Creating a great documentary is something that seems to be much more difficult to achieve than to create an ordinary fictional or non-fictional narrative. For many reasons I find this to be true. For one, finding a subject that is interesting enough to make a film about, this is often one of the hardest tasks, then there is the matter of prinicipal photography (shooting the film), and finally we have the job of putting it all together.
There are plenty of fascinating subjects in this world, man-made and natural. The amount of subjects there are to film and make great docs is inummerable, but then why is it so hard to find one when you need one? When it really gets boiled down to a few options, there are always the same questions that pop up.
Let’s say, for example, that the subject of your documentary is the local homeless man. He has ben seen all over town with his shopping cart, over-filled with random stuff, for as long as you can remember. Everyday you see this man you wonder what his life is like. What a great idea for a documnetary! You’ll follow this guy around for a month and ask him a few questions, and bam! The movie writes itself.
Question number one: “What if his life is just plain-old boring?” It’s possible. Granted this guy could have, at some point, been a millionaire who lost everything in a bad gamble with the mafia, but what are the chances? Also, in contrast to that exaggerated example, what if he was never anything? What once looked like a great subject, is beginning to look a little dull. But, for the sake of this article, let’s say he used to be a rich guy and made a really bad investment. Just a stupid choice he made and it screwed up his life.
Now we’re into principal photography. We have organized our film in an outline and we are ready to take to the streets.
Question number two: “How do you get the most out of your subject?” No matter how rich your subject is with turmoil or intrigued, you, as the filmmaker, need to be able to extract all of the best parts from it. In documentaries where the filmmaker just lets the film write itself, often leads to an unorganized and uninteresting doc, regardless of how interesting the subject itself is.
The documentary Confessions of a Superhero, to me, is a good example of this. The documentary follows four different people who dress up as superheros and work for tips in front of the famous Mann’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles. When I had heard of this documentary, my interest was instantly piqued. I’ve always been curious about the lives of those people. They don’t work for the theater so it always interested me to know what made them do that job.
But, once I finally sat down and watched the entire doc, I wanted more out of it. It seemed to me as if all the filmmakers did was follow these people around and record there random chatter. The interviews were a little more interesting, but only because the people themselves were interesting. It didn’t feel as though they got the best out of there subjects.
After all is said and done, the last thing to do is to piece the whole thing together. The editing process is crucial in documentaries, because unlike everyday films, the context in which something is said or preceived is very important. When working on docs, you are telling the story of real people, real subjects. You’re not out to glorify them or edit things in a way that isn’t how they intended. Your goal is to tell their story as they told it to you and make that translate into film. The documentaries that are the most successful are the ones that, after you’ve seen them, you say to yourself, “I can’t believe that was all true!” Or, “Wow that was truely amazing. And it was all real life!”
Though exceptional documentaries are hard to come there are plently of them out there for you to enjoy. Who knows, maybe even one day you’ll pick up a camera and make one of your own. Good Luck!
