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Home » Blog » Some Pointers on Making a Film Documentary

Some Pointers on Making a Film Documentary

Article by Zoul

Some Pointers on Making a Film Documentary – Entertainment – Movies

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A film documentary is a very effective way of educating people on certain issues and subjects that are relevant to them. It is also a means of conveying the views of the filmmaker regarding the topic being handled in the film. The first responsibility of the filmmaker in this regard is to choose a certain subject to be tackled. As much as possible, this should be something that affects the lives of people, especially those of the target audience of the film. If not, this should be able to generate concern from the audience on the plight of others or on the situation that may not directly affect them.

After the topic or subject has been identified, the next thing that would be done is the pre-production phase, which usually consists of preparatory activities. It is during this phase that the storyline is formulated and the narration is written in accordance to it. At the same time, the crew is assembled and the equipments needed are acquired. However, even at this early stage, steps in building the audience should already be done. This means that the target viewers should be identified. In line with this, the possible venues for the film-showing should be pointed out too.

Even as the filming is taking place, another group of individuals should already be creating a distribution plan. Although the implementation of this plan would take place only after the final cut of the film is done, it is necessary to make a thorough study on the issue of distribution. A filmmaker should know that if this is not worked out well, there would be problems with regards to achieving the targeted income later. In cases when the filmmaker and his crew do not have any experience or knowledge on this particular task, they may hire an expert in film distribution.

While a filmmaker and the entire production outfit would not have any problem with using their own shots for the film, they may have to deal with music rights for their soundtrack. This would be a difficult and costly process. They would have to contact the owner of the said music rights before they could use these on the documentary. To avoid this trouble, it would indeed be better if the filmmaker just use his own music, produced exclusively for the documentary film itself. To realize this, he may have to hire a music composer for the project. Apparently, this is a less costly move compared to paying for music rights.

There is no way can a production roll if there is no funding at all. This is the reason why the producers of the film documentary should immediately start gathering the needed funds right after the planning phase has been done. For new filmmakers, targeting big companies and other organizations for funding may not be viable. It is important that the entire idea of the film documentary is packaged well so that it would become presentable to the possible donors or funders of the project. It is usually those who are very convinced of the necessity and beauty of the outcome that would willingly provide more funds.

About the Author

Find out more about how to make a film documentary by checking on Filmmaking Mastery.

Use and distribution of this article is subject to our Publisher Guidelines
whereby the original author’s information and copyright must be included.

Zoul



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Filed Under: Filmmaker News Tagged With: Documentary, Film, Making, Pointers, Some

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