7 Basic rules about Making a Documentary Film... That I hadn't considered!!

1. The more organized and meticulously planned your documentary production is, the more time you’ll have to play, be free and discover genuine spontaneity and cinema verité beauty.

2. Research is essential, but pre-interviews with your subject can kill good interviews.

3.Short, simple questions in interviews are much better than long, rambling ones (which tend to be more about you, than your subject). The best question of all time is “why?”

4. Don’t ask your interviewees to “repeat the question in their answer.” Besides stressing them out and making them do your job for you, it leads to boring answers. When they give you one word, un-editable answers, just act stupid and ask them what they’re talking about, as if you forgot. Repetition is fine.

5. When editing dialog in documentaries, edit sound first, then picture. Sound is the secret weapon of most documentary scenes–if you build a sonically believable sequence (whether dialog, music, or insects chirping), it will work.

6. If you are debating whether to leave a scene in or out of your film, 99% of the time it should go out. Editing documentaries is less about collecting and putting together… it’s about omitting and throwing away.

7. Be grateful if you are able to get meaningful distribution for your film, and remember than distributing documentaries is a thankless, difficult chore in a nearly impossible market with a terrible, horrible history of financial success. You don’t have to love your distributor or agree with all of their suggestions; you do have to respect them, and be willing to let go.