What makes a compelling documentary

Home Discover Top Articles Login. What Makes a Good Documentary Film? From Around the Web. The Beatles - a musical appreciation and analysis. The Distortion of Sound. Finally Free, Terrell Johnson. Related Articles. Civil Rights History: Six women you need to know of. Martin Luther King Jr. Huaxi — Secrets of the Richest Village in China. From the outside, Huaxi is dubbed as a socialist village.

But on the inside, it is actually a capitalist corporation, m Does the subject seem so good that it's like As I think about it more and more, do I think of more and more reasons it is interesting? Am I the right person to make this movie? Do people's eyes light up when they hear me talk about it?

Does it seem like it has a high likelihood of failure? Will I be forced to learn a lot of new things? Does it not sound like a lot of other movies I've seen? Is there actually a story—a fairly complicated one, where things change over time?

Initially, I look for several things: One, do I simply like the person and find them interesting enough to want to spend a lot of time with them. Secondly, are they engaged in some meaningful journey that intrigues me? My criteria are expansive.

Passion and obsession are infectious. Of course documentary can very successfully dramatize interior life. But I am drawn to characters engaged in both external and internal struggles. Which leads to my final point. I am drawn to conflicted characters, typically men, wrestling with strong contradictions and impulses. Finding subjects who are natural performers helps, but the real interest is locating the deeper motivations, and measuring the distance between the public and private self.

Of course screen presence or charisma is essential, but this is hard to define or quantify. But you tend to recognize these qualities when you find them—or perhaps you have no business making feature documentaries. It tells me a couple of things, the first is does the camera love them?

Do they take on the light, do they pop? So the characters I'm thinking of building a film around should do the same, they should invade the frame, in a tight shot, in a wide shot, and everything in between. Now the question is, do I believe their stories? Not necessarily. So when you do a test, make sure you shoot your potential subject in varying ways and in as many situations as possible but most especially film them in silence—meaning to say film them doing nothing and ask them nothing.

How they handle silence is really very telling. We don't have exact rules about choosing a subject because one never knows how things will turn out. But we do look for certain things. And of course sometimes we'll make a film about someone simply because there's funding.

Usually our subjects select us. Well, not the subject exactly but someone else who has seen our films will say to us, "You should make a film about xxxx. More filmmakers have access to the tools, as well as the platforms to share their work. But, with this expansion comes some pitfalls.

One of which is technology overshadowing the foundations of what makes a doc compelling. No matter how stunning the graphics, or how flashy the cinematography, story and character is what will make or break.

The foundation of any compelling documentary is character. Deep, complicated, multi-layered subjects are what drive tension, action, and the exploration of themes. We often see parts of ourselves in them, and relate to their challenges, triumphs, and imperfections. Even when a film is about a topic or issue, they are typically more successful when following characters, even if that character is the narrator or filmmaker.

It gives us as audience someone to relate to, and join on a process of discovery. While there are many variations on how docs are structured, the core of most will include some form of dramatic arc. Subjects embark on a journey, incited by a central conflict, and experience a series of trials and tribulations until reaching a resolution. In other works, like Baraka , the arc is far less obvious.

The film is a compilation of scenes from everyday life and has no dialogue or narration. Despite it being completely observational, scenes are constructed with meaning, unfolding like a day in the life that takes us on a journey to uncover a deeper sense of connectedness.

Most experts agree that somewhere between 70 to 93 percent of all communication is nonverbal. The same logic applies to doc storytelling. In the actions and experiences of the American and Chinese workers, we explore the vast social inequalities that exist in both cultures and ponder what the future will look like for the American working class.

Documentary has a unique ability to reach deep into our hearts and minds and put core beliefs into question.