Documentaries

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Throughout this book, industry professionals and insiders have kindly lent their words of wisdom, cynicism and expertise. Below is a brief description of who these people are:

ALMA HAR’EL – Born and raised in Israel, Alma began her work as a photographer and video artist. While working in New York and London her live video-art performances with musicians led her to directing music videos and her frequent collaborations with singer Zach Condon of the band Beirut brought her several nominations in film and music video festivals around the world. The video for Beirut’s ‘Elephant Gun’ was chosen as one of the best videos of the decade in 2010 by several publications. Her work is recognised for her expression through modern dance, landscape and character and for her ability to create images with an honest balance of emotions: heavyhearted as much as they are joyful and playful. Currently she lives in Los Angeles where she recently directed Bombay Beach, her first film.

KIM LONGINOTTO – Kim is an internationally acclaimed documentary filmmaker from the UK who has often provided unique portraits of the lives of women. The award-winning The Day I Will Never Forget examines the practice of female genital mutilation in Kenya and the pioneering African women who are bravely reversing the tradition. The recent Sisters in Law (co-directed by Florence Ayisi), about the landmark achievements of the Women Lawyers Association (WLA) of Kumba, in southwest Cameroon, won the Prix Art et Essai at the Cannes Film Festival.

BRIAN WOODS – Brian graduated from Cambridge with a first-class honours degree in psychology in 1985. In 1995 he started his own production company, True Vision. The company’s first production, The Dying Rooms, rapidly became Channel Four’s most widely sold single documentary, and picked up a clutch of international awards including an Emmy, a Peabody and the Prix Italia. Since then, Brian has produced, directed, filmed, edited and exec’ed numerous international documentaries through True Vision for the BBC, Channel Four, HBO and Discovery. Most of these films have had a campaigning human-rights theme. The company has the highest ratio of awards won to hours produced of any independent in the UK. Among over 50 international awards Brian has won five BAFTAs, eight Emmys, seven RTS Awards, three Peabodies and four One Worlds.

JO CLINTON-DAVIES – Jo is Controller of Popular Factual at ITV. Previously she was at UKTV where she was head of commissioning across the ten channels. Prior to that she was head of independent factual commissioning at the BBC. She directed and produced BBC1’s documentary series Making Babies and The Shop and many single documentaries as well.

MARC ISAACS – Born very near the location of his first film, Lift, in London’s East End, Marc Isaacs began working on documentary films as an assistant producer in 1995. He then assisted Pawel Pawlikowski on Twockers and the award-winning Last Resort. After completing Lift in 2001, Marc directed two further documentaries for the BBC about the subculture of shoplifting, both of which were nominated for a BAFTA Craft Award in the UK. His documentary film Travellers, for Channel 4, was followed by Calais: The Last Border, which offers an original view of England from across the Channel. Marc continues to be a prolific documentarian with recent films including All White in Barking, The Curious World of Frinton-on-Sea, Men of the City and Outside the Court.

SIMON CHINN – Simon conceived and produced Man on Wire, which won over 30 international awards, including the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, the BAFTA for Outstanding British Film and the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, and was named by the Observer as one of the best British films of the past 25 years. Simon’s most recently released film, Project Nim, won the World Cinema Documentary Directing award at Sundance, the Directors’ Guild Award for best documentary and was nominated for a BAFTA and a Producers’ Guild Award, among many others. He has recently premiered two films at Sundance: Searching for Sugar Man, which won the Special Jury Prize and the Audience Award and was acquired by Sony Pictures Classics, and The Imposter which secured multiple theatrical distribution deals.

MARILYN GAUNT – Marilyn is a British freelance award-winning filmmaker, having made over 50 documentaries for most of the major broadcasters and the BBC. Her films include the BAFTA award-winning Kelly and Her Sisters, which looks at three months in the lives of Kelly and her five sisters, six children who live with their mother – their father left some months ago – in poor housing on a run-down estate in Birmingham.

EMILY JAMES – Emily is a filmmaker who studied at the National Film and Television School in the UK. Her first film, The Luckiest Nut in the World, follows an animated American peanut, which sings about the difficulties faced by nuts from developing countries. She has continued to use animation and puppetry in her documentaries, and her most recent current-affairs television series, Don’t Worry, featured a cast of investigative puppet reporters.

KEVIN MACDONALD – Kevin has made the Academy award-winning One Day in September about the 1972 Munich Olympics. He has also directed Touching the Void and the recent award-winning fiction feature The Last King of Scotland. Macdonald has been associate editor at Faber & Faber since 1995: he co-edited The Faber Book of Documentary (1997), and wrote Emeric Pressburger: The Life and Death of a Screenwriter (Faber, 1994, winner of BFI film book of the year and shortlisted for the NCR non-fiction prize).

ROGER GRAEF – Roger is a writer, filmmaker, broadcaster and criminologist. In January 2006, it was announced that Roger had been awarded an OBE in the New Year’s Honours List. In 2004 he was awarded the prestigious Fellowship to the British Academy of Film and Television, again for his outstanding contribution and achievements. Roger also won a BAFTA in 2003 as the producer of the Flaherty Best Documentary for Feltham Sings! Among his more than 80 films, he is best known for his pioneering work in gaining access to hitherto closed institutions ranging from ministries and boardrooms, to police, courts, prisons, probation and social work.

SIMON AEPPLI – Simon is an editor and filmmaker who has a background in Artist’s Film and Video. He has tutored for the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff and the Documentary Filmmakers’ Group, and has also been a media educator in London at the Institute of Education, ARCO PLUS, WAC Performing Arts and Media College, The Place and New Vic College.

JENNIFER ABBOTT – Jennifer is a documentary maker, cultural activist and editor with a particular interest in producing media that shifts perspectives on problematic social norms and practices. In addition to co-directing and editing The Corporation, she produced, directed and edited A Cow at My Table, a feature documentary about meat, culture and animals, which won eight international awards.

JERRY ROTHWELL – Jerry is a documentary producer-director with a 10-year track record in broadcast documentaries, specialising in programmes about arts, mental health and education. He has produced and executive produced documentary, news and drama for Channel 4, Carlton and the BBC. He is the co-director of the recent feature documentary Deep Water, and is currently completing another feature documentary, Heavy Load, which documents a year in the life of a punk band, whose members include musicians with learning disabilities.

ESTEBAN UYARRA – Esteban is an award-winning director, editor and cinematographer of documentary films who has worked for several UK television channels, including the BBC and Channel 4. His recent work includes the award-winning feature documentary War Feel Like War, which focuses on the role of journalists covering the Iraq War in 2001.

RUSSELL CROCKETT – Russell is an editor who has worked on many documentaries including Marc Isaacs’ award-winning Lift.

LINDA STRADLING – Linda has spent more than 20 years in the TV industry, and is an experienced and well-established production manager working predominantly on large documentary series.

AL MAYSLES – One of America’s foremost non-fiction filmmakers, Albert Maysles, along with his brother and partner David (1932–87), has been recognised as the creator of ‘direct cinema’, the distinctly American version of French ‘cinéma vérité’.

ANTON CALIFANO – Anton is a filmmaker based in London. He began making films in the 1990s when he originally trained as an editor. His experience in filmmaking includes working on feature films, documentaries and short drama. His short films have been shown in over 60 film festivals worldwide and have won several awards. His work has taken him to a variety of countries including India, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Gran Canaria, Poland and Portugal.

INTRODUCTION

If you’ve bought, borrowed or stolen this book, or if you’re browsing through it whilst sitting in a bookshop on a long, wet, miserable Sunday afternoon, then it’s probably because you’re interested in documentary filmmaking. Maybe you are actively making films, and want to read up on some techniques, approaches or tips. Maybe you’ve never made a documentary film and you’re looking for a good place to start. Or perhaps you’re not sure whether or not you’re a filmmaker at all, but know that you want to learn more. But, whatever stage you’re at, I hope this book will prove an invaluable tool, and help you to advance your understanding of documentaries and how to make them.

The word ‘documentary’ can refer to many different types of film. From the earliest classics such as Basil Wright and Harry Watt’s Night Mail through to the latest feature documentaries in cinemas, the word encompasses as many different types of films as there are people making them. Today, with the clever use of graphics used in historical and nature documentaries, the distinction between fiction and fact has become significantly blurred. And the advent of reality television and various other forms of ‘factual entertainment’ have made the definition even broader.

Documentary filmmakers can be a peculiar bunch of people, driven by an amazing drive to tell a specific story and impart a message. It’s a hard slog to make a documentary film, both physically and emotionally, and there are easier, less precarious ways to earn a living. But there are numerous rewards that make it worthwhile. Firstly, as documentarians, we get to completely immerse ourselves in fascinating, hitherto unknown, subject areas. As a result of documentaries I’ve been involved in, I have learned about the hormones in men, life in women’s prisons, missionaries in the Middle East and unreported wars in West Africa, to name but a few topics. Secondly, we have the opportunity to effect change, or make some kind of difference. A recent survey conducted by the Documentary Filmmakers’ Group showed that over 80 per cent of documentary filmmakers made films in order to ‘make a difference’, be that on a global, national, community or individual level. And there are countless examples of films that have either created or contributed to change (see the following chapter). Thirdly, we get to observe people. We are the ethnographers of the modern age, meeting a huge variety of individuals, often from all corners of the world; fascinating and sometimes inspirational, they can help us tell stories about unique and interesting subject matter.

There may be many more reasons that compel people to make documentaries, but for me it’s primarily about learning. I learn about other people, other cultures and other concepts, and maybe I can share this knowledge or perspective with other people by making a film. Most importantly, though, I learn about myself. Every film I’ve been involved in has changed me a little bit, given me something and helped me to reflect on who I am.

There is no better time to be involved in documentary filmmaking. In the past few years there has been something of a renaissance in this area, and our televisions and cinemas are now full of hundreds of films that come under the banner of ‘documentaries’. We also have much cheaper technology at our disposal, so now anyone, in theory, can inexpensively shoot and edit their own documentary film. And now, with hi-speed broadband, TV on demand, and the next generation of smartphones, iPods and iPads, the possibilities for distributing our work are changing rapidly.

This book talks about the art and craft of documentary filmmaking. But, more importantly, it also discusses the ways in which this craft works in today’s industry. For example, there is no point in discussing shooting technique on 35mm film, or how to work with an eight-person crew, when such trends rarely exist any longer in the real world. The types of stories we tell, and the ways in which we tell them, are also considerably influenced by today’s market. And if we want to distribute our films, as well as simply making them, an understanding of this market is not only invaluable, but also essential. Throughout the book, I have often used the term ‘independent filmmaker’ and this probably deserves some clarification. Many of you who read this book will be at the start of your ‘career’, if you’re even thinking of it in ‘career’ terms. You will often be making your film independently rather than as part of a broadcaster’s in-house team. Sometimes you might be attached to a small ‘indy’ (or independent production company); or you might be on your own. In addition, you may find that you are often working as a multi-skiller, meaning that you are producing, directing and shooting your own documentary – perhaps even sound recording and editing too. As such, you need to keep your costs down, work flexibly and develop skills in as many different areas as possible.

I have tried to break the first part of this book into three sections according to the various stages of the production process. ‘Section One’ deals with the initial idea and how to develop this into a concrete treatment. I then discuss what the fundamental ingredients are for a documentary film, and how one can think about getting various types of funding. ‘Section Two’ discusses the actual filming process in detail: what equipment you need and how to use it, along with the important skills of being a documentary filmmaker – interview technique, production management, the art of storytelling, and so on. ‘Section Three’ deals with post-production and how to deliver the finished product (either to television broadcast, cinemas, festivals, DVDs or the Internet).

Thereafter, ‘Section Four’ looks at some of the ethical issues that can affect documentary filmmakers. ‘Section Five’ (new to the Second Edition) deals with the increased output of what can loosely be defined as ‘campaigning documentaries’ – films that, together with a strong outreach strategy, are specifically aimed at raising awareness and bringing about change regarding a particular issue. Although it’s often seen as an intrinsic aim of documentaries to bring about change in the world, this new zeitgeist of the campaigning documentary does it in a unique way that merits extended comment. ‘Section Six’ (also new to this edition) looks briefly at the role documentaries can play in the new ‘multi-platform world’ and how the convergence of games, websites, smartphones and iPads, etc, has created both an additional home for documentaries and helped push the form in ways that are often novel and unique. ‘Section Seven’ includes interviews with established documentary filmmakers, with a focus on their process of making a particular film.

I’ve added two final sections to this edition as well. ‘Section Eight’ is a resources section and details the books, Internet sites, organisations and documentary films that you might find useful. ‘Section Nine’ is a quick-reference shooting guide for when you’re out and about filming. Put it all together and you have a comprehensive resource on the core skills you need to go out and make a brilliant, hopefully sellable, documentary film.

An important point to make: if you read through this book sequentially – and, really, it’s a good idea to do so – all the information included may seem a little bit overwhelming. It does get easier over time, I promise you. A good analogy to hold in your head is that of driving a car. At first, before you set foot in a car, you are unconsciously incompetent in that you have no idea how bad you are at driving and how many skills you do not have. As soon as you set foot in that car, and have your first driving lesson, you experience the sensation of conscious incompetence, in that you now realise how bad you actually are. After some time at learning to drive, you become consciously competent; that is you are aware of things that you can now do – change gear, check your mirror, and use the clutch. The only problem is, it’s an awful lot to focus on, and mentally exhausting. But soon you’ll reach a stage of unconscious competence; i.e. the things you are good at are mostly unconscious and you can drive a manual car almost automatically. The same goes for filmmaking, in that the more you practise, the easier things become, and the less mental effort you need to exert. So, please try to use this book in conjunction with lots and lots – and lots – of practice.

SECTION ONE

PRE-PRODUCTION

1. WHY WE MAKE DOCUMENTARIES

We can go into a high-street shop these days, buy a small HD camera, and go out and make our documentary. We can then edit the film on our home computers, add a little music, burn it onto a DVD or – more commonly – upload it to the web. The process might not lead to the highest production values, and our intended audience might only be our mum, dad, friend, or a few people on a social network, but the very fact that we can just go out and do it is very new. What we now take for granted was not only once novel, but actually incredible.

In the beginning, making a documentary film could often involve a large team and a painstakingly long process. I’ve tried to give a brief overview below of the history of documentary, simply because it allows us to see today’s filmmaking practice in context, and understand in more detail the tools we have at our disposal. (For those interested in reading more on the topic, I have suggested some useful titles in Section Four.)

The very first ‘documentary films’ were a far cry from what we see on our television screens and in cinemas today. At the turn of the last century, they were simply a visual and audio recording of an event. No story. No plot. No character development. People would flock to cinemas to see these films, which either reflected contemporary life on the big screen, or, for the first time, showed portraits of what life was like in the far corners of the world (such as Robert Flaherty’s classic Nanook of the North). In Britain specifically, the early pioneers of documentary, such as Humphrey Jennings, made films about ordinary people going about their everyday business. Arthur Elton and Edgar Anstey’s Housing Problems was one of the first times people actually witnessed the experiences of the British working class on film. This powerful look at contemporary society, which had never before been seen in such a way, sowed the seeds of the documentary form as a tool for social change.

Any documentarian will hear the name John Grierson mentioned again and again, often cited as the father of documentary filmmaking, and founder of the Documentary Film Movement in Britain in the late 1920s¹. He defined documentary as ‘the creative treatment of actuality’, a definition which has stood the test of time, and a theme we’ll come back to later in this book. The Documentary Film Movement produced many classic examples of the emerging documentary genre through several public bodies and corporate sponsors. These included, famously, the GPO Film Unit (which produced Night Mail), Shell, and the Crown Film Unit at the Ministry of Information (Listen to Britain). The Movement gave us filmmakers such as Alberto Cavalcanti, Paul Rotha, Basil Wright, Edgar Anstey and the aforementioned Humphrey Jennings. The important point here, though, was the type of documentaries they made, and how this set the context for documentary making over the subsequent decades. Grierson’s academic training was as a philosopher, but he also studied the psychology of propaganda, which informed the techniques he used to make documentary films. ‘I look on cinema as a pulpit, and use it as a propagandist,’ he said, and in some ways it’s a legacy that has defined many documentaries we see today (such as Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11).

Figure 1. Don’t Look Back (1967). Directed by DA Pennebaker. Shown from left (behind the scenes): Bob Dylan, DA Pennebaker. Credit: Pennebaker Films/Photofest.

Following World War Two and the advent of television, documentary disappeared from the cinema in Britain to re-emerge in our homes, where it developed into the television forms we can still recognise today in current-affairs strands such as BBC’s Panorama and in the work of many documentary filmmakers. There were certain fringe movements of cinematic documentaries such as the Free Cinema Movement (1956–9), which was a series of programmes held at the National Film Theatre in London by a group of filmmakers, including Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson and Michael Grigsby. They were much more experimental and poetic in form than mainstream fare, and often depicted the working-class experience. Classics here include Momma Don’t Allow, O Dreamland, Every Day Except Christmas and Enginemen. The screenings ended in 1959, but most of the filmmakers went on to successful feature-film careers and formed the British New Wave, while Grigsby became a renowned documentary filmmaker in his own right.

Meanwhile, outside the UK, the cinematic documentary continued to grow. The transition to more portable 16mm cameras, together with the ability to capture synchronous sound, directly influenced the aesthetics and content of a trend known as ‘cinéma vérité’ (Cinema Truth) in France and ‘Direct Cinema’ in North America. From these two similar movements emerged filmmakers such as brothers Albert and David Maysles, DA Pennebaker (Don’t Look Back), Chris Hegedus and Frederick Wiseman (Titicut Follies) in the US, and Jean Rouch in France (Chronique d’un Été or Chronicle of a Summer). Both movements relied on observational techniques with an attempt to capture real events as they unfolded. Direct Cinema was all about having little or no involvement with the action in front of the lens, with the intention that the camera somehow became ‘invisible’; cinéma vérité, on the other hand, sometimes sanctioned direct involvement, or even provocation, when the filmmakers felt it was necessary. Regardless of the subtle differences, this fly-on-the-wall approach had a profound influence on documentaries and, it has been argued, directly influenced the advent of reality television that is so prevalent on the small screen today.

Back in the UK, from the 1960s through to the 1990s, the main documentary output was on television, rather than at the cinema. Granada’s documentary department produced consistently high-quality documentaries, many of which have now unfortunately been lost to audiences. Highlights from the period include: Michael Apted’s 7 Up series (starting in 1964); Peter Watkins’s The War Game (1965); Michael Grigsby’s A Life Apart (1973); Paul Watson’s The Family (1974); Roger Graef’s Police series (1982); and John Akomfrah’s Handsworth Songs (1986). There were many strands and series from the period, including the BBC’s Man Alive, a social and political documentary strand, which ran from 1965–81; Arena and Omnibus, the arts strands; plus Granada’s anthropological Disappearing World, and World in Action, the long-running current-affairs strand.

In the 1990s, on both sides of the Atlantic, television saw the advent of video diaries and the docusoap, with series such as Driving School and Airport creating celebrities of its participants. More recently, of course, we have the formatted derivatives of documentaries (now known as factual entertainment) such as Wife Swap, Big Brother and The Apprentice.

It is this potted history which makes one realise that the term ‘documentary’ now encompasses a whole range of films. Just as the forms of documentaries are exceptionally varied, so, too, are the themes. Despite the various forms of documentary, perhaps the first intended purpose – to comment on social phenomena or even to effect social change – is one that still appeals to many documentary filmmakers today. And it’s this notion of documentary as a tool of social awareness that I would like to briefly discuss here.

Throughout my career as a producer, filmmaker and tutor, the vast majority of aspiring filmmakers I have met have stated that they wanted to use documentary film to influence social or political change, help inform people, and attempt to make a positive difference. In short, many believed that documentary had the power to change the world.

And this isn’t such a far-fetched notion. Many of my earlier films were about mental health. I thought that many stereotypes and prejudices existed about mental illness, and I set out to attempt to dispel some of these. I wouldn’t claim that the films made any massive global change, but they did get wide exposure, and not only on television; they were subsequently used in hospitals, community centres, universities and schools as an educational aid. I’m sure that, somewhere, some hearts and minds were touched, in which case I’ve succeeded.

Some documentaries really have made a profound difference and changed the world, sometimes in small ways, and sometimes on a much bigger scale (the recent flood of ‘campaigning documentaries’ is discussed in Section Five). One of the first films I noticed was Brian Woods and Kate Blewett’s The Dying Rooms. It tells the tale of the one-child policy in China and the impact this has had on female babies. We see images of a new-born girl tied up in urine-soaked blankets, scabs of dried mucus growing across her eyes, her face shrinking to a skull, malnutrition slowly shrivelling her small body, and we are told the plight of these children – that literally thousands will be left to die in places that became known as ‘The Dying Rooms’. When the film was due to be aired on Channel 4, the Chinese government started to make a lot of fuss; they warned Britain that if they aired the documentary it would ‘poison’ relations between the two countries. Channel 4 went on to show the film as planned, and it caused a national outcry about the obvious abuses of human rights. Later it brought international attention to what was happening in China. This resulted in human-rights agencies and charities going to China, which in turn led to various reforms of the one-child policy. In addition, True Vision (the production company behind the film) set up The Dying Rooms Trust, which makes various contributions to these charities to help improve conditions in Chinese orphanages.

This is just one of countless examples of ways in which, over the course of their short history, documentaries have been instrumental in bringing about change, and the trend continues. For example, in Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me, the filmmaker ate nothing but McDonald’s food for a whole month. His declining health during that time was seen as a direct result of this unhealthy diet. The film did tremendously well and McDonald’s removed ‘super-size’ portions from their menus in the US. Roger Graef made a series called Police in 1982, with one episode, A Complaint of Rape, that showed police officers interviewing a rape victim. The footage revealed the harsh and bullying manner in which the police dealt with their questioning, and the film significantly influenced the ways in which the police force in the UK continued such work, leading to changes in policy [see box below].

Not all documentaries have an overarching social agenda. Sometimes we make documentaries for other reasons. The BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs and Planet Earth have used state-of-the-art techniques to give us a view of the world that we have rarely seen in such vivid detail. There are films that inform us of individuals or cultures that we rarely come across, for example the BBC series Tribe, and there are documentaries that capture unique moments in history, such as Michael Wadleigh’s Woodstock. The list is endless and you will find some of the best in Section Four.

Of course, the word documentary has now come to encompass reality television and many of the more formatted television shows such as Wife Swap, Survivor, Brat Camp and others. If we apply Grierson’s definition here, then they, too, are documentaries and, despite some of the bad press they get, it is