results. You’ll also record any temporary and final voiceover if your documentary has narration.

Getting feedback – Almost every film, nonfiction or not, involves a substantial feedback gathering phase once there’s a rough cut ready to be shown. Just like writing a book, you’d want someone you trust to read it (and preferably lots of people) before you send it off to a publisher for consideration, filmmaking is much the same way. Documentary filmmakers will often hold rough cut screenings of a few people like subject matter experts, general audience member types and other filmmakers to help figure out what the weak or unclear parts of the film are. These days you can also send a private link to the film via email for feedback to people.

Polishing – Finally, once you’ve reached picture lock and your film is done with editing you’ll probably need to get a sound mix and color correction done to really make the film shine. If you have a film score composer they’ll also work during this stage to add custom music underneath some scenes. See our related article: How to boost film production values.

Phase 4: Documentary Distribution

Every film is unique and every film will have a unique distribution trajectory. What follows here are some examples of what the distribution phase may include, not every film will do each of these.

Submit to film festivals – This is a common step in the indie filmmaking process. Documentarians might submit their film to submission services like Film Freeway that will, for a fee, send your film to various festivals around the world. If you’re accepted to some you may attend them in person to show your film, give Q&As afterward to the audience, and sometimes meet with other filmmakers or distribution representatives from companies if there are any in attendance who are interested in your work.

Get a distribution agent to pitch your film to studios – This might be another step although not every documentary film does this.

Submit your film to broadcasters like PBS – Specifically, PBS has their POV and Independent Lens for 1 hour long stand alone docs.

Put the film online for streaming/VOD purchases – Online storefronts like Amazon, iTunes and others will allow you to market your film and sell directly to consumers.

Not every film will include all of the steps in this step by step documentary filmmaking guide, and just about every film will include other unique steps that we haven’t mentioned. But hopefully, now you have a bird’s eye view of what the documentary filmmaking process is commonly like. Browse around our website for more documentary filmmaking information.

Related:
How to write a script for a documentary film

How to boost film production values

Download documentary film release forms

Best documentary filmmaking cameras

10 Common Documentary Filmmaking Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

How to get audio/video transcribed – speech recognition & manual transcription programs

The post What are the steps to make a documentary film? How to make a documentary appeared first on Documentary Film Cameras.

Unlike fictional films which have fairly rigid shooting script formats, documentary filmmakers may use a variety of script formats to get their point across either for their collaborators or to submit along with funding proposals as is sometimes requested by grant-makers.

There are three basic types of documentary script formats. In this article, we’ll introduce each one, explain how they’re used, and give examples of what they look like. Some filmmakers might use all three types of documentary film scripts, and others might only use one or some type of modified combination (a small number of filmmakers may not write at all, especially for very short films).

The basic types of documentary film script formats are:

• A Treatment – This is a sometimes hypothetical pre-shoot narrative document describing what happens in the film from start to finish
• A Split Script – A side-by-side two column format with one side telling what the audience will see and the other side detailing what the audience will hear at the same time
• A Paper Edit – A detailed accounting of visuals along with the precise soundbites that will accompany them which match what was actually recorded in interviews

Let’s jump in and examine each of these in detail, as well as learn how to write each one.

What is a documentary film treatment?

A documentary film treatment is often written before a film has begun shooting (although it may also be written at a later stage). It forecasts the visuals that the filmmakers plan to collect and the and interviews that they might be paired with. It even may guess what types of things expert interviews might contain. Sometimes the finished film is quite close to what the original treatment contained, and other times it turns out to be quite far off from the final cut of the film.

Treatments are sometimes requested by grant-makers as part of documentary film funding proposals. They can also be used by filmmakers to plan what their film will contain in a loose manner without having to write a rigid document.

What is the documentary film treatment format?

The format for documentary film treatments is less formal than other scriptwriting formats. Some people may not even consider it technically a script at all. Generally speaking the treatment (also used in fictional filmmaking) tells us what the audience will see and hear, starting with the beginning of the film and proceeding in order until the end of the film. A documentary treatment might read like this:

We see the inside of a Hershey’s chocolate factory. Industrial food equipment pours liquid chocolate into molds in the shape of the Easter bunny. We see factors wearing hairnets inspect each chocolate bunny before it is placed into packaging.

A representative from the Hershey’s company explains the challenges in producing large quantities of bunny-shaped chocolate but talks about how much demand has grown for them in recent years. We see lots of mouth-watering shots of chocolate being packaged.

As you can see, this treatment could be written speculatively before the filmmakers even arrived at the factory and set up a tripod. It guesses the types of footage and interview sound bites they may collect, and gives the reader both a rough sense of what watching this scene will be like and also what types of footage and interview they filmmakers will need to collect on site. This can be used to formulate a simple shot list and interview question list for the shoot itself.

Some filmmakers are sticklers about not including any speculative soundbites “in quotation marks” because they don’t want to set their heart on any particular wording that their interviewees may or may not give them. Other filmmakers will try to guess roughly what their interviewees will say and who they will be, regardless of how close that ends up being to the finished product. Similarly, some treatments may be short, encompassing an entire film in a page or two, whereas other treatments may be extremely detailed blueprints, going on for ten pages or more. There is no right or wrong choice for how to write a treatment as long as it gives the reader a sense of what watching the film will be like from start to finish.

What is a documentary film split script?

A split script is visually quite different from a treatment. Instead of being a narrative accounting of what we expect the film to contain, a documentary split script is based on a two column format with the left column describing the imagery that the viewer will see and the right side of the page telling us what we’ll be hearing. Sometimes the two will be in unison – sync sound, such as seeing and hearing an expert in an interview speak on screen – and sometimes the two will diverge such as hearing a narrator explain something that we are watching unfold.

Documentary film split scripts are often useful in post-production because they can be a detailed blueprint that a producer or director can hand off to an editor and say “make this!” The editor, theoretically, will understand the scaffolding of what they need to construct.

What is the documentary film treatment format?

Documentary scripts of this type are typically a two column table with a heading for picture and sound. They look something like this:

Some split scripts may have exact word for word quotes around what soundbites to use from interviewees that were actually captured verbatim on set, and others may be written more loosely. Although split scripts don’t always need to contain shot for shot accountings of which footage to use, they generally do specify if b-roll is needed what the imagery should depict. If they are extremely specific with exact quotes and information about timecodes, split scripts might actually bleed into the next type of documentary script format, which is…

What are documentary film paper edits?

If a treatment is a rough sketch, and a split script is a blueprint, then a paper edit is a detailed diagram that contains measurements, numbers, and an exact ingredient list for the steps to construct a documentary. The paper edit is most often used near the end of the filmmaking process when all the interviews have been shot, the b-roll has been collected, and the producer or director is ready to hand off their entire vision to the film’s editor.

The documentary paper edit might also be used as a document for the director, producer, or editor to gather their thoughts and imagine what the shape of the final film might be. Many drafts of a paper edit might be discarded before a final version is greenlit for the editor to work on. Often a paper edit is cobbled together from transcripts that have been made from interviews.

What is the documentary paper edit format?

Documentary paper edits might be split script documents like the example above, only with exact verbatim quotes from interviewees and timecode and tape numbers to help the editor find the relevant footage. Or they may match more of a narrative treatment format with timecodes and exact quotes and reel numbers included. They may also take a spreadsheet type format like this:

Back in the old days, filmmakers might even cut and paste pieces from typed transcripts onto a single piece of paper, page by page. Paper edits should be written to make it as easy as possible to find the material needed to edit the film in the video editing program as possible.

In closing, documentary film scripts take many different shapes and forms but the most important thing is that you choose the format that’s most useful to you at whatever stage of the game you’re in to communicate whatever you need to communicate, whether that’s for a funder, a collaborator, or even just yourself to organize your thoughts.

Related:
What are the steps to make a documentary film? How to make documentaries

How to boost your documentary film’s production values

10 Common Documentary Filmmaking Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

How to get audio/video transcribed – speech recognition & manual transcription programs

The post What does a documentary script look like? How to write a script for a documentary film appeared first on Documentary Film Cameras.

Documentary filmmaking can be quite expensive: budgets can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars or more for a feature-length documentary. If you’re interested in making a low budget documentary film, especially if you’ve never made one before, you’ll need to spend wisely and count every penny.

10 Low Budget Documentary Film Tips

Don’t start until you’re really and truly ready to make a documentary film

This first tip might be a bit of a buzzkill but the truth is, making a documentary film is extremely hard work and it’s important to know what you’re getting into. Many filmmakers could have saved a huge amount of money if they planned a bit more before they even picked up a camera. If this is your first documentary film, we recommend picking up a good book about documentary filmmaking which will help you plan out your journey ahead.

In addition, if you’re paying at least some crew or renting gear, you can save money by doubling up multiple things when you schedule shoot days– i.e. on the same day that you interview a film subject, also get some b-roll of them in their everyday life so you don’t have to get it later, if there’s even a chance you might need it.

Shoot your film with a cheap documentary film camera

Photo credit

One of the most expensive things for first-time documentary filmmakers to purchase outright is a good video camera for documentaries. Having your own documentary film camera is quite useful because you never know quite when a potential shoot could come up.

To help you find a great doc camera on a budget, we’ve put together a list of some of the best cheap documentary film cameras.

Apply for grants & try a Kickstarter campaign

Famed hockey player Wayne Gretzky once said you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. In the same way, you miss out on 100% of the documentary film grants that you don’t apply for. Many of these are extremely competitive, but if you focus on smaller grants, non-documentary specific grants aligned particularly well with the topic of your documentary, or general arts grants for artists in your city or state, you may have a better shot. And of course, you can always try a Kickstarter campaign to raise additional funds for your documentary.

It may feel uncomfortable asking for money but take solace in the fact that for crowdfunding campaigns you can let your footage speak for you to a certain extent. If you craft a dynamite fundraising trailer with all your best footage and a compelling or unique premise, you have decent odds of success. Just make sure you lay the groundwork by prepping your potential donors months in advance and reading up on the best way to conduct a crowd-funding campaign.

Enlist the help of your friends and/or do skill trades for crew

Paying a documentary film crew can get expensive but if you’re able to interest your friends/classmates/colleagues in your project you can definitely save some money. Just keep in mind, you often get what you pay for. So if you have a critical shoot or event you need covered properly or a very important interview to shoot, you may want to hire a pro to help shoot it or capture audio.

You can also do skill trading with others– working on their project in exchange for them working on yours.

Edit your film yourself– or at least get started on it

Professional documentary film editors with many credits under their belt can charge $5,000+ a week and it can take many weeks to edit a film, meaning it’s easy to rack up a huge bill. Often documentaries can get stalled in the post-production phase when they run out of money to pay their editor.

You can save huge amounts of money if you’re hiring an outside editor by organizing your footage well and prepping it for editing. We’re talking about putting each shoot in its own folder and making sure your footage is converted if it needs to be (all in the same edit-friendly format) and ready to be edited before you hand it off to your editor.

Related: 10 Ways to Boost Documentary Film Production Values

You can, of course, save even more money by editing your documentary yourself. NLEs (non linear editing programs– like Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro) are cheaper and easier to use than ever before. And you can find online training tools as well to help you start.

Use stock music instead of a composer

Composers for a documentary film can charge $10,000 and up to score your doc. For a low budget documentary that’s often out of the question. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have great music– using stock music from a website like Storyblocks Audio, which charges an annual subscription fee for $99/year allows you to download as many royalty free music tracks as you want to use in your documentary film. Pond5 offers an even larger selection of music and sound effects (though it’s pay per individual track used).

Save money by using public domain archival footage & photos

Old archival film footage is another one of those costs that can cost thousands of dollars for even a few seconds. You can save money by using public domain films from places like Archive.org, or CriticalPast.com, which charges a fee but provides HD footage of old public domain films on a variety of topics whose copyright has expired.

Old photos whose copyrights have expired are also fair game for documentary filmmakers. And so are photographs and videos/film footage shot by US federal government employees as part of their job (which aren’t eligible for copyright in the first place). Pond5 has a great public domain photograph collection which it offers for free.

Leverage Fair Use to your advantage

The Fair Use clause in US copyright law means you can use even copyright material without paying for them– so long as you’re using them to critique them, or in a few other limited circumstances. For instance, if you intend to critique Hollywood’s portrayal of Hispanics, you can excerpt short bits of movies that demonstrate your point, even without paying a dollar in license fees. Check out the Fair Use for Documentary Filmmakers guide for more info on how this works.

Be strategic and selective about film festivals

You might think that once your documentary film is finished, you can finally relax your budget. But the truth is, in the 21st-century film festivals can be a bit of a racket. In order to submit your film, they charge (sometimes large) entry fees whether or not you’re selected, and they can result in very little from your perspective– not to mention cost a lot to attend if they’re out of town. So if you want to send your documentary to film festivals, be strategic about your festival strategy. Check out our article specifically about film festival strategy.

Distribute your film online for cheap

Distributing your film online can be done virtually for free– if you do it right. Read our article about online film distribution to learn more about getting your film out there, and getting people to watch it.

Related:

The Best Low Budget Documentary Cameras

Cheapest 4K Video Cameras for Documentary Filmmaking

What is the Best Cheap Documentary Camera for Filmmaking in 2019?

10 Ways to Boost Documentary Film Production Values

The post How to Make a Low Budget Documentary Film appeared first on Documentary Film Cameras.