4 Easy Steps to Film a Short Documentary

hey Andy Mugler's Griffin here today I want to give you the four essential ingredients for shooting your documentary whether your camera is an re Alexa or an iPhone there are the same for creative considerations that make documentaries look like documentaries in fact this is the quickest way to upgrade from what I think looks like amateur home video style shooting to actually making what looks like a film so when your non video friend comes up to you and says hey I'm going on the trip of a lifetime to Patagonia what do I shoot with my new camera I think this is the easiest way to teach that just tell your friend there are four essential elements of documentary and the first one is an interview also called a talking head or a soundbite we also refer to them in television news as a SOT sound on tape which is definitely an outdated phrase because there's no tape involved anymore right now I'm recording audio through XLR right into the camera which is how I do most of my interviews but I like the phrase shot because it's a really short acronym shorter than writing out interview when I'm naming my files after I've shot the film so I can just say David Tran SOT I know exactly what that is these are really important as the documentarian to capture because I'm learning a lot of information and I'm getting a great audio track that I can use to build my film honestly the way that I like to edit I may only use the actual talking head shot for a second here a second there it's really that audio that I need people want to see the detail on the fur they want to see the eyes of the animal I want to see these little mats that are flying in front of it so the second element of documentary is vo voiceover and I like voiceover because people seem to like my voice and II mobilers hey Andy Mugler's hey Indy mogul errs so for me it's a free asset I have I don't have to hire extra Talent a voice-over artist I can just do my own voiceover for my film my neighborhood in lower Manhattan is especially bright and colorful so I visited a local neon sign maker to see I do think that voiceover can be a crutch if your whole film is voiceover then you have to ask yourself why am I not conveying this information effectively through visuals why are my interviews not conveying this information but I do think that voiceover can be a nice through line to take all the things you learned in interviews that maybe you had to cut out for timing reasons and you can string your film together with voiceover less than a mile away Vanessa's dumplings are slightly more expensive I tell her I have just come from tasty dumpling the third element of documentary is b-roll and there's a reason that I put b-roll in this quadrant above interviews because that's primarily the purpose of b-roll b-roll is all the wonderful shots that you captured while shooting your documentary although close-ups and medium shots and wide shots of all the details in the film and you're primarily using them to cover up the interview you put them on top of the interview cuz you can imagine how boring a documentary would be if it was just a talking head shot for the entire time and you would have no ability to cut out anything from the interview so yeah b-roll also covers up voiceover so in television a vo piece a voiceover piece is a piece that's just b-roll so often when I worked in news I would just shoot a bunch of beautiful b-roll shots package them together into a 30 second or 60 second clip and then they could just play it during the broadcast during a live show when the anchors are talking you can cut away to this be rolled one thing you should know about b-roll if you've never shot in a documentary or a television news story is that you need a lot more of it than you think you do you want to give yourself options in the Edit especially when you shoot b roll before you shoot your interview because the interview may reveal what are the things that you're talking about that I need to see and in fact I like to shoot b roll before i ever get to the interview i don't want to show up and do the interview first when my relationship with the subject isn't there yet i might want to spend a few hours shooting some b-roll even if i don't really know what I'm supposed to be capturing yet just spending that time getting the subject comfortable then when we sit down and do the interview there'll be a better subject and they'll trust me more to give me good answers so shoot a lot of b-roll sometimes I think the ratio is like 60 to 1 of what you'll need I shot a 5 minute film called hand cut about ice in cocktails but it had eight hours of interviews in b-roll when I made sriracha a 33 minute documentary I had 32 hours of interviews and b-roll so shoot a lot of stuff because well if you're like me you may want to cram a lot of shots into the film here's the power of b-roll I'm gonna play you an uncut moment from an interview in my film hand cut well I'm finished with ice sculptures at least in this portion of my life we're gonna change over to more of it uh non-specialty ice product something stands at like cubes and cut cubes and dry ice and selling block ice so that sounded okay he didn't stutter or cough sometimes all cut those things out but I do think from just an efficiency standpoint I can cut this down in length and still convey the same information so here I'll make two cuts and we'll see how this sounds well finished with ice sculptures at least in this portion of my life we're gonna change over to something stand at like cubes and cut cubes and selling block ice so those are very clearly jump cuts they feel pretty awkward when you can hear the cut you can see the cut at the exact same time we're not cutting to something else you know exactly what I've done and sometimes I'm okay as a filmmaker putting a jump cut in a film and letting the audience know about the editing but generally we kind of want to hide the production process from the audience and just let them get wrapped up in the story one thing I want to challenge you to though is let's watch that again and this is something I do when I'm editing these sound bites once you make a jump cut it's pretty obvious when you're looking at it that it's happening it's very jarring to see but the real test is can you hear it so I want you to watch it one more time and just close your eyes is and yes the jump cuts are there but if you can't hear the edit then it's okay what can cover it up with b-roll and as long as we can't hear that edit it's fine finished with ice sculptures at least in this portion of my life we're gonna change over to something stand at like cubes and cut cubes and selling block ice so yeah now that I've listened to it I know that it sounds okay so here's the version with b-roll on top well finished with ice sculptures at least in this portion of my life I'm gonna change over - something stand at like cubes and cut cubes and selling block ice one caveat I will mention about these first three elements of documentary is if you're shooting a cinema verite documentary cinema verite means cinema truth then you may not have a formal interview and you probably won't have voiceover because cinema verite is about showing up with a camera and just documenting what's actually happening which you may not want to stage an interview for that but most documentaries will have these elements and the final element of documentary is a NAT sound break NAT sound is short for natural sound we also call it wild sound and when I'm shooting documentary I'm always capturing NAT sound whether it's on a microphone hidden here end of the shot or even if it's just the on-camera microphone for NAT sound I'm okay with the on-camera microphone you know just hearing the street sound or anything like that that's the natural sound and a NAT sound break is where you just let that audio live on its own for a moment in the film so you know maybe the music continues but you drop out the sound bites the voice over and you just let the NAT sound live for a moment they're still wild animals and you have to have travel with a group of people in hand cut it's chipping away at the ice just letting the audience hear that you know 20 to 30 rings alright in television news it's often called a NAT sound pop that's just one more audio element really that's helping you tell your story and so these are the four elements interview voice over b-roll and NAT sound break that I'm thinking about am i capturing all these things when I'm out in the field these are the four elements that I talk about when I give workshops on how to shoot documentaries it's a very audio heavy list and this is what I think about when I'm making documentary thanks for watching if you enjoyed this if you learn something today then I think you'll also like this new crash course I've put together on documentary filmmaking this is a workshop that I've taught all around the world in many different countries and I'm excited to finally bring it to you make it available online it's an hour talking about elements of documentary storytelling structure the gear that I use editing tips and it's all available at Griffin Hammond comm slash crash it's ten dollars but I do want to make it available to any bogel errs for half price so it's only five dollars if you use the coupon code mogul again that's at Griffin Hammond com slash crash [Music]

Channel: Indy Mogul

Views: 406,535

Keywords: indy mogul, film, filmmaker, indie, independent, filmmaking, behind-the-scenes, DIY, video, how to, techniques, documentary, broll, b-roll, voiceover, interviews

Id: f-K_XbCLtVk

Length: 9min 48sec (588 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 22 2019