Chapter 33: Getting There

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This final chapter is a response to many e-mails from readers, which in one way or another have asked how to get started in documentary and, by implication, how to do well in the field.

This is a great time to make documentaries. All of the barriers that kept people out of the field have been removed, except for talent and hard work.

Talent: You have to have an interesting idea for a documentary, and you have to execute it skillfully.

Hard work: As I wrote in chapter 1, it looks so easy, but it’s not. On the other hand, it can be a lot of fun. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking that because making documentaries has now become more accessible, it has also suddenly become easy.

The Low-Budget Documentary

It used to cost a lot of money to make a documentary. Today, technology has made it possible to shoot and edit a low-budget documentary for little more than pocket change. Certainly, if you want to go big time and shoot on location in high-definition video, you still need expensive equipment and a thoroughly professional crew. But if you are willing to start small, shoot with a good but relatively inexpensive camera, and edit on your computer, you can afford to make a first documentary. The technology is not terribly difficult to learn. The cost is manageable.

If you have a specialized knowledge about some topic or an intense interest in exploring and documenting a subject, there is nothing standing in your way other than your own willingness to start. And, I should add, your willingness to continue after you have made a few mistakes. Be comforted by the fact that we have all gone through such a learning process. Throughout this book I’ve shared some of my learning experiences with you.

There is, of course, no guarantee that your documentary will make any money for you, but there never is. So go. Do. Enjoy.

Work at What You Want to Do

Start with either the documentary process or the documentary topic that you want to become good at, and then keep at it until you are.

Start Where You Are, Do What You Can

If you want to make spontaneous cinema documentaries, just start. Take an idea that you can do close to home and document it. It’s a lot easier to do a first documentary about your kid brother’s Pop Warner football team, obsessive lawn care in your community, people at the pool, dogs vs. cats, or the people who shop at 7-Eleven, than about brothels in Calcutta, penguins in Antarctica, or life aboard a submarine at sea. The critical factor in almost all documentaries is how the idea is presented on the screen – not the idea itself. A well-executed, short film about lawn wars might spark far more interest than a heavy-handed presentation about some vital issue of our time. Show that you know what to do with whatever you have to work with, and you’ll find opportunities to move up in class.

Expect that it will take making a couple of documentaries to get to the point where most of the time you will feel confident that you know what you are doing. You have to work past that process of trial and error. Just remember, for the learning process to work, you have to care about those first documentaries and want them to be good. And they can be. The point to a learning process is that you correct the mistakes you’ve made, and learn from them, so you’ll be less likely to make them next time.

The finished production will stand as proof that you not only know how to make this type of documentary, but have stuck it out and completed it. That’s a big plus when you’re trying to raise money for your next project or trying to get a job with a producer who does the sorts of documentaries you’d like to make.

Get Close to Success

If you want to make documentaries for PBS, then get as close to people making them as you can. There’s a lot more to getting a film on the air than just a neat idea and good videography. The competition is fierce, the process may often take a considerable amount of time, and there may well be lots of wrong ways to present a project and few right ways. The people who work for people who make documentaries for PBS learn these things.

The same is true for the History Channel, Discovery Networks, National Geographic, or any of the other cable outlets. It is far, far easier to present a documentary idea to someone at a network who already knows you than to get even a look-in from someone who has never heard of you.

How do you find such employment? Hardly ever by offering to sweep the floors or do any job at all, just so you can learn. People who run production companies, TV stations, and networks are often selfishly fixated on the needs of their organizations. They want to hire people who will contribute to the organization rather than people who want the organization to make a charity contribution to their own career plans.

So you need to figure out what you have to offer. If you lack production skills, you might have talents to offer on the business side, such as bookkeeping or selling, that could get you in the door. Or you may need to take some production courses or make a first documentary on your own before you’ll be ready to look for a position close to power.

The same goes for theatrical documentaries. Try to find someone who is doing them and serve an apprenticeship. If, however, what you actually want to do is make feature films, why spend time doing documentaries? Take the low budget equipment, get a script, find some actors, shoot a feature (or a short), and leave documentaries to those who are obsessed with truth.

You’ll find a compilation of useful organizations and associations in appendix 2 that may help you identify potential employers doing the kind of work you are interested in.

What Should You Study?

What interests you? If you are headed to college, are in college now, or are thinking about taking some college courses, you may be wondering where to go and what to study. I regularly get e-mails from readers asking me to recommend a school or a film course for them. All I can tell you is to look for courses offering real, hands-on experience with up-to-date equipment. And talk with former students who have completed the course and are working in the industry. Get their take on how well they feel the course prepared them to (1) get a job; and (2) do the job.

The truth is, the technology of filmmaking at the documentary level is not that difficult to learn, unless your goal is mastery of the technology so you can work as a technical person. I strongly believe that the best preparation for a would-be documentarian is to master one or more academic subjects — history, economics, science — rather than to concentrate on mastering the tools of the trade. In the world of today’s documentaries, you constantly will be presented with various forms of evidence, including statements from experts, supporting a specific position. How are you to know if the evidence is any good if all of your training has been about camera angles and digital editing?

Take a few courses to learn the production process from concept to completion, but become an expert on something you want to make films about.

Hard Science

There are not nearly enough filmmakers who actually understand a scientific discipline such as physics, biology, or chemistry. We live in a world of technology that depends on these sciences, and yet we lack communicators who understand them sufficiently to explain to the general public in plain language what current developments in these fields actually mean. Or even what the language of science is actually about. The absolute master at defogging science for a lay audience is Sharon Begley, who as I write this is science editor for The Wall Street Journal. Look up some of her articles or her books to see what can be done just with words, remembering that, as a documentarian, you will have visual evidence in addition to words.

Statistics

Learn some statistics. Most people have no idea how to read a statistical report or what statistics — even those that seem very clear — actually mean. If you make documentaries, advocates for various positions are going to wave statistics at you as proof of the validity of their point of view. But as Bjorn Lomborg points out in The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, advocates often use short-term results that tend to confirm their view of things, rather than statistics covering a longer term that might tend to refute their position.

The world has unquestionably grown warmer over the past century than it was at the end of the 300-year-long “little ice age” in 1850. But is it significantly warmer than it has been at various times in the past? Or are both “little ice ages” and periods of “global warming” part of the natural order of things? Can you tell from the data that are presented? Do you know how to test for statistical significance? Are you clear about the difference between models and observations?

Economics

If I were entering college today — but with the knowledge I’ve gained from a lifetime of reading, writing, and making films — I’d seriously consider minoring in economics. We are way short of people who really understand economic principles. And you’re kidding yourself if you think you can do social documentaries in the twenty-first century without correctly accounting for the underlying economic issues.

A good place to start is Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics. He actually explains how things work. For enjoyment, take a look at Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. It’s not only an eye-opener, it offers a technique for finding the unexpected truth underlying common phenomena. For a good read that offers a glimpse of how economists sometimes tackle problems, read Pietra Rivoli’s The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy.

History

Most Americans know far less of their own history than they think they do, and very little of the history of the rest of the world. For at least the last two decades, the United States has been doing more business with Asia than with Europe, and yet few Americans have any idea of the complex and fascinating history of the many nations that make up that vast continent.

Africa, the Middle East? The level of ignorance about them is even higher.

Even America’s European heritage remains unexplored territory for many college students and college graduates.

There is a world of opportunity waiting for the filmmaker with the knowledge to turn the truth about historical events into great documentary storytelling.

Other Areas

Anthropology and sociology have long been the source of powerful documentary films. Study in these areas provides an entry into the discipline and methodology that separate serious documentary filmmaking from partisan fluff.

The arts are a fertile field for the documentarian who can bring more understanding to painting, sculpture, music, or dance than just lighting and focal lengths. If your knowledge of any form of art goes beyond the surface presentation, so that you can help an audience understand how a specific body of work came about, you can make a serious contribution.

There are countless other areas in which gaining a certain amount of expertise can help you to make a better documentary. Here are a few to stimulate your thinking:

  • The professions. Medicine, law, architecture, and theology, are all fertile areas for a well-informed documentarian.

  • The military. When I was in college, every family had someone who had served or was serving in the armed forces and who brought home stories about military life. Today, the military is an unknown world to most Americans. If all you know about the armed forces comes from movies, even highly acclaimed movies such as Saving Private Ryan, you don’t know anything about the military.

  • Education and learning. More than sixty years ago, writing about the state of education research, the Swiss psychologist and learning theorist Jean Piaget said that we do not even know if the ability to spell is genetic or the result of learning. And today, we still don’t know.

During a period in which we have made astonishing advances in medicine and science; developed the personal computer, the Internet, and the cell phone to change the way in which we think, work, and communicate; and, oh yes, put some people on the moon; about the best one can say about public education in America is that it has stood still. That’s as if U.S. airlines were still flying the Douglas DC-7. Back in the ’50s it was the best propeller-driven airliner ever built. But it carried just 110 passengers and had a cruising speed of about 350 miles per hour. Pretty good back then. But today?

  • Government. Almost all reporting about government, regardless of whether by journalists or documentarians, is about politics, not governance. We hear how this bill or that policy will affect the chance for reelection of some person or party, but rarely do we get any cogent analysis of how it will affect the lives of ordinary people.

  • Aging. Americans as a people are growing older and living longer. And there is very little research to tell us what that actually means. This is a frontier area.

Follow Your Instincts

My point is not to tell you what to study, but to suggest that a concentration on film technique is probably not the best career preparation for a documentarian.

I suspect that most people don’t start out to be documentary filmmakers. They start out wanting to explore or expose or recount something they care passionately about. And they want to do it as a film.

What do you care about?

Go there.

Good luck with your project.



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