Interviews, documentary filmmakers

Documentary Storytelling. That s what this book is about. It s about the story, how to convey that story eloquendy, effectively, and ethically. This book is absolutely brilliant... packed full of interviews with award-winning documentary filmmakers offering up information, advice, and wisdom you ll find interesting and useful."... 

For filmmakers, this book focuses primarily on longer-form work, but the principles of documentary storytelling can and do apply in a range of forms and formats. I have applied the story and structure tools contained in this book to six-minute historical documentaries, eight-minute natural history films, and even 90-second audio presentations. Brett Culp, interviewed in Chapter 18, applies these tools as an event filmmaker, crafting stories from key moments in his clients lives. 

Another noted example is British filmmaker Michael Apted s Up series. In the 1960s, Apted worked on Seven Up , a documentary in which 14 seven-year-olds of various economic backgrounds were interviewed about their lives and hopes for the future. Apted, who is... 

Narration or voice-over, if done well, can be one of the best and most efficient ways to move your story along, not because it tells the story but because it draws the audience into and through it. Narration provides information that s not otherwise available but is essential if audiences are to fully experience your film. When documentary makers dive into fairly complicated historical policy or legal and legislative issues," notes filmmaker Jon Else, "narration is your friend. It may mean that you have only two or three lines of narration in a film, but something that might take 10 minutes of tortured interview or tortured verite footage can be often disposed of better in 15 seconds of a well-written line of narration."... 

Discussed here are two of their feature documentaries. Troublesome Creek A Midwestern, about the Jordan family s struggle to save their Iowa farm, won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 1996 and was nominated for an Academy Award. So Much So Fast, which premiered at Sundance in 2006, is about the events set in motion when Stephen Heywood was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig s disease). I spoke with the filmmakers separately for this interview, conducted in 2003 and updated since. 

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