The Insiders' Guide to Factual Filmmaking

Tony Stark

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780815369776
• eBook ISBN: 9781351251440
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

The Insiders' Guide to Factual Filmmaking is an accessible and comprehensive 'how to' guide about the craft of making documentaries for TV, online or social media. Filmmaker Tony Stark distils a long career at the BBC and as an independent producer to explain the conceptual, visual, editorial and organisational skills needed to make impactful and stylish factual films.

Interviews with top industry professionals in the UK and US - commissioners, executive producers, filmmakers, strand editors and media lawyers – add valuable insight and authority to this book. For more experienced filmmakers The Insiders' Guide tells you how to get the green light for undercover investigations, how to tell film stories online and on social media, and how to budget a factual film.

This is a key text for anyone who wants to succeed in the rapidly changing, competitive freelance markets in Britain and America. It provides expert guidance to students on filmmaking courses, journalists wanting to move from print to video and non-professionals with an interest in film-making. Whatever the final destination of your film – and whatever the budget - The Insiders' Guide provides a vital roadmap.

The book's accompanying website is a 'show-me' resource for new directors: with 24 specially-shot film clips illustrating the key rules of filmic grammar and sequence shooting – together with downloadable versions of essential production forms.

Part 1

Survival Skills

1The Factual Filmmaker’s Skill-Set

A Survival Guide for Newcomers to the Industry

KEY CONCEPTS

•The attitudes and the abilities that a factual filmmaker needs to survive and thrive in the industry.

•Why multi-skilling is the name of the game.

•Why this is a collaborator’s – not a ‘loner’s’ – profession.

•Why creative imagination might be a necessary skill for good producers and directors but, on its own, it’s not sufficient to guarantee success.

Factual filmmaking is a highly competitive profession on both sides of the Atlantic and anyone with a passion for documentary or current affairs considering a career in making films that reflect our world or reveal wrong-doing, must equip themselves with the right skill-set and the right attitude. A failure to do this will shackle your career prospects. So, in this chapter, I am going to outline the key issues that you need to consider.

Multi-Skilled Filmmakers are in Demand

If you’re up-and-coming in the industry, if you have at least a couple of skills – you’re a producer but you can also shoot – it’s much easier to start being a filmmaker that way … The industry is really teeming with makers. If somebody walks in the door and they can shoot and produce we’re much more willing and eager to hire them. Especially if their filmmaking is high level.

Raney Aronson-Rath, Executive Producer, PBS Frontline

The transformation of the media industry mentioned in the introduction to this book has given filmmakers who are multi-skilled a distinct advantage. Easy to use digital cameras, editing software that can be installed on home computers, declining factual budgets and a profession dominated by independent production companies and freelancers, have all ensured that producers and directors who can do more than simply produce and direct are highly prized. Combining two or three jobs into one person saves big money on budgets and many lower-budget factual films now expect the producer/director to do all the creative tasks involved in the making of a factual film: that is, producing, directing, shooting, recording sound, interviewing and even editing.

In today’s competitive market, it is definitely an advantage to have a CV that includes self-shooting and editing skills. You might not become the best shooter – or the best film editor, but being competent at both will give you a distinct advantage – whether you are working in the UK or in America. But multi-tasking is not something to be taken lightly. The pressures on a producer/director who also has to film a project are very severe. Doing this successfully demands the ability to keep tabs on many things at once – and it is not for the faint-hearted. See page 40 in Chapter 3 for more information on what self-shooting involves.

Collaborative Filmmakers are in Demand

If you are just starting in this industry, make sure you surround yourself with people who are experienced enough and know what they are doing. A lot of time when people are doing their first gig, they feel almost like they have to do everything themselves, to prove themselves … And actually the best first time directors I’ve worked with are the ones that let you do your job but have good input at the same time.

Peter Zacaroli, Managing Director, West Digital Post-Production

My first job in TV was on a now long-forgotten, but then much-watched current affairs programme called ‘Nationwide’ that went out nightly all over the UK on the BBC. I was a weekly newspaper journalist who had long-harboured an ambition to make documentaries, and the offer of a job on ‘Nationwide’ was a fantastic opportunity to take the first steps towards realizing this goal. So I moved to Plymouth, in the south west of England, and turned up at the BBC studios to begin my first day’s work. I was a regional researcher. The job was finding guests with interesting current stories to tell to feed into the networked programme. On my first morning, I got a call from the London-based daily production desk telling me about a story my predecessor had found just before he left. “Hi Tony,” said the producer. “Welcome to the show. There’s a great story in Cornwall about a ghost seen by several people on a stretch of road where there’s been a string of accidents. Ghoulish appearances distracting the drivers, or something like that. A good last item for tonight’s show. So take a crew down there, speak to the locals and make a 3 minute film.” There was no training for newcomers to BBC Nationwide. It was sink or swim. Knowing little to nothing about directing a short on-the-day factual film, I set off in search of ghostly apparitions on a haunted stretch of highway on the Cornish coast. My mind was reeling as I drove out to meet my camera operator and the local news reporter. I had no idea what to film, or how to structure a three-minute segment for the show. So disaster, a three-minute hole in the programme and an early end to my fledgling career, loomed! In fact I was saved by the goodwill, experience and supportive nature of my camera operator and the news reporter. They were very sympathetic to this very green researcher, guiding me through the process – deciding on the sequence of shots, the interviews, what the reporter would say on camera, and the way the piece was cut together. I soaked it all in without the need to face on-air embarrassment. It was an early and a salutary lesson to me, a newspaper journalist used to working entirely on my own, that collaboration and listening carefully to the advice of those with whom you are working, is part and parcel of factual filmmaking. This is true at every level of the profession.

The most difficult PDs to work with are the ones who effectively think: ‘OK. I’ve got this programme commissioned now, I’m going to go off and do my own thing and I’m not going to report back until the edit suite’. And actually that just doesn’t work because you end up in the edit suite with someone like myself sitting there thinking: ‘why on earth have we done X, Y, or Z?’. In order to get the best out of any programme, it has to be a constant conversation. The PD has to keep the commissioning editor or the exec, fully briefed on what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. And the more you talk about something, the more likely you end up with a better product because always, hopefully, several brains are better than one brain.

Louisa Compton, Head of News, Current Affairs and Sport, Channel 4 TV

Written journalism is an individual pursuit. You get a brief from your editor, you go out and research the issue, conduct interviews, find stills, commission graphics and then write the story. You’ll have occasional briefings with your editor, of course, but the story is yours: you write it, you take the credit. Filmmaking is really not like that at all. Yes, the producer, of a film should have a well-defined conception of the story that he or she would like to tell; the director must possess a clear sense of how to visualize it; and a producer/director, of course, needs both. But filmmaking is a complex, layered process. Its success rests on a very wide range of abilities, and it is unlikely that they will all be present in one person. To use a motoring analogy: you, the filmmaker, might be in the driving seat as you motor down your narrative highway, but there are others in the car with you who can help discover the most interesting path to your destination: your eyes might be fixed on the horizon in front of you, but those around you can look left and right and might just spot a route that you have missed. Filmmaking requires the abilities of a range of professionals for its successful completion and it is well worth asking for the advice of creative individuals whose training and experience are different to yours: the combination of their skills with yours will enable you to produce a much better film than you can on your own. Conversely, if you try to take all the key decisions about everything yourself, you’re likely to produce a dull film. So it is about teamwork and the most talented and successful producers and directors realize and accept this on a deep level.

The Many Creative Decisions that go into the Making of a Factual Film

You have to appreciate the many creative calls needed in the conception and the making of a documentary or current affairs film. Here are some examples:

What makes a good televisual interviewee? Content is king when you’re interviewing someone for a newspaper article. But content is only part of the decision-making process when you’re making a film. How the person looks, how they speak, the tone of their voice, are all important issues to consider in deciding who is going to appear in your film.

I could be working with a producer who has his or her vision, a reporter who has his or her vision. And then I have my vision – and we won’t always see eye to eye. And you never always see eye to eye actually, there’s always tension and sometimes quite bad clashes, but I firmly believe that creative tensions and collaboration often lead to better filmmaking. You’ve got to be able to push for what you want but at the same time understand the perspective of others. And if you can collaborate, people will want to work with you as well. I think it is an extraordinarily collaborative job.

Diana Martin, Executive Producer, BBC TV, Panorama

Where and how am I going to film my interviewees? Inside? Outside? Artificially lit? Standing still? In a chair? Walking along a road? In a vehicle? And how do I frame and light my interviewees? All in close-up? Or filmed in a mixture of shot sizes? Heavily side-lit to emphasize mood? On a long lens to blur the background and focus attention on the speaker?

What other kinds of images will I need of my interviewees? I need sufficient visual material to cover commentaries that speak about them and for use as ‘overlay’ to cover edits in interviews. What will I film them doing? What’s the most appropriate image to complement my story? And how much of this imagery will I need in the film?

What other images will I need? I must give viewers a strong sense of location and illustrate the issues under discussion in my film. How and where do I shoot these images to give visual interest? And what is the best time of day to film them?

Do I need dramatic reconstruction? This can help tell a past-tense story for which no stills or archive exist. But is this approach appropriate for my film – or is the subject too sensitive for this technique? If it is justified, what style will it be filmed in? Will there be dialogue? And what are the key parts of your story that need such dramatization?

Do I want to use a presenter or reporter? If so, will they be filmed in vision or just used as an off-camera narrator? And if in vision, which parts of the story will they tell to the camera? And how much other imagery will I need of them? Will they be filmed on their own or with some of my interviewees? And, anyway, is the person I’d like to be the presenter good enough on (and off) camera to do this job?

What’s the style of the programme? Do I want to use a lot of hand-held camera to give a sense of drama, or danger? Or do I want a much more stylised approach – with beautiful compositions and the camera on a tripod for most of the shoot? Or perhaps a mixture of the two is best? Do I need any special camera equipment to achieve the images I want: A camera harness? A dolly and track? A car mount? An aerial drone camera?

Whether you’ve come straight from school, college, university or just as a freelance out of the university of life, then however good your idea, it is worth having people around you who can help you deliver it. And there is a certain amount of humility that’s required in this game to ensure that you realize that this should really be a collaborative process. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It can be really good if people are encouraging you to be the best that you can and to get the best out of what you are doing. If you haven’t done it before, I think that’s a good thing.

Tom Giles, Controller of Current Affairs, ITV

Will archive or stills enhance my narrative? If so, what’s the best place to use them in my story? And can I afford to pay the royalty fees charged for their use in my film?

How do I cut my rushes into a strong story? There are many ways of cutting a film story together. There’s no right way, just better and worse ways. Some cuts engage the viewer from start to finish. Others make them yawn and switch off after five minutes. But how do you find the best cut?

How do I transform my edited programme into a finished film? Once you have cut your story together, there’s another raft of creative decisions to take. The sound tracks have to be mixed together at a pleasing balance; you might need to adjust the colour, hue or brightness of some of the images – or blur out some faces if you’re making an investigation. All of these decisions are taken in collaboration with creative post-production staff.

None of us make a film on our own. It’s all about collaboration. If you think: ‘oh, this is my film, I’m going to make it and I’m the auteur’ the chances are you’re going to fuck up because the best ideas can come from the least expected sources. I grew up in the theatre. My mother was an actress and a stage manager in the West End. And I remember one of the things she absolutely used to say: ‘you listen to everybody whether they are t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Credits
• Introduction
• Part 1 Survival Skills
• Part 2 Creative Skills
• Part 3 Planning Skills
• Part 4 Undercover Skills
• Part 5 Financial Skills
• Index