October Sun Films

Documentary films tend to engage the audience more than traditional films. Another thing documentaries do is to inspire. A number of editing software packages are available or can be downloading from online sources. This can serve as an excellent starting point for future filmmakers.

A documentary is a good place for aspiring filmmakers to start since they are often based in real world settings and often require no more than an interesting subject and some good editing skills. When looking for a good documentary you check out the offerings of television providers like http://www.netflix.com for you streaming fans who don’t want to switch tv providers. Three are many other options for locating good documentaries. I would start by checking to see if they have a few documentaries that might provide some inspiration:

“Earth” (2007) – Sure, this is a large scale documentary that follows the migration of four animal families. The settings are breath-taking and the editing is near perfection. Obviously amateur filmmakers are not going to be able to duplicate something of this magnitude with the backing of somebody like Disney (who happen to behind this particular film, taken from the documentary television series “Planet Earth.”) It does offer plenty of ideas though about how compelling the animal world can be. Directors: Alastair Fothergill, Mark Linfield

“Super Size Me” (2004) – This is a better example of how to put together a documentary film that must beginners can easily do themselves. Like most documentaries, this one starts off with one single idea and follows it through. In this case, the idea is to see what a diet of nothing but McDonald’s food for a month will do to the human body. It’s a concept that can be adapted to a number of situations and documented at a relatively low cost to create a compelling story. Director: Morgan Spurlock

I hope you found this information helpful. Let me know if you have any questions.

When I started thinking about putting together my first documentary movie, the largest issue I had was where to get the money for it! This is a common problem among unknown documentarians. Breaking into the industry is difficult enough, but finding someone to fund an unknown director / writer / producer can be a real headache.

The best advice I can give is to keep it simple. For your first documentary, don’t try to out-do National Geographic. Start small. Find something local which (more…)

Choosing a subject for your documentary can get a little tricky. There are just so many ways you can go when choosing a subject that it can get a little confusing at times. Do you want to be controversial? Maybe you would prefer to present a more straightforward documentary. There is also the chance you may want to do a documentary on something you are an expert in.

Political documentaries can be controversial. You may present some facts that people do not (more…)

Crumb 1994

Crumb is a documentary about the artist Robert Crumb and his eccentric family. The film is a fantastic example of the genres ability to profile a subject and make it compelling. Even if you have never heard of Robert Crumb or seen his work you will be fascinated by his unorthodox behavior and the subject matter of his art. It has been called one of the most compelling and finest documentaries of the last few decades.

Grey Gardens 1975

This documentary is about the relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. It focuses on an elderly woman and her adult daughter. (more…)

Cinema began as a series of moving pictures, at some point coalescing into a story. Occasionally, title cards would convey information or dialogue that was seemingly necessary to the story. With the advent of sound, many filmmakers took it for granted that it was now necessary to embrace this new feature. Charlie Chaplin was a notable exception, refusing to ever let his Tramp character speak in order to hang on to the mystique.Starting in the 1980s, some documentary filmmakers decided to try their hand at conveying truth without words. The Qatsi (Hopi for “life”) trilogy, produced by Godfrey Reggio, is the most notable example. These films are not entirely silentthey feature compositions by the minimalist musician Philip Glass. But language is noticeably absent. When the first film, Koyaanisqatsi, was released in 1982, Reggio remarked that language “no long describes the world in which we live.” (more…)

In 2003, three filmmakers from Southern California travelled to Africa and discovered something that they had to share with the world. In the documentary Invisible Children, they do just that, but it’s not an easy thing to watch. The film tells the story of children in Uganda who have been abducted and enlisted into the Lord’s Resistance Armya rebel group trying to bring down the Ugandan government. To avoid the soldiers, the children would travel long distances at night, unaccompanied by any guardians. (more…)

The Academy Awards instituted a Documentary category in 1942, and then divided it into two categories the next year (Feature and Short Film). If you’ve never watched a documentary before, you could do much worse than to start with these. On the other hand, if you have always enjoyed nonfiction film, here’s a chance to see how the genre got its start. Here we highlight a film from each decade that wowed the committee with its honesty, beauty, and power.1943 Desert Victory: The first film to win the new Documentary Feature award captured the violence of the war which was now engulfing America. Produced by the British Ministry of Information, it chronicles the North African campaign against Erwin Rommel.1953 The Living Desert: Ten years later, a desert film of a different sort took the trophy. Living Desert took a close look at the wildlife of the American Southwest. Disney approved the film after seeing footage of a battle between a wasp and tarantula. (more…)

Documentary films come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes they’re constructed like a story, with a beginning, middle, and end. Other films are more fragmented, and still others simply seem to unfold naturally. The latter usually describes cinema vrit, a style of documentary film-making that emerged in the late 1960s. In addition to styles of editing and camerawork, films in this genre are also linked by the role of the filmmakerthey were usually much more present in the film than in other documentaries, sometimes even provoking or guiding the subject. Cinema vrit is often associated with the Direct Cinema movement.An early example of these genres is Michel Brault’s and Pierre Perrault’s 1963 film Pour la suite du monde. The filmmakers asked residents of a Canadian island to re-enact a whale hunt as they film it. What was seen on screen was a direct result of the filmmakers’ requestso was it fiction or reality? A common answer is that while the actual hunt is an act, the history and lineage which are revealed are true. (more…)