A comprehensive guide onto making documentary films from A-Z

1. Guide on Making a
Documentary
Opinions from Experts and a Fresh Filmmaker.

2. What the Experts Say?
Tips and Tricks From The Best in The Field.

3. Dylan Pank:
University of Portsmouth:
School of Creative Arts, Film and Media Tutor

4. Nail your narrative down as much as possible
 Make sure your showing something new or unusual.
Every year at least one group of students want to make a film about a student who is also a
DJ, as if that was something new and revolutionary that had never happened before.

5. Pre Interview!
 Decide whether you want your questions to be heard in the soundtrack or not.
 Write a script, even if you don't know all the subjects answers yet, imagine what they might
be, research with pre-interviews would help you here.
 The script should contain visual as well as verbal information

6. Transcripts and Paper Edits
 Once you've done your interviews, do a transcript and then a paper edit.
Don’t waste your time (let alone your editor’s!) while you wallow in all that footage
as you search for a story.
You can always improve on the paper edit, but it gives you the equivalent of a
script to work on when you go into the edit room.
It seems like a drag (the transcript and paper edit) but it will save you loads of time.
You can always improve upon the paper edit, but it gives you a map to work with.

7. And finally, the above is, as the man said "more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules."
Except the bit about paper edits.
That's a rule.

8. Richard P. Alvarez
Screenwriter - ISA

9. How and What do I Write?
 I like to write out the script, including what I expect the interviewees to say. Then, when
I am conducting the interviews, I ask questions that will result in the sorts of answers I
am looking for.
 Is this 'objective'? It is as objective as your advocacy is. You still have to be flexible
enough to follow the answers wherever they might lead.

10. The term ‘Documentary’ is a Generic
label for anything that’s not narrative.
 Within that label are investigative reports, issue docs, advocacy docs, expose's, biographies, etc. etc.
Each of these subsets has a specific point of view going in.

11. Michael Plunkett
Photo Plunkett – Owner

12. What to Shoot?
 A beginning, a middle and an end is a noble starting point and it should be no different for any
film regardless of size.

13. Barry Hampe
Author - Making Documentary Films and Videos

14. The Process?
 From the very start of the scripting process, your research, planning, organization, and
writing must be pointed toward answering the question, What will the audience see?
As writer of the script, you have to show to the client, the director, the camera
operator, and the video editor—and through them the audience for the video—
the images that make up the story you want to tell.
You do this with a well-visualized, coherent script which clearly communicates your
intentions to the people who will read it.

15. o The more specifically you can describe your script in terms of concrete images, the better your
chance of communicating through video.
o Similarly, the more abstract or interpretive your idea is, the more important it becomes to build
up evidence for the idea through concrete images.
o To be recorded on video, an image has to be solid, tangible.
o Images are described with concrete nouns and action verbs.
o A concrete image can be understood in a single shot
o Field research is so important to a scriptwriter.
o You can't describe what you haven't seen.
o And you can't use as visual evidence what you don't even know exists.
o As a scriptwriter, you not only have to think in pictures, you have to learn to see like a camera.
o When you are out scouting a scene, a setting, or a location, you have to learn to see
what is actually there.
o Otherwise your brain may instruct your eye to filter out whatever the brain considers
unimportant.

16. Documentary Script Format
Ease to use.
Time Video Audio
0:00:00
Black Screen.
Fade in Title Credits.
Title Credit: BERT WALL AND THE
GHOST STORIES OF THE DEVIL’S
BACKBONE
Fade In:
Background music – Title Music.
Rousing but a bit mystical.
0:00:20 Camera Wide on an open 2-lane
Texas Highway as the headlights
of a car pierce through the fog
and mist.
Images of Spirits, an Indian on
horseback, a Woman sitting by a
fire in a rocking chair, a road
sign that reads: “Purgatory
Road”, a white stag deer, a
white owl flies by, another road
sign that reads “Texas Highway
32”, and a lone Indian with a
flat brimmed hat and an eagle
feather appear in the distance.
A rushing sound should accompany
each image as it appears and floats
towards the car windshield then fly
off left and right.
A background sound of the tires of a
car on the tarmac of a Texas
Highway.

17. Final Thoughts?
 Field Research Before You Write.
 Write Before You Shoot.
 Paper Edit Before You Video Edit.

18. Made By:
Omar Magdi
In Association With: Old Dominion
University, The Film Studies Program,
Contact:
omarmagdifl@gmail.com
+20 102 335 4466
Gplus.to/OmarMagdi
/OmarMagdi
@OmarsUniverse
/OmarMagdy