What’s the story? AKA Discovery.

The term ‘documentary’ can mean wildly different things to different people – not least when it comes to talking scope and scale. A documentary might involve a crew living in tents following a herd of buffalo for 4 years, or it could be one person capturing a short event in an afternoon and getting some bypassers’ reactions to it.

It’s very important then to clarify some big picture things from the get-go:

1. What is the story we are trying to tell?
2. Who is the audience?
3. What about this story is interesting to them?
4. Where is the emotional resonance?
5. What does success look like for this project?

You don’t need to have great answers to all of these questions – part of the point of pre-production is to find that out – but it’s important to start defining these before getting sidetracked with practical and technical considerations. After all – the audience is not having an emotional reaction to a lens or a light (though these may help) – ultimately we are talking about telling stories and peoples’ reactions to them.

From here we want to gather all these materials together, sift our what is the most compelling and relevant to what we want to achieve, and start looking for themes and connections that we can use later when we plan our story.

 

Pre-Interviews

Unlike a scripted commercial or film, documentaries are (in many cases, and in certain ways) ‘discovered’ along the way. That’s not to say that the producer just stumbled upon a story out of nothing (though this is sometimes the case) but rather they came upon details as they progressed that they didn’t know from the beginning.

While it might seem romantic to just head out with a camera or sit someone down in a room and ask them questions until something great spontaneously comes out, this is also quite wasteful time-wise for all involved. On the other hand, we don’t want to script and prescribe everything that everyone does on camera because – especially with non-actors – it will obviously come across sterile and fake (to put it mildly).

So what do we do? Well we pre-interview our prospective interviewees (either in person or on zoom) and get a sense of what they might have to contribute to the story, before we sit them in a room with 10 lights and start interrogating them.

A pre-interview is a very low-stress situation where the producer gets a chance to feel out who could be great to involve in the production, and what part of the story they might be best suited to contribute. If Sally has a great take on a particular plot point, you may not need to get the other 5 people to tell their less-interesting versions on the shoot day, because you already know you have the one you want to use. Maybe we had discounted Simon but after hitting with a few questions he has an interesting take on a certain thing that nobody else covers, and so on.

It’s also an opportunity to go down rabbit-holes 1-on-1 and feel out interesting insights and observations that the subject might feel are too trivial or irrelevant to mention on the shoot day with the pressure of other people around. We’re always looking for nuggets of gold that we can collect and line up in just the right order to tell the story in a way that feels insightful and real from start to finish. The pre-interview process is a low-pressure way to pan for those nuggets.

Remember! These people are usually not trained actors, and so we have to be careful how we elicit natural stories and observations from them. Actors spend many years learning to deliver lines and reactions as if it’s the first time… again and again and again. Non-actors might give a great natural response to a question, but lose all that energy when asked to do it a second time. So, like excavating a fossil we want to delicately work out what is there – leave it in place – and then return on the shoot day to carefully capture as naturalistic a ‘first telling’ as possible.

Speaking of non-actors, a pre-interview gives the producer a chance to get on more comfortable terms with the subjects and calm some of their potential concerns about the shoot day, making things smoother for everyone.

 

The story ‘plan’

So after the pre-interviews we’ll have a good idea of WHO we have to work with, and the kind of story raw material that we will fashion into a plan or outline. At this point this could be very loose and high level – we’re talking a single page of bullet points that almost resembles how you might explain a movie to a friend after having seen it the previous night.

‘So there was this guy, who came to the country when he was 8 years old, and he always wanted to make shoes, but his mum told him he had to be a doctor..’ and so on.

From here, we should have an overall sense of where the story goes, some of the twists, turns, escalating circumstances, a climax and emotional pay off and so on. This is not to say that nothing can change along the way, but we should at least have an overall idea of the story we’re telling since that knowledge will inform every other aspect of the production hence.

We will have gotten some ideas from the pre-interviews of how we might want to tell different parts of this story from different contributors – the mum might talk about memories of our subject first going to school, or his wife might talk about some dating anecdote and so on… all of which is pieced together to form a cohesive story.

Okay so we’re done, now? Not quite. Now we have to start thinking about HOW we are actually going to make this thing.

 

What are we actually going to shoot?

Remember that we’re not scripting a commercial here where we are specifying exactly ahead of time what shots we need from which angles, BUT we can have some solid plans to put ourselves in a position to be able to capture great material that is not only going to feel natural, but also specific and be useful for telling our story in our edit.

The ‘safe’ and I would argue lazy or bad way to make a documentary is the following:

1. Shoot some ‘talking heads’ sitting down in chairs, answering some questions – ‘A-roll’
2. Shoot some generic behaviour like these people typing at a keyboard or walking down a corridor – ‘B-roll’
3. Cut together the best pieces of the A-roll, slap the best takes of B-roll on top, add music and call it a day.

While generic b-roll might feel convenient – both to shoot and to liberally apply randomly over people talking – the downside is that it feels to the viewer like what it is… generic. Shooting more specific shots and sequences is ‘riskier’ in the sense that they might seem TOO specific in the edit and feel irrelevant to the dialogue content that ends up getting used. The upside, however – when you do it right – is that you end up with a much more compelling visual experience and journey. Something that feels ‘cinematic’ rather than shots that a news cameraman happened to pop off while he was waiting for his coffee to get made. (see the formula article for shot quality)

In order for us to be able to shoot more specific b-roll and sequences, we first need to know:

1. What do we want to convey at this point of the story?
2. What and who do we have access to shoot – also where, and for how long?
3. What can we cover with other materials (e.g. archive photography, graphics etc)
4. How will all these elements fit together to create a cohesive and overall flow?

After all, this isn’t a podcast or an audiobook where we can just play a sound effect and leave it to peoples’ imagination, we actually have to SHOOT these things, or otherwise convey them visually and for that, we need a plan.

 

Scouting

To really get a sense of the potential shots/angles/visual potential of a space ultimately the director and/or camera operator needs to physically walk around and see it for themselves. They will likely see options for shots that others won’t – especially if those others already spend a lot of time at the location and are somewhat ‘numb’ to the space.

In the name of efficiency though – as with the pre-interviews – we want to filter out options before we take the time to travel somewhere and walk around, which is where the ‘phone tour’ comes in. I recommend someone just flip their phone horizontal and start at one end of the space and slowly walk through each room, as if you’re showing off a new house to your grandma who isn’t a fan of shakey-cam.

This approach is superior to just having someone go around and take some pictures because likely (as mentioned earlier) they will not see the visual or story potential of the space and as such the crew will never even know that certain pockets of the location exist until the day, and as such they can’t be planned for.

After looking through all the phone tours (and maybe some google street views) the producer(s) can then take the time to inspect only the locations that they really want to shoot at, and go and take their own planning reference photos for the purposes of their own shotlists and scheduling.

 

The Story + Visual outline

Okay so now we know WHO we want to shoot, for which STORY BEATS, and we can plan WHAT we want to see as far as b-roll at WHICH locations.

At this point we can have a pretty good sense of how the story will flow, and what sort of things we are going to see and hear throughout. This is a great place to be in, and assuming our plan is realistic, we can be pretty confident that the whole thing is ultimately going to work as far as being a satisfying story experience.

What we DON’T know – however – is EXACTLY what each shot is going to look like. For example, we might have a plan in our outline that our subject is going to cross a busy intersection looking serious, on a long lens with a lot of other people crossing in front of her. That’s fine, we can kind of imagine how that would work, and how we would feel watching it. Do we know the EXACT angle we’re going to use? Or the exact shot? No.

The purpose of a storyboard (see what is a storyboard) traditionally is so that each shot can be planned to link up nicely with what comes before and after it – and the filmmakers know that the edit will cut together smoothly between them in a non-confusing way. Spielberg can know that he needs this specific angle on the shark to cut to this angle of the guys on the boat, and it will look correct and make sense.

What we’re doing, is a bit different. We have a plan, but we are not a violinist in an orchestra that is precisely following the sheet music. We are more like a jazz pianist who – while having some restrictions the musical key or vibe of the track a track – ultimately needs the flexibility to improvise and capture something spontaneously in the moment. This is not some pretentious claim at art, but rather a practicality of being agile enough to take advantage of organic ‘real life’ moments that actually resonate with people.

Remember, all those people crossing that intersection are not paid extras like on a Spielberg production – they’re real people and we can’t tell them what to do. We don’t quite know what they are going to do, or how our subject will end up interacting with them. For these reasons we want to simultaneously have a plan, but know that we can break from the plan in the moment if we see or come up with something better… knowing that we have the plan and a solid structure to fall back on if we need it.

If suddenly it starts raining and we can’t shoot at that intersection, it’s more important to know the function of that sequence (e.g. showing the subject feeling overwhelmed and overstimulated) so we can come up with a different option on the fly that conveys a similar tone and effect.

And that.. is why a story outline with an intended shot list is superior than a storyboard.

 

The Schedule

And so now that we’re happy with the overall story plan and what we would see and hear while that story unfolds, we now come to the all important schedule.

My preference is to break up the actual pre-production process in this way:

1. Story ‘discovery’
2. Pre-interviews
3. Phone scouts
4. Creating the story outline
5. Physical scouts
6. Creating the story + visual outline
7. Shoot 1 – the main interviews
8. Create dialogue edit (just people talking on camera)
9. Refine the b-roll plan based on what ended up being used in (8)
10. Shoot 2 – the b-roll sequences (to match the confirmed dialogue edit)
11. Shoot 3 – extra pick-up shots if necessary (may just be exteriors and things that need no subject participation)
12. Edit and assemble final video

The great thing about this approach is that you go into your main interview shoot with a detailed plan of what material you want from who, and you focus on the pieces that are most important to tell your story.

You then get to put that together and incorporate riffs and impromptu anecdotes or comments that your subjects make, which gives your dialogue edit a natural feel and injects new life into the story that you’re now quite familiar with.

And THEN, knowing that the dialogue edit works (almost like a radio play) you get to go and shoot b-roll FOR the edit. This is a luxury whereby as you are shooting you KNOW that you will use a certain shot, because you know exactly where it will go in the edit, and you can put extra effort into making it good, rather than constantly worrying that you are wasting time on shots that will likely not even be used.

To clarify, dividing the shoot up in multiple days like this is not adding MORE TIME, it’s actually SAVING time. Remember, these days could be half days or certain pick up shots, it totally depends. Importantly, rather than just spraying our camera wildly all over the place hoping to capture some shots that will be useful later on (for an edit that we haven’t seen yet) we are instead laser focused on capturing shots that we KNOW we need, to fill gaps on a timeline for a story that ALREADY WORKS, we’re just making it better, shot by shot.

 

Wrapping up

So that should give you some insight into my preferred way to achieve the best most compelling product for the least amount of time and effort for all involved. It’s not about being lazy, it’s about squeezing the most value and quality from the resources we have available.

Of course – like documentary production itself – there are times when we need to be flexible and adapt to circumstances. Maybe there is a particular event that won’t happen again that we need to capture material from before we have the story edit laid out – that’s fine. The important thing is while we’re rolling with it, we are always thinking about how this factors into getting the most powerful end product for all involved.

If you would like to discuss the potential for your project, feel free to get in touch.