Lessons In Making A Better Documentary

How to make your documentary better – check out these important lessons from documentary filmmakers.

If you’ve not bothered to pay for a formal film school education*, you can learn plenty online for free thanks to these documentary filmmakers sharing their wisdom and experiences on the whole gamut of filmmaking tasks involved in producing a gripping and entertaining documentary. Take some time out and learn about everything from shooting your documentary to creating story enhancing motion graphics. Sit back and absorb.

*Film school can be worth paying for a) for the experience b) for the connections and c) for the opportunity to watch a lot of movies.

Editing Documentaries

In this 45 minute documentary editing seminar Richard Speziale, walks through the entire process of building a documentary from the ground up. A must watch for those new to documentary editing.

Documentary Story Structure

Fernanda Rossi, know as the Story Doctor, delivers a very interesting talk on the way in which many documentaries that end up as wild successes start out as failures. In this (unfortunately low-res recording) story workshop she demonstrates the kind of before and after story structure work she specializes in. It’s a rare window into how to shape a documentary, sometimes just to get it into festivals.

After Effects for Documentary Editors

Steve Audette a highly experienced documentary editor, delivers this brilliant lecture on how to best use After Effects in the documentary edit suite. If you enjoy this you’ll definitely want to check out Steve’s exemplary lecture on documentary editing.

Shooting Documentaries

At the most recent LACPUG Filmmaker Bill Megalos shares what it takes to shoot and make documentaries all over the world.