24
Ten Tips for Creating a Documentary
In This Chapter
Planning your project
Shooting more than youâll 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 motherâs 60th birthday or your sonâs first haircut. (Put them together and you get Taxi to Your Momâs 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 Burnsâ Jazz, Baseball, and The Civil War, as well as news segments that range from one minute to one hour. The duration doesnât 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 Youâre Going to Cover
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