Documentary Storytelling, 3rd Edition

Preface to the Third Edition

The phrase documentary storytelling has become commonplace since this book was first published in 2003; it describes the powerful merging of visual and literary narrative devices to enable media makers to reach and engage audiences with nonfiction content. But the need for “storytelling” is also sometimes used to justify nonfiction work that is overly sentimental or sensational, poorly researched, and poorly crafted. That's not what this book is about, and it's not what the filmmakers featured in these pages do.

Instead, it's about an organic and often time-consuming process in which a filmmaker approaches a subject, finds (as opposed to imposes) a story within that subject, and then uses a wealth of narrative devices—structure, ...