A documentary film is a nonfictionalmotion picture intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education, or maintaining a historical record.[1] 'Documentary' has been described as a 'filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception' that is continually evolving and is without clear boundaries.[2] Documentary films were originally called 'actuality' films and were only a minute or less in length. Over time documentaries have evolved to be longer in length and to include more categories, such as educational, observational, and even 'docufiction'. Documentaries are also educational and often used in schools to teach various principles. Social media platforms such as YouTube, have allowed documentary films to improve the ways the films are distributed and able to educate and broaden the reach of people who receive the information.
This 16 mm spring-wound Bolex 'H16' Reflex camera is a popular entry level camera used in film schools.
Definition[edit]
The cover of Matuszewski book Une nouvelle source de l'histoire. (A New Source of History) from 1898 the first publication about documentary function of cinematography.
Polish writer and filmmaker BolesÅaw Matuszewski was among those who identified the mode of documentary film. He wrote two of the earliest texts on cinema Une nouvelle source de l'histoire (eng. A New Source of History) and La photographie animée (eng. Animated photography). Both were published in 1898 in French and among the early written works to consider the historical and documentary value of the film.[3] Matuszewski is also among the first filmmakers to propose the creation of a Film Archive to collect and keep safe visual materials.[4]
In popular myth, the word documentary was coined by Scottish documentary filmmaker John Grierson in his review of Robert Flaherty's film Moana (1926), published in the New York Sun on 8 February 1926, written by 'The Moviegoer' (a pen name for Grierson).[5]
Grierson's principles of documentary were that cinema's potential for observing life could be exploited in a new art form; that the 'original' actor and 'original' scene are better guides than their fiction counterparts to interpreting the modern world; and that materials 'thus taken from the raw' can be more real than the acted article. In this regard, Grierson's definition of documentary as 'creative treatment of actuality'[6] has gained some acceptance, with this position at variance with Soviet film-maker Dziga Vertov's provocation to present 'life as it is' (that is, life filmed surreptitiously) and 'life caught unawares' (life provoked or surprised by the camera).
The American film critic Pare Lorentz defines a documentary film as 'a factual film which is dramatic.'[7] Others further state that a documentary stands out from the other types of non-fiction films for providing an opinion, and a specific message, along with the facts it presents.[8]
Documentary practice is the complex process of creating documentary projects. It refers to what people do with media devices, content, form, and production strategies in order to address the creative, ethical, and conceptual problems and choices that arise as they make documentaries.
Documentary filmmaking can be used as a form of journalism, advocacy, or personal expression.
History[edit]Pre-1900[edit]
Early film (pre-1900) was dominated by the novelty of showing an event. They were single-shot moments captured on film: a train entering a station, a boat docking, or factory workers leaving work. These short films were called 'actuality' films; the term 'documentary' was not coined until 1926. Many of the first films, such as those made by Auguste and Louis Lumière, were a minute or less in length, due to technological limitations (example on YouTube).
Films showing many people (for example, leaving a factory) were often made for commercial reasons: the people being filmed were eager to see, for payment, the film showing them. One notable film clocked in at over an hour and a half, The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight. Using pioneering film-looping technology, Enoch J. Rector presented the entirety of a famous 1897 prize-fight on cinema screens across the United States.
In May 1896, BolesÅaw Matuszewski recorded on film few surigical operations in Warsaw and Saint Petersburg hospitals. In 1898, French surgeon Eugène-Louis Doyen invited BolesÅaw Matuszewski and Clément Maurice and proposed them to recorded his surigical operations. They started in Paris a series of surgical films sometime before July 1898.[9] Until 1906, the year of his last film, Doyen recorded more than 60 operations. Doyen said that his first films taught him how to correct professional errors he had been unaware of. For scientific purposes, after 1906, Doyen combined 15 of his films into three compilations, two of which survive, the six-film series Extirpation des tumeurs encapsulées (1906), and the four-film Les Opérations sur la cavité crânienne (1911). These and five other of Doyen's films survive.[10]
Frame from one of Marinescu's science films (1899).
Between July 1898 and 1901, the Romanian professor Gheorghe Marinescu made several science films in his neurology clinic in Bucharest:[11]Walking Troubles of Organic Hemiplegy (1898), The Walking Troubles of Organic Paraplegies (1899), A Case of Hysteric Hemiplegy Healed Through Hypnosis (1899), The Walking Troubles of Progressive Locomotion Ataxy (1900), and Illnesses of the Muscles (1901). All these short films have been preserved. The professor called his works 'studies with the help of the cinematograph,' and published the results, along with several consecutive frames, in issues of 'La Semaine Médicale' magazine from Paris, between 1899 and 1902.[12] In 1924, Auguste Lumiere recognized the merits of Marinescu's science films: 'I've seen your scientific reports about the usage of the cinematograph in studies of nervous illnesses, when I was still receiving 'La Semaine Médicale,' but back then I had other concerns, which left me no spare time to begin biological studies. I must say I forgot those works and I am thankful to you that you reminded them to me. Unfortunately, not many scientists have followed your way.'[13][14][15]
1900â1920[edit]
Geoffrey Malins with an aeroscope camera during World War I.
Travelogue films were very popular in the early part of the 20th century. They were often referred to by distributors as 'scenics.' Scenics were among the most popular sort of films at the time.[16] An important early film to move beyond the concept of the scenic was In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914), which embraced primitivism and exoticism in a staged story presented as truthful re-enactments of the life of Native Americans.
Contemplation is a separate area. Pathé is the best-known global manufacturer of such films of the early 20th century. A vivid example is Moscow Clad in Snow (1909).
Biographical documentaries appeared during this time, such as the feature Eminescu-Veronica-CreangÄ (1914) on the relationship between the writers Mihai Eminescu, Veronica Micle and Ion CreangÄ (all deceased at the time of the production) released by the Bucharest chapter of Pathé.
Early color motion picture processes such as Kinemacolorâknown for the feature With Our King and Queen Through India (1912)âand Prizmacolorâknown for Everywhere With Prizma (1919) and the five-reel feature Bali the Unknown (1921)âused travelogues to promote the new color processes. In contrast, Technicolor concentrated primarily on getting their process adopted by Hollywood studios for fictional feature films.
Also during this period, Frank Hurley's feature documentary film, South (1919), about the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition was released. The film documented the failed Antarctic expedition led by Ernest Shackleton in 1914.
1920s[edit]Romanticism[edit]
Nanook of the North poster.
With Robert J. Flaherty's Nanook of the North in 1922, documentary film embraced romanticism; Flaherty filmed a number of heavily staged romantic films during this time period, often showing how his subjects would have lived 100 years earlier and not how they lived right then. For instance, in Nanook of the North, Flaherty did not allow his subjects to shoot a walrus with a nearby shotgun, but had them use a harpoon instead. Some of Flaherty's staging, such as building a roofless igloo for interior shots, was done to accommodate the filming technology of the time.
Paramount Pictures tried to repeat the success of Flaherty's Nanook and Moana with two romanticized documentaries, Grass (1925) and Chang (1927), both directed by Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack.
The city symphony[edit]
City symphony films were avant-garde films made during the 1920s to 1930s. These films were particularly influenced by modern art: namely Cubism, Constructivism, and Impressionism. (See A.L Rees, 2011)[17] According to Scott Macdonald (2010), city symphony film can be located as an intersection between documentary and avant-garde film: 'avant-doc'. However, A.L. Rees suggest to see them as avant-garde films. (Rees, 2011: 35)
City symphony films include Manhatta (dir. Paul Strand, 1921), Paris Nothing but the Hours (dir. Alberto Cavalcanti, 1926), Twenty Four Dollar Island (dir. Robert Flaherty, 1927), Ãtudes sur Paris (dir. André Sauvage, 1928), The Bridge (1928), and Rain (1929), both by Joris Ivens.
But the most famous city symphony films are Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (dir. Walter Ruttman, 1927) and The Man with a Movie Camera (dir. Dziga Vertov, 1929).
In this shot from Walter Ruttmann's Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (1927), cyclists race indoors. The film is shot and edited like a visual-poem.
A city symphony film, as the name suggests, is usually based around a major metropolitan city area and seek to capture the lives, events and activities of the city. It can be abstract and cinematographic (see Walter Ruttmann's Berlin) or utilise Russian Montage theory (See Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera). But most importantly, a city symphony film is like a cine-poem and is shot and edited like a 'symphony'.
In this shot from Man with a Movie Camera, Mikhail Kaufman acts as a cameraman risking his life in search of the best shot
The continental, or realist, tradition focused on humans within human-made environments, and included the so-called 'city symphony' films such as Walter Ruttmann's Berlin, Symphony of a City (of which Grierson noted in an article[18] that Berlin represented what a documentary should not be), Alberto Cavalcanti's Rien que les heures, and Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera. These films tend to feature people as products of their environment, and lean towards the avant-garde.
Kino-Pravda[edit]
Dziga Vertov was central to the SovietKino-Pravda (literally, 'cinematic truth') newsreel series of the 1920s. Vertov believed the cameraâwith its varied lenses, shot-counter shot editing, time-lapse, ability to slow motion, stop motion and fast-motionâcould render reality more accurately than the human eye, and made a film philosophy out of it.
Newsreel tradition[edit]
The newsreel tradition is important in documentary film; newsreels were also sometimes staged but were usually re-enactments of events that had already happened, not attempts to steer events as they were in the process of happening. For instance, much of the battle footage from the early 20th century was staged; the cameramen would usually arrive on site after a major battle and re-enact scenes to film them.
1920sâ1940s[edit]
The propagandist tradition consists of films made with the explicit purpose of persuading an audience of a point. One of the most celebrated and controversial propaganda films is Leni Riefenstahl's film Triumph of the Will (1935), which chronicled the 1934 Nazi Party Congress and was commissioned by Adolf Hitler. Leftist filmmakers Joris Ivens and Henri Storck directed Borinage (1931) about the Belgian coal mining region. Luis Buñuel directed a 'surrealist' documentary Las Hurdes (1933).
Pare Lorentz's The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1938) and Willard Van Dyke's The City (1939) are notable New Deal productions, each presenting complex combinations of social and ecological awareness, government propaganda, and leftist viewpoints. Frank Capra's Why We Fight (1942â1944) series was a newsreel series in the United States, commissioned by the government to convince the U.S. public that it was time to go to war. Constance Bennett and her husband Henri de la Falaise produced two feature-length documentaries, Legong: Dance of the Virgins (1935) filmed in Bali, and Kilou the Killer Tiger (1936) filmed in Indochina.
In Canada, the Film Board, set up by John Grierson, was created for the same propaganda reasons. It also created newsreels that were seen by their national governments as legitimate counter-propaganda to the psychological warfare of Nazi Germany (orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels).
Conference of 'World Union of documentary films' in 1948 Warsaw featured famous directors of the era: Basil Wright (on the left), Elmar Klos, Joris Ivens (2nd from the right), and Jerzy Toeplitz.
In Britain, a number of different filmmakers came together under John Grierson. They became known as the Documentary Film Movement. Grierson, Alberto Cavalcanti, Harry Watt, Basil Wright, and Humphrey Jennings amongst others succeeded in blending propaganda, information, and education with a more poetic aesthetic approach to documentary. Examples of their work include Drifters (John Grierson), Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright), Fires Were Started, and A Diary for Timothy (Humphrey Jennings). Their work involved poets such as W. H. Auden, composers such as Benjamin Britten, and writers such as J. B. Priestley. Among the best known films of the movement are Night Mail and Coal Face.
Film Calling mr. Smith (1943) was anti-nazi color film[19][20][21] created by Stefan Themerson and being both documentary and avant-garde film against war. It was one of the first anti-nazi films in history.
1950sâ1970s[edit]Cinéma-vérité[edit]
Cinéma vérité (or the closely related direct cinema) was dependent on some technical advances in order to exist: light, quiet and reliable cameras, and portable sync sound.
Cinéma vérité and similar documentary traditions can thus be seen, in a broader perspective, as a reaction against studio-based film production constraints. Shooting on location, with smaller crews, would also happen in the French New Wave, the filmmakers taking advantage of advances in technology allowing smaller, handheld cameras and synchronized sound to film events on location as they unfolded.
Although the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, there are important differences between cinéma vérité (Jean Rouch) and the North American 'Direct Cinema' (or more accurately 'Cinéma direct'), pioneered by, among others, Canadians Allan King, Michel Brault, and Pierre Perrault,[citation needed] and Americans Robert Drew, Richard Leacock, Frederick Wiseman, and Albert and David Maysles.
The directors of the movement take different viewpoints on their degree of involvement with their subjects. Kopple and Pennebaker, for instance, choose non-involvement (or at least no overt involvement), and Perrault, Rouch, Koenig, and Kroitor favor direct involvement or even provocation when they deem it necessary.
The films Chronicle of a Summer (Jean Rouch), Dont Look Back (D. A. Pennebaker), Grey Gardens (Albert and David Maysles), Titicut Follies (Frederick Wiseman), Primary and Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (both produced by Robert Drew), Harlan County, USA (directed by Barbara Kopple), Lonely Boy (Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroitor) are all frequently deemed cinéma vérité films.
The fundamentals of the style include following a person during a crisis with a moving, often handheld, camera to capture more personal reactions. There are no sit-down interviews, and the shooting ratio (the amount of film shot to the finished product) is very high, often reaching 80 to one. From there, editors find and sculpt the work into a film. The editors of the movementâsuch as Werner Nold, Charlotte Zwerin, Muffie Myers, Susan Froemke, and Ellen Hovdeâare often overlooked, but their input to the films was so vital that they were often given co-director credits.
Famous cinéma vérité/direct cinema films include Les Raquetteurs,[22]Showman, Salesman, Near Death, and The Children Were Watching.
Political weapons[edit]
In the 1960s and 1970s, documentary film was often conceived as a political weapon against neocolonialism and capitalism in general, especially in Latin America, but also in a changing Quebec society. La Hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces, from 1968), directed by Octavio Getino and Arnold Vincent Kudales Sr., influenced a whole generation of filmmakers. Among the many political documentaries produced in the early 1970s was 'Chile: A Special Report,' public television's first in-depth expository look of the September 1973 overthrow of the Salvador Allende government in Chile by military leaders under Augusto Pinochet, produced by documentarians Ari Martinez and José Garcia.
Modern documentaries[edit]
Box office analysts have noted that this film genre has become increasingly successful in theatrical release with films such as Fahrenheit 9/11, Super Size Me, Food, Inc., Earth, March of the Penguins, Religulous, and An Inconvenient Truth among the most prominent examples. Compared to dramatic narrative films, documentaries typically have far lower budgets which makes them attractive to film companies because even a limited theatrical release can be highly profitable.
The nature of documentary films has expanded in the past 20 years from the cinema verité style introduced in the 1960s in which the use of portable camera and sound equipment allowed an intimate relationship between filmmaker and subject. The line blurs between documentary and narrative and some works are very personal, such as the late Marlon Riggs's Tongues Untied (1989) and Black Is..Black Ain't (1995), which mix expressive, poetic, and rhetorical elements and stresses subjectivities rather than historical materials.[23]
Historical documentaries, such as the landmark 14-hour Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years (1986âPart 1 and 1989âPart 2) by Henry Hampton, 4 Little Girls (1997) by Spike Lee, and The Civil War by Ken Burns, UNESCO awarded independent film on slavery 500 Years Later, expressed not only a distinctive voice but also a perspective and point of views. Some films such as The Thin Blue Line by Errol Morris incorporated stylized re-enactments, and Michael Moore's Roger & Me placed far more interpretive control with the director. The commercial success of these documentaries may derive from this narrative shift in the documentary form, leading some critics to question whether such films can truly be called documentaries; critics sometimes refer to these works as 'mondo films' or 'docu-ganda.'[24] However, directorial manipulation of documentary subjects has been noted since the work of Flaherty, and may be endemic to the form due to problematic ontological foundations.
Documentary filmmakers are increasingly utilizing social impact campaigns with their films.[25] Social impact campaigns seek to leverage media projects by converting public awareness of social issues and causes into engagement and action, largely by offering the audience a way to get involved.[26] Examples of such documentaries include Kony 2012, Salam Neighbor, Gasland, Living on One Dollar, and Girl Rising.
Although documentaries are financially more viable with the increasing popularity of the genre and the advent of the DVD, funding for documentary film production remains elusive. Within the past decade, the largest exhibition opportunities have emerged from within the broadcast market, making filmmakers beholden to the tastes and influences of the broadcasters who have become their largest funding source.[27]
Modern documentaries have some overlap with television forms, with the development of 'reality television' that occasionally verges on the documentary but more often veers to the fictional or staged. The making-of documentary shows how a movie or a computer game was produced. Usually made for promotional purposes, it is closer to an advertisement than a classic documentary.
Modern lightweight digital video cameras and computer-based editing have greatly aided documentary makers, as has the dramatic drop in equipment prices. The first film to take full advantage of this change was Martin Kunert and Eric Manes' Voices of Iraq, where 150 DV cameras were sent to Iraq during the war and passed out to Iraqis to record themselves.
Documentaries without words[edit]
Films in the documentary form without words have been made. From 1982, the Qatsi trilogy and the similar Baraka could be described as visual tone poems, with music related to the images, but no spoken content. Koyaanisqatsi (part of the Qatsi trilogy) consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. Baraka tries to capture the great pulse of humanity as it flocks and swarms in daily activity and religious ceremonies.
Bodysong was made in 2003 and won a British Independent Film Award for 'Best British Documentary.'
The 2004 film Genesis shows animal and plant life in states of expansion, decay, sex, and death, with some, but little, narration.
Narration styles[edit]
The traditional style for narration is to have a dedicated narrator read a script which is dubbed onto the audio track. The narrator never appears on camera and may not necessarily have knowledge of the subject matter or involvement in the writing of the script.
This style of narration uses title screens to visually narrate the documentary. The screens are held for about 5â10 seconds to allow adequate time for the viewer to read them. They are similar to the ones shown at the end of movies based on true stories, but they are shown throughout, typically between scenes.
In this style, there is a host who appears on camera, conducts interviews, and who also does voice-overs.
Other forms[edit]Docufiction[edit]
Docufiction is a hybridgenre from two basic ones, fiction film and documentary, practiced since the first documentary films were made.
Fake-fiction[edit]
Fake-fiction is a genre which deliberately presents real, unscripted events in the form of a fiction film, making them appear as staged. The concept was introduced[28] by Pierre Bismuth to describe his 2016 film Where is Rocky II?
DVD documentary[edit]
A DVD documentary is a documentary film of indeterminate length that has been produced with the sole intent of releasing it for direct sale to the public on DVD(s), as different from a documentary being made and released first on television or on a cinema screen (a.k.a. theatrical release) and subsequently on DVD for public consumption.
This form of documentary release is becoming more popular and accepted as costs and difficulty with finding TV or theatrical release slots increases. It is also commonly used for more 'specialist' documentaries, which might not have general interest to a wider TV audience. Examples are military, cultural arts, transport, sports, etc.
Compilation films[edit]
Compilation films were pioneered in 1927 by Esfir Schub with The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty. More recent examples include Point of Order (1964), directed by Emile de Antonio about the McCarthy hearings. Similarly, The Last Cigarette combines the testimony of various tobacco company executives before the U.S. Congress with archival propaganda extolling the virtues of smoking.
Poetic documentaries, which first appeared in the 1920s, were a sort of reaction against both the content and the rapidly crystallizing grammar of the early fiction film. The poetic mode moved away from continuity editing and instead organized images of the material world by means of associations and patterns, both in terms of time and space. Well-rounded charactersâ'lifelike people'âwere absent; instead, people appeared in these films as entities, just like any other, that are found in the material world. The films were fragmentary, impressionistic, lyrical. Their disruption of the coherence of time and spaceâa coherence favored by the fiction films of the dayâcan also be seen as an element of the modernist counter-model of cinematic narrative. The 'real world'âNichols calls it the 'historical world'âwas broken up into fragments and aesthetically reconstituted using film form. Examples of this style include Joris Ivens' Rain (1928), which records a passing summer shower over Amsterdam; László Moholy-Nagy's Play of Light: Black, White, Grey (1930), in which he films one of his own kinetic sculptures, emphasizing not the sculpture itself but the play of light around it; Oskar Fischinger's abstract animated films; Francis Thompson's N.Y., N.Y. (1957), a city symphony film; and Chris Marker's Sans Soleil (1982).
Expository documentaries speak directly to the viewer, often in the form of an authoritative commentary employing voiceover or titles, proposing a strong argument and point of view. These films are rhetorical, and try to persuade the viewer. (They may use a rich and sonorous male voice.) The (voice-of-God) commentary often sounds 'objective' and omniscient. Images are often not paramount; they exist to advance the argument. The rhetoric insistently presses upon us to read the images in a certain fashion. Historical documentaries in this mode deliver an unproblematic and 'objective' account and interpretation of past events.
Examples: TV shows and films like Biography, America's Most Wanted, many science and nature documentaries, Ken Burns' The Civil War (1990), Robert Hughes' The Shock of the New (1980), John Berger's Ways Of Seeing (1974), Frank Capra's wartime Why We Fight series, and Pare Lorentz's The Plow That Broke The Plains (1936).
Observational[edit]
film team at Port of Dar es Salaam with two ferries
Observational documentaries attempt to simply and spontaneously observe lived life with a minimum of intervention. Filmmakers who worked in this subgenre often saw the poetic mode as too abstract and the expository mode as too didactic. The first observational docs date back to the 1960s; the technological developments which made them possible include mobile lightweight cameras and portable sound recording equipment for synchronized sound. Often, this mode of film eschewed voice-over commentary, post-synchronized dialogue and music, or re-enactments. The films aimed for immediacy, intimacy, and revelation of individual human character in ordinary life situations.
Types[edit]
Participatory documentaries believe that it is impossible for the act of filmmaking to not influence or alter the events being filmed. What these films do is emulate the approach of the anthropologist: participant-observation. Not only is the filmmaker part of the film, we also get a sense of how situations in the film are affected or altered by their presence. Nichols: 'The filmmaker steps out from behind the cloak of voice-over commentary, steps away from poetic meditation, steps down from a fly-on-the-wall perch, and becomes a social actor (almost) like any other. (Almost like any other because the filmmaker retains the camera, and with it, a certain degree of potential power and control over events.)' The encounter between filmmaker and subject becomes a critical element of the film. Rouch and Morin named the approach cinéma vérité, translating Dziga Vertov's kinopravda into French; the 'truth' refers to the truth of the encounter rather than some absolute truth.
Reflexive documentaries do not see themselves as a transparent window on the world; instead, they draw attention to their own constructedness, and the fact that they are representations. How does the world get represented by documentary films? This question is central to this subgenre of films. They prompt us to 'question the authenticity of documentary in general.' It is the most self-conscious of all the modes, and is highly skeptical of 'realism'. It may use Brechtian alienation strategies to jar us, in order to 'defamiliarize' what we are seeing and how we are seeing it.
Performative documentaries stress subjective experience and emotional response to the world. They are strongly personal, unconventional, perhaps poetic and/or experimental, and might include hypothetical enactments of events designed to make us experience what it might be like for us to possess a certain specific perspective on the world that is not our own, e.g. that of black, gay men in Marlon Riggs's Tongues Untied (1989) or Jenny Livingston's Paris Is Burning (1991). This subgenre might also lend itself to certain groups (e.g. women, ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians, etc.) to 'speak about themselves.' Often, a battery of techniques, many borrowed from fiction or avant-garde films, are used. Performative docs often link up personal accounts or experiences with larger political or historical realities.
Educational Films[edit]
Documentaries are shown in schools around the world in order to educate students. Used to introduce various topics to children, they are often used with a school lesson or shown many times to reinforce an idea.
Translation[edit]
There are several challenges associated with translation of documentaries. The main two are working conditions and problems with terminology.
Working conditions[edit]
Documentary translators very often have to meet tight deadlines. Normally, the translator has between five and seven days to hand over the translation of a 90-minute programme. Dubbing studios typically give translators a week to translate a documentary, but in order to earn a good salary, translators have to deliver their translations in a much shorter period, usually when the studio decides to deliver the final programme to the client sooner or when the broadcasting channel sets a tight deadline, e.g. on documentaries discussing the latest news.[29]
Another problem is the lack of postproduction script or the poor quality of the transcription. A correct transcription is essential for a translator to do their work properly, however many times the script is not even given to the translator, which is a major impediment since documentaries are characterised by 'the abundance of terminological units and very specific proper names'.[30] When the script is given to the translator, it is usually poorly transcribed or outright incorrect making the translation unnecessarily difficult and demanding because all of the proper names and specific terminology have to be correct in a documentary programme in order for it to be a reliable source of information, hence the translator has to check every term on their own. Such mistakes in proper names are for instance: 'Jungle Reinhard instead of Django Reinhart, Jorn Asten instead of Jane Austen, and Magnus Axle instead of Aldous Huxley'.[30]
Terminology[edit]
The process of translation of a documentary programme requires working with very specific, often scientific terminology. Documentary translators usually are not specialist in a given field. Therefore, they are compelled to undertake extensive research whenever asked to make a translation of a specific documentary programme in order to understand it correctly and deliver the final product free of mistakes and inaccuracies. Generally, documentaries contain a large amount of specific terms, with which translators have to familiarise themselves on their own, for example:
The documentary Beetles, Record Breakers makes use of 15 different terms to refer to beetles in less than 30 minutes (longhorn beetle, cellar beetle, stag beetle, burying beetle or gravediggers, sexton beetle, tiger beetle, bloody nose beetle, tortoise beetle, diving beetle, devilâs coach horse, weevil, click beetle, malachite beetle, oil beetle, cockchafer), apart from mentioning other animals such as horseshoe bats or meadow brown butterflies.[31]
This poses a real challenge for the translators because they have to render the meaning, i.e. find an equivalent, of a very specific, scientific term in the target language and frequently the narrator uses a more general name instead of a specific term and the translator has to rely on the image presented in the programme to understand which term is being discussed in order to transpose it in the target language accordingly.[32] Additionally, translators of minorised languages often have to face another problem: some terms may not even exist in the target language. In such case, they have to create new terminology or consult specialists to find proper solutions. Also, sometimes the official nomenclature differs from the terminology used by actual specialists, which leaves the translator to decide between using the official vocabulary that can be found in the dictionary, or rather opting for spontaneous expressions used by real experts in real life situations.[33]
See also[edit]Some documentary film awards[edit]
Notes and references[edit]
Sources and bibliography[edit]
Ethnographic film[edit]
External links[edit]
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Documentary_film&oldid=903421374'
A documentary is a non-fiction film account of a topic. To make your DSLR documentary of any length and subject matter into something that people will find interesting, consider these ten tips.
Know the topic you plan to film
Whether youâre making a two-hour feature length film or a two-minute online video, you need to understand the subject; otherwise, youâre not going to fully understand what to include, ask the right questions, or draw the appropriate conclusion. Thereâs a variety of ways to accomplish this task:
Plan your shoot well
Making a documentary is about more than shooting a series of scenes, putting them together with a narration track, and expecting to have a compelling movie. Quite the contrary: A documentary encapsulates classic storytelling with a beginning, middle, and an end, along with detailing the conflict and coming to some sort of resolution.
In order to do all that, you need to meticulously plan for each shoot and the actual message. Here are a few tips:
Have the right film equipment
Even professionals find themselves without the right gear sometimes because some situations require specific equipment for coverage. These decisions are vital before you get started.
Have a plan for shooting
Planning the shooting is not to be confused for planning the documentary. Remember to shoot your movies with the proper variations for each scene. Use focal length, camera angle, and camera-to-subject distance to capture the necessary shots.
Make contact with sources before shooting
Unless youâre capturing a family event, chances are you wonât know the subject, nor will you shoot in your backyard or even your town.
Here are a few suggestions:
Donât under/overestimate your social skills in your shots
Use your charm to approach each interview with politeness and wide-eyed optimism. Donât assume you know the answers before you ask the questions.
Consider the following:
Shoot a strong narrative
In a perfect world, James Earl Jones would narrate your story. You can still find a strong solitary voice to carry the storyline and set up people, places, issues, and other elements.
Here a few suggestions:
Shoot much more than youâll ever use
Many film classes teach that the average documentary shot at a 20:1 ratio between overall footage and what ended up in the movie. Because the movie is not scripted, you never know how long each interview takes to provide the content that you need. Because the story comes together in editing, itâs hard to tell how much youâll need to shoot.
Use still photos
Although using still photos in a documentary movie may sound more boring than watching your cousinâs homemade wedding video, that all changed with the work of Ken Burns. He took the static nature of a photo and made it move, added compelling narration, and took the audience through a place they never thought theyâd go.
While Burns used Adobe After Effects, some followed up with Final Cut. Now you can do it using Adobe Premiere Elements.
Consider the following:
Crop them a little to fill the frame.
Watch documentaries to understand narrative
Although a filmmaker learns how to make films by making films, the same can be said when it comes to watching them too. That applies to documentaries too.
Get past the misconception of documentaries as tedious, boring movies. When theyâre made correctly, they are as entertaining as a feature film.
Here are a few to consider:
IndieWire reached out to the cinematographers whose feature films are premiering at the Cannes Film Festival to find out which cameras and lenses they used and, more importantly, why these were the right tools to create the visual language of their films.
Page 1: Competition (Palme dâOr Contenders)
Page 2:Out of Competition & Special Screenings Page 3: Un Certain Regard & Criticsâ Week Page 4: Directorsâ Fortnight
(Films are in alphabetical order by title.)
Competition
courtesy of filmmaker
âAtlanticsâ
Dir: Mati Diop, DoP: Claire Mathon
Format: Digital, 1.66 aspect ratio, post production was done in 2K
Camera: Red Epic 5K and Panasonic Varicam35 4K Lens: Angenieux 45/120 and 25/250, and Zeiss lenses T1.3
Mathon: We chose the Red Epic to shoot daytime, to give romance to images that were captured in a documentary way, and to enhance the sun-drenched sets. We wanted to make a film that was visually arresting but remained very grounded in reality
We chose Varicam at night for its great sensitivity that allowed us to visibly film neighborhoods of Dakar almost plunged into darkness. The texture is a bit matte, and the rendering of flares and shine, especially on the skin, work with the fantastical dimension of the film while still capturing the soul of the Senegalese capital. We wanted the viewer to feel the dust, humidity and the ocean spray.
âAtlanticsâ is a movie of ghosts. The work on the materials, the elements (setting sun, ocean, etc.) and the ability to capture black skin in the night was very important.
The lightness of the chosen tools allowed me to shoot the film either on my shoulder with an easyrig (mostly) or on foot with a very long focal length, in a documentary approach: I could turn fast, catch things on the fly, and improvise in the moment.
âBacurauâ DP Pedro Sotero and director Kleber Mendonça
Nicolau Saldanha
âBacurauâ
Dir: Kleber Mendonça Filho & Juliano Dornelles, DoP: Pedro Sotero
Format: 3.4K Open Gate Arriraw
Camera: ARRI Alexa Mini Lens: Panavison Anamorphic C and E series, Angenieux 11:1 Panavision rear-mounted anamorphic zoom.
Sotero: Since the beginning of my conversations with [directors] Juliano and Kleber about the look of âBacurau,â we all agreed that the film should have a classic widescreen image and a set of Panavision C Series Anamorphic lenses seemed to be the perfect match to the image we desired to achieve. The idea of shooting a near future Brazilian western, shot in very rough isolated locations, with the lenses that shot 70âs and 80âs classics like âRaiders of Lost Ark,â âDeliveranceâ and âThe Thing,â but with a modern 4:3 open gate digital sensor of a very compact and reliable camera as the Alexa mini, seemed to be the best way to go for the film.
The film is set in the Sertão, a drought stricken region in the Northeast of Brazil, which is well known for its role in important chapters in Brazilian history (War of Canudos, the Cangaço), literature and cinema (âAntonio das Mortes,â by Glauber Rocha, âCentral Stationâ by Walter Salles and many others. Itâs also a region known for itâs strong people, very harsh sunlight and a dry, gray and hostile landscape. We decided to put a twist on this classic Brazilian imaginary for the look of âBacurau,â incorporating a less known, greener and livelier landscape that is the regionâs raining season, but completely respecting itâs arid and rough inherent nature.
Shooting in very extreme locations and light conditions of the Brazilian Sertão, day and night for 8 weeks, it was important to count on the extra latitude and color space that arriraw provides, to keep the rich skin tones, strong high lights and dense skies of the region.
âThe Dead Donât Dieâ
courtesy of Cannes
Free Documentary Films
âThe Dead Donât Dieâ
Dir: Jim Jarmusch, DoP: Frederick Elmes
Format: ProRes 4.4K
Camera: Arri Alexa LF Lens: DNA prime lens set, Angenieux EZ Zoom lens and 28-76mm zoom with extender
Elmes: Taking advantage of the cameraâs larger image size, using wider focal length lenses and shallow depth of field, we kept the camera close to our characters to help us feel we were there with them, experiencing the world going haywire. This also emphasized the frightful looks of our ghouls when they appeared on screen. I also wanted to take advantage of the mismatched qualities inherent in the DNA lenses. Each has a unique quality â some are less contrasty, some not quite so sharp at the edges â which when combined with some simple diffusion netting and special âflairâ filters we built, added an unpredictable element to our visual style. I enhanced the growing sense of unease in the story by mixing multiple light sources and shooting many night scenes during daylight hours.
The Alexaâs color space gave me the assurance I would have enough âstretchâ in the image to do what I needed later and the information to complete the visual effects seamlessly. The LF Cameraâs large sensor provided the âstretchâ necessary to capture the range of exposure and contrast I wanted to work with on this movie. And the Alexa color space gave me the assurance I would have the control necessary in post production to seamlessly complete the visual effects.
AndreÌ PriÌncie / SBS Productions
âFrankieâ
Dir: Ira Sachs, DoP: Rui Poças AIP
Format: 2.8K ARRIRAW; 1.66:1 aspect ratio
Camera: ARRI Alexa Mini Lens: Cooke S4; Angenieux Optimo 24-290mm
Poças: The choice of the camera and lenses were driven by the vision we wanted for the whole movie: A natural feel like the one we could get in some 70âs and 80âs French color movies. Also we wanted a versatile lightweight camera that was easy to operate. I rated the camera at 800 ISO as it seemed the best choice for the average light conditions and the kind of image we were looking for.
The Cooke lenses have a great soft felling and for that reason we chose the Cooke S4, which are subtle for capturing the skin tones. According to the specific cinematic approach developed with Ira Sachs in the preparation, we framed âFrankieâ in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio using mostly the 35mm and the 50mm lenses, which we felt conveyed the kind of approach we wanted for the audience. The camera follows the action at a âhuman distanceâ but doesnât obey any desire to get closer or change the point of view. The characters actions simply take place in front of us and it is not up to the camera to point out any detail or dramatically underline a given situation.
I chose the Alexa sensor because we knew that it would give us a full range in latitude and true color. Also, one of our ideas in making this film was to create images in the most pure and natural way possible in both lighting and composition. This movie was Ira Sachsâ first feature in digital and Arri Alexa was the best choice for the job.
âA Hidden Lifeâ cinematographer Joerg Widmer
Reiner Bajo
âA Hidden Lifeâ
Dir: Terrence Malick, DoP: Jörg Widmer
Format & Camera: RED Epic Dragon 6K, we switched to RED Epic-W Helium 7K for the winter scenes, always 2 camera bodies, one equipped with Skintone Highlight, the second with Low Light. OLPF [Optical Low Pass Filters], all shot in RAW
Lens: We used the ARRI Masterprimes 12mm as main lens, 16mm as our long lens and sometimes the Ultraprime 8R
Widmer: The director Terrence Malick wanted us to be explorers, able to shoot like a documentary crew, mostly with natural light. We were always looking for backlight, for which we needed lightweight cameras with lenses, which could take a lot of contrast without flaring and with a huge range of latitude. The actors should be able to move quite freely and keep their energy. We prepared the cameras in a setup, which allowed us to change from steadicam to slider or handheld in less than a minute. The takes could last from 4 to 40 minutes without a break. In interiors, we switched to the low light camera to capture as much as possible of the dark interiors in the rural homes, stables and prison cells. The RED IPP2 pipeline allowed us in postproduction to preserve the details in the bright skies and windows as well as in the dark parts of locations and faces, which was surprising considering the fact that there was hardly any artificial lighting for most of the movie.
âLes Misérablesâ
Dir: Ladj Ly, DoP: Juilien Poupard
Format: 3.2K Arriraw
Camera: Arri Alexa mini Lens: Zoom angenieux optimo (15-40/28-76/45-120)
Ladj Ly: We were looking for a device that would make the film look like a documentary, to be attentive to all possible situations and improvisation. We were looking for a human point of view, as if the camera could be a film character. For this we chose a lightweight camera and zoom.
âMatthias and Maximeâ
Shayne Laverdiere
âMatthias and Maximeâ
Dir: Xavier Dolan, DoP: André Turpin
Format: Kodak 5219 and 5213 Super35 mm, Kodak 500 T 5219 65mm, Kodak 7219 500T (super 8)
Camera: Arricam LT, Arri 765 for one sequence, Arri Alexa Mini for one drone shot and one underwater shot Lens: Master Primes, Angénieux lightweight zooms, Arri large format lenses from the eighties.
Turpin: I primarily use Master Primes for their sharpness and speed. Xavier also wanted to do fast, quirky, and nervous zoom movements for the handheld work to accentuate the spontaneity and chaotic feel of the frenzied overlapping dialogue between the boys. For that, my camera operator Yves Bélanger (who happens to be a wonderful cinematographer) and I (I operated the occasional 2nd camera), used the Angénieux lightweight 28-76 zooms.
When he was not acting, Xavier would operate the remote controls himself and surprise and destabilize us with quick in and out zooms. We also used the 65mm format for a climactic love scene to have it emerge from the rest of the film. Very satisfying of course.
âMatthias and Maximeâ has a different aesthetic if you compare it to Dolanâs previous work. Itâs more natural, fresh, and simple, not as lit, flashy, colorful or contrasting.
âOh Mercy!â
courtesy of Cannes
âOh Mercy!â
Dir: Arnaud Desplechin, DoP: Irina Lubtchansky
Format: 1.85, digital.
Camera: Red Monstro, 6K, color IPP2 Lens: Panavision Primo lenses 70MM with Panavision primo ZOOM (25/275)
Desplechin: As soon as I finished the script, I started shooting in scope, which I loved so much. I knew I was going to film the deprived people and the splendor, the emphasis of 2.39 did not fit the film I wanted to do. One of my biggest influences on this film was Hitchcockâs âThe Wrong Man.â So I came back to the format 1.85, more modest and conventional.
We shot the film in six weeks, so quickly, with four players, and the inhabitants of Roubaix, this ruined city ⦠1.85 in 4K, we did not like the ratio of the focal (VS Scope 2.39). We tried the 6K and 8K on Red Monstro with its new sensor. I wanted to get a lot of reality in the camera, this is a more realistic movie romance. We realized that the distance between the camera and the actors was better suited for 6K, less close, less intrusive than 8K. In 8K, I realized, with the camera on my shoulder , I was stuck under the nose of the actors! And it was not possible for me.
We were able to enjoy the wide latitude in shadows of the Monstro camera, a very soft noise rise and good color rendering. The camera is very sensitive and has allowed us to work with a little more depth of field and be more comfortable with this large sensor in wide shots. Primo 70mm were technically suited to this large sensor. They seduced us with their rendering and weight, resolution fineness (fuzzy fine), and smooth in contrast. So we could have a sharp image, but not too hard. They go very well together with the Primo lenses.
Cannes Film Festival
âPain and Gloryâ
Dir: Pedro Almodovar, DoP: José Luis Alcaine
Format: 3.4K ARRIRAW
Camera: ARRI ALEXA ST Lens: COOKE S4
Alcaine: I choose the Cooke S4 lenses because, for Pedro and me, these were the best color natural skin rendering of all the lenses we tried. Another thing we considered was wanting to have as much depth of field as possible, as I think that if you have a good depth of field on the screen there will be a lot more of information and the audience can chose where to look and in a certain way be more part of the film. The tendency of the current cinematography is to have a point of focus through the use of the 1.3, 2., or 2.8 [iris] diaphragm throughout the film. This tendency was created in the 90âs for the TV ads, and is employed now by a large number of cinematographers. And with this technique the moviegoers are not involved in the stories shown on the screen. They remain cold and no emotion arrives to them. So, after talking with Pedro who was absolutely O.K. with this, I choose to go, on the contrary, on a very high [iris] diaphragm, from 11 to 22, whenever possible. And by the way, with these diaphragms, the colors have a corporeality unattainable at others openings. The colors became rich, bright, and in a certain way enhanced like if they had relief in themselves.
Even if I have a lot of light on the set, I tried always to have a natural, and credible light, all along the movie. Anyway we finished the shooting one week earlier than the scheduled time. My light came from the art of painters like Rembrandt, Velasquez, Vermeer, Hooper, etc⦠I.E. at the home cave, Eduardo, the young worker, has the light of some Francis Bacon paintings, (he was like a kind of God for Salvador).
âPortrait of a Lady on Fireâ
courtesy of Cannes
âPortrait of a Lady on Fireâ
Dir: Céline Sciamma, DoP: Claire Mathon
Format: Digital, 1:85 aspect ratio, post-production was done in 4K
Camera: Red Monstro 7K Lens: Leica Thalia
Mathon: The choice of shooting format was discussed at a very early stage. Tests combining a 35mm/Leica Summilux and a Red Monstro/Leica Thalia gave an analogue reference for the grading of the digital images and made us choose the Red Monstro for the personification and presence that emerged from the first faces filmed. Even though Celine Sciammaâs film relates to the memory of a love story that took place in the 18th century, we did not want to highlight this dimension but, on the contrary, invent our own 18th century (âour 2018th centuryâ) with a contemporary echo.
The precision and very rich colors give a pictorial dimension to the film. The rendering of the skin tones was essential in my work on this film full of faces and portraits. Inspired in particular by Corotâs intimate portraits, I sought both softness and a slightly satiny, unrealistic rendering while remaining natural and very vibrant.
âSibylâ
Dir: Justine Triet, DoP: Simon Beaufils
Format: ArriRaw 3,4k Full Frame aspect ratio 2.39
Camera: Arri Alexa Mini Lens: Hawk Anamorphic V and V+ lenses
Beaufils: Justine Triet and I wanted âSibylâ to go further in âmise en scène,â play with cinemaâs codes, rules, try sophisticated shots to enhance scenes, and at the same time to be really discrete, not showy. I felt the 2.39 was the good ratio for this. I like to shoot in anamorphic, especially with a video camera, to have a softer texture. Hawk V lenses are a bit heavy, especially when you go on the top of a vulcano!! But with Alexa, it was a really good combination, to have subtle nuances on skins, nice vivid colors, without being too sharp. I went into low light many times to be a bit grainy, even in daylight situations. I like the feeling of Alexaâs grain, when you are a little bit too low. Skins texture, landscapes, become suddenly more organics.
âSorry We Missed Youâ cinematographer Robbie Ryan and director Ken Loach
âSorry We Missed Youâ
Dir: Ken Loach, DoP: Robbie Ryan
Format: We shot on Arri 16mm
Camera: Arri416 16mm Lens: We used mainly Arri ultra 16 primes mixed with masterprimes
Ryan: Well Ken always likes to shoot on film as it best visualises the story he wants to tell. We usually shoot 35mm 4perf, but we couldnât afford that route this time due to the Kodak stock prices going up sadly! So we decided to shoot 16mm, which suited the story as we were shooting in a delivery van quite a bit, so the smaller size of the camera made it easier to work in the more confined spaces. 16mm is a fantastic format because it has an inherent organic filmic feel to it⦠a very honest format for a very honest filmmaker.
âThe Traitorâ
Cannes Film Festival
âThe Traitorâ
Dir: Marco Bellocchio, DoP: Vladan Radovic
Format: Open Gate 3.4K ARRIRAW
Camera: 2 ARRI Alexa Mini Lens: Master Prime Lenses ARRI and Zoom FUJINON ZK 25/300
Radovic: The Master Prime lenses combined with the Arri Alexa sensitivity have given me the opportunity to work with the darkness while deciding whether to add details or not in the deepest shadows. Being that the character portrayed is full of contradictions I have chosen to use my cinematography to follow his changes.
Vlad Cioplea
âThe Whistlersâ
Dir: Corneliu Porumboiu, DoP: Tudor Mircea
Format: ARRIRAW 3.4K Open Gate
Cameras: Arri Alexa SXT, Sony A7SII Lens: Zeiss Master Anamorphic
Mircea: We did a lot of scouting of our locations and research into movies and artists that inspired us. The landscapes in La Gomera inspired us to go for the anamorphic format. We choose Arri Alexa for the wide latitude that allowed us to explore different looks, and for the simple way of working with this camera. After testing we decided to tell the story using Zeiss Master Anamorphic lenses for the cinematic look, high contrast, high speed, the nice focus fall-off and distortion-free image. It is also a beautiful format for portraiture.
The challenge was to find our own visual language, having in mind Edward Hopper, Hitchcock movies and film noir. We also placed a great deal importance on our set, especially the color. The production designer, art director and costume designer worked together closely to find the right colors for our story.
I used a different camera for the surveillance cameras in the movie, to give a different texture to the picture while making use of the high sensitivity that small Sony camera is offers.
âThe Wild Goose Lakeâ
Cannes Film Festival
âThe Wild Goose Lakeâ
Dir: Diao Yinan, DoP: Dong Jinsong
Format:8K FF 1.89:1
Camera: RED Monstro 8K VV Lens: Cooke s7i Prime Lenses Focal Length: 32mm 40mm 50mm 75mm 100mm
Jinsong: The humid and stuffy summer nights, sound and silence, turnings of life, souls with temperatureâ¦All the abstract text should be presented by images, but how? 80 percent of the scenes were shot at night, and they have different spaces and atmospheres. How should we deal with the overall atmosphere to engrave the details? How can we ensure that the camera could breakthrough the restrictions from the narrow space and accomplish the directorâs mise-en-scene? And how do we consider the poetic expression? How can we use the heavy machinery to achieve a smart and fluid impression?
Based on the above ideas, I chose the full-frame camera and the Cooke lenses to present an âimmersive feelingâ of viewing. We kept a high color saturation with rich levels so that the black details in the dark part of frame have been well retained.
courtesy of Cannes
âYoung Ahmedâ
Dir: Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne
Format: 4K, 1.85
Camera: Arri Alexa mini Lens: Série ZEISS T2.1
Dardennes: We chose this camera and lens for its maneuverability when it is mounted on the shoulder.
Next Page: Out of Competition/Special Screenings
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Continue Reading:Cannes Cinematography Survey: Hereâs the Cameras and Lenses Used to Shoot 54 Films
ContributorUpdated July 12, 2018
Documentaries are stories about real life. Your subjects will have their own thoughts so your documentary script needs to be flexible, especially at the beginning of your project. However, in order to focus the content of your filming you will need a shooting script at the beginning and an editing script by the end of your project. Here's how you can write your documentary's script.
The First Script or Shooting Script
Have your documentary topic completely researched. Before you start shooting, you need to have an idea about what your story will be. As with dramatic films, there needs to be interesting characters, conflicts and plots. Unlike dramatic films, these should occur naturally, without directing the people in your documentary.
Write down an outline of what you think your documentary will be about. This outline needs to include the characters, their conflict and how you imagine their conflict will be resolved. Your documentary will change as you begin shooting, so right now all you need is a vague outline.
Create a list of questions that you want to ask your characters. These questions will help to develop the characters and investigate their conflict. As you shoot, your characters' answers will provide you the meat of your documentary.
Begin shooting, now that your shooting script is done. Make sure you cover all of the questions you had, but be ready to take your documentary in a different direction if a new, better conflict arises. As your conflict changes, keep editing you shooting script.
Second Script or Post-Shoot Script
Complete all of your filming, and start your post-shoot script. The purpose of this script is to help you or your editor know exactly what to do to complete the project.
Verify your WoW Installation Path. That is where you are running WoW from and THAT is where you need to install your addons. Move to the Addon folder. Open your World of Warcraft folder. (default is C:Program FilesWorld of Warcraft) Go into the âInterfaceâ folder. Go into the âAddOnsâ folder. In a new window, open the âMy Addonsâ folder. How to get addons for wow.
Choose the scenes that you shot that best develop your characters, conflicts and plot. Write an outline of the scenes that you intend to use in your final documentary.
Write, word-for-word, the script for your documentary. This means that you will write the dialogue of your characters as well as the narrator's dialogue. Remember, your script needs to be complete so that another person who edits your documentary will cut the dialogue just as you envisioned.
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Even if you have a definitive budget, scheduling your shoot schedule can be tricky. You need to break down all the elements of your film to determine how to distribute the money you have. These breakdowns also help you figure out how many days it will take to shoot your film. You have to make your budget fit your schedule, so be prepared to do some juggling. If youâre on a tight budget, you wonât have the luxury of shooting your film over a period of several months. Your budget may only allow you to schedule a 12-day shoot (every additional day is going to cost you money). Juggling includes consolidating scenes. If you can shoot the scene in the cave in two days instead of three, and the breaking-up scene in the car, instead of in the shopping mall, youâll be able to shorten your schedule â thus, saving time and money.
The director and assistant director usually make the schedule together. The process includes figuring out what scenes can be shot together in the same day, scheduling actors to work consecutive days, and how to tighten the schedule so the film can be shot in fewer days. If you donât have an assistant director to help schedule and be on the set to help things stay organized, then you have to do the schedule all by yourself. Scheduling your film includes
A calendar is your best friend when scheduling your film. You choose the date on which to start principal photography and the date on which the shoot will wrap. By looking at a calendar, you see what days the weekends fall on and whether any statutory holidays occur that the cast and crew will have off (like Christmas and Memorial Day).
Lining your script
You break down, or line, your script by pulling out elements that affect your budget and schedule. With different-colored highlighters in hand, start combing through your script (or have the assistant director do it, if you have one), highlighting important items with a different color for each category. You end up with a very colorful script after the process is complete. This process is intended to flag the script so accurate breakdowns can be made. The categories to highlight include the following:
Breaking into breakdown sheets
After you highlight the various categories of items, transfer the highlighted elements to individual breakdown sheets â one for each scene in your film. A breakdown sheet contains separate drawn category boxes to add the elements youâve highlighted in the script. You enter each element in the appropriate category box, such as a hammer in the props area, either by hand or by using one of the available software programs.
Each breakdown sheet should be numbered so that you can go back and reference it if you need to. Every character in the script is also given a reference number, usually starting with the number 1 for your lead actor. You transfer these numbers to the breakdown sheets and eventually to the individual strips on the production board. Numbering saves space so that you donât have to keep writing the charactersâ names (plus there wouldnât be enough space on a strip).
A breakdown sheet also has a header that includes the following details:
Figure 1 shows a sample breakdown sheet from the film The Dragonâs Candle. Scene 106 has Ghandlin the wizard driving a borrowed police car and zapping traffic out of his way with his magic wand. The breakdown sheet provides separate boxes listing the elements that are needed for this scene.
Figure 1: A breakdown sheet created with Gorilla production software. Your prop list
Every prop that will appear in your film must be pulled from the script and added to the props category in your breakdown sheets. A prop is defined as anything your characters interact with, such as guns, cell phones, brooms, and so on. On a low-budget film, try to borrow your props â especially if theyâre contemporary items. For hard-to-find props, you can usually rent them from a prop house or rental house listed in the Yellow Pages or the 411 directory in New York and Los Angeles.In North Hollywood, California, 20th Century Props has over 100,000 square feet of storage that houses thousands of props.
Often, props are confused with set dressing, but the difference is that actors donât interact with set dressing. Set dressing includes a picture frame on a mantle or flowers in a vase on a table. The baseball bat in Mel Gibsonâs film Signs would have been categorized as set dressing, but because the actors actually interact with the bat (which is displayed on a wall), it is categorized as a prop. You address set dressing in your breakdown sheets only if itâs crucial to the story.
Your wardrobe list
You add certain wardrobe elements to your breakdown sheets, such as costumes, uniforms, or clothes that have to be sewn from scratch. A characterâs jeans and T-shirt donât need to be entered in the wardrobe box, but a gangsterâs zoot suit does. Because scenes arenât usually filmed in chronological order, each outfit is given a script day number to ensure that the actor wears the correct wardrobe in each shot. Script days (the timeline of your story) will be part of the breakdown sheets, and if the story takes place over five days, youâll sit down with the wardrobe person and decide what clothing your actors will wear each day if itâs not addressed in the script.
Shooting on location
You can list your location setting in the heading of each breakdown sheet. Locations dictate a lot regarding scheduling and budget. If youâre using software like Movie Magic Scheduling, you can cross-reference details about the locations (Are they private or public property? Do you need to secure permits or pay location fees, and how much do they cost?). Keep your locations to a minimum; otherwise, you may end up going over budget.
You can stretch your entire budget if you decide to shoot outside the United States. Shooting in Canada, depending on the exchange rate at the time, can stretch your budget up to 45 percent or more! Donât plan to head north of the border without doing some research first, though. Many states in the United States offer incentives to encourage filmmakers to shoot in their cities.
Scheduling special effects
Scheduling special effects on your breakdown sheets helps you determine what kind of effects you can afford. Keep effects to a minimum if youâre working with a lower budget. You may find that designing special effects on a computer fits within your budget better, depending on how elaborate the special effect.
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