Fundamentals of Documentary Filmmaking: Key Lessons From A Pro | Chris Burkard | #KandoEverywhere

[Music] my name is chris burkhard and today i'm here to talk about documentary filmmaking and as a sony artisan who's been with the brand for about 10 years i can honestly say that shooting smaller more discreet cameras has really changed for me at least the way that i've been able to to operate and function and run in these in these really unique situations where you're in intimate scenarios of people when you're on expeditions i mean that that's really been the game changer for me like the biggest tool um what i really want to dive into today is just kind of a sadly not a conversation since this is digital but sort of a loose conversation around the idea of of what do you look for what do you what are you hoping to gain when you're when you're shooting um some sort of a documentary and over the years i've been lucky enough to do um documentary films like under arctic sky dude this is it this is it right here if they get a wave um owner our newest film that's coming out right now um a whole bunch of other smaller bigger projects for sony and and kind of everything in between and really the dream scenario here is for me is always to figure out the goal in mind what what is the main singular takeaway that you're hoping that the viewer watches right in the beginning of my career when i was working on surf films we were going to places like kumchatka we were going to places like remote alaska the aleutian islands where we worked on the cradle of storms film we were going to the pharaohs we made a film from there russia we made a film from there um the the goal was always really singular it was to go to these places tell a story about the the search the hunt the exploration for new and interesting surf right now that's great and i'm telling you this because in the in the early days in the beginning it was really a lot about kind of letting the landscape letting sort of this location sort of speak for you i didn't pay enough attention to the concept that you know although these places are beautiful and stunning and yeah the waves are great it's really the people it's really the um the characters that you need people to fall in love with so as i've taken this journey as a filmmaker and as a photographer i've tried to really realize and learn one of the most important lessons and that's really what i'm hoping to kind of get through to you today is a couple of these really key things that i've learned along the way and if you keep these key things in the forefront of your thoughts then you will never fail right and one of the biggest things is that character development is everything and when i say that what i mean is that you not only need to have a strong character or have a strong sort of guide through your film but you need people to care about them and in order for people to care about them one of the most important things you can do is you can build up that character this doesn't mean that you need to make them perfect this doesn't mean you need to make them in some way infallible or without mistake in fact those types of human traits looking for those human traits the way in which we relate to those people is what makes them really win our hearts and for me starting to learn and understand the importance of that when making films has changed everything i mean that is truly the most significant thing that i have i have ever found to be a guiding light within documentary filmmaking now let's stop there for a second and back up what is documentary filmmaking right typically you think a documentary is kind of like okay well i'm going to be going around and filming somebody in real life in real time you know running around with a camera and you're like in their face you're getting every little moment well yes that's a documentary but there's also a documentary in the sense that you might be going back and retelling a story that happened right typically documentary filmmaking is rooted in real life experiences right it's not like a fictional story that was created like a like a motion picture film right so a documentary film will oftentimes you know it's a very loose term nowadays but it might have pieces of the truth that have been then kind of helped to be created that's more of the hollywood version um a lot of times it's taking sort of historical or anecdotal footage or articles or letters or photographs and you're tying this in ultimately you're telling a real story right and one of the things that i've learned because in the beginning of my career it was all about going there you're shooting on the trip and whatever you walk away with whatever you come home with that's all you have okay that's it you have nothing more right you shot the trip you shot every little waking moment you could but the reality is you can't go back and recreate me this stuff and and i think what i realized over the years is that yes that's important but sometimes in order to build up and explore some of these scenes deeper you might need to go back through there and one of my very first experiences in making a successful documentary film was under an arctic sky it's a film that is about a group of surfers who goes to iceland and endures the biggest storm in 25 years and after that they kind of form this i guess unbreakable bond that forces them into the situation where they're going out and they're surfing at this remote beach under the northern lights we have that experience that like that was something that happened and we all witnessed it now that's the story line now to do that trip and to do that story we made two trips we went there we had the experience as i laid it out to you the storm the boat the the northern lights the cabin the whole thing but we walked away from that trip with about 10 minutes of footage now why because we didn't go there with the intent of making a documentary film we went there with her the intent of making a fun little surf film for the client who was surfer magazine but we walked away with this incredible story and i knew in my heart of hearts in that moment that i needed to do something greater to help tell this story that i needed to expand and really branch out further to help tell this story in this narrative so what did i do well i went out i got some funding and i went back and what we did when we went back was we we recreated as much as we could to kind of build up more of that footage we wanted this to be in the 40 minute length scenario so we shot time lapses we shot landscapes we shot a lot of the b-roll to fill in some of these things these scenes and then we also shot interviews and we recreated some stuff of what we could we recreated some storm scenes because we didn't shoot enough in that moment we shot maybe 10-15 seconds total when it actually happened so we we tried to go out there and without changing the story or without altering the story we tried to create more content that we could to really build up this thing now through that experience i really learned something critical and i hope you can apply this to your documentary filmmaking techniques protocols and or or hopes and goals there and that being said it was so important especially when we got into the edit day when we sat there in the edit bay and we're like okay here's all the footage we have the first trip the second trip we realized in that moment wow there's a lot of characters here there's a lot of people involved in this project how do we tell each of their stories and that's really what became the greatest challenge so to say is like how are you going to make people care about each one of these people well that's a good question i want to relate this to a story that maybe you have heard it's about a boy and a shire with a ring and his job is to go and put the ring into the fire to save the whole world right the lord of the rings film right well this is one of the greatest classic examples of filmmaking and how sort of the story the antagonist protagonist theory comes to life what i mean is that there is a singular main character frodo but what you notice is that all the other characters are equally as important but their role their job is really to support the main character so in this film under arctic sky i was thinking a lot about that scenario it's not important necessarily for there to be a bunch of main characters with a bunch of objectives again this is getting back to that first thing i said what's the thesis what's the goal what's the conversation here well what we realized on an arctic sky was what we needed to lay out the characters not based upon their accolades or how great they are something what did they have on the line what did they put out there and we kind of realized that justin quintal who was one of the surfers he was the person who had the most riding on this he was the person who later on he ended up getting the cover of surfer magazine he ended up getting sponsored by his first sponsor it changed his life and so how do we parlay this experience to being really about him it's from his perspective now this is one of the the most beautiful things about documentary filmmaking is if you're going to go out there and make a documentary about hitler and world war ii and the nazis well the perspective might not be interesting to tell it from hitler's perspective might be interesting to tell it from a family members or somebody else the goal here what i'm saying is that you take these subjects who seem kind of like the obvious main character and then you're going to want to kind of tell a different side to that story so what the goal was with our film was i came in as sort of another sub character and i was hoping to narrate this experience kind of through my lens but it's about justin quintal and really and it's about his kind of rise to i guess surf stardom you you could call it right all the other characters i basically just took two red eyes to get here it was pretty cold coming from hawaii to here so justin was in florida and i was in new jersey and there's a blizzard just as important just as interesting but their role was not shared as much their their kind of trials were not shared as much as this one person's i know this is the fourth night we've been out here trying to get something a little frustrated now that can be a daunting task because ultimately how do you kind of get to the fact that you're going to ultimately you know hone in on this one person well it takes some digging right and i think that's what we had to do in the edit base we had to go back look through the footage organize the footage okay here's everything we have on each character we listed out like a long list of sticky notes what's each person's um what's each person's sort of commitment what's each person what is each person giving up to be here and then we kind of built this story arc right and this is really the most important thing i've found is if you're making a film that's in the two to three minute range um or five minute range short real short short it's not really important to have sort of the heroes journey so to say or the struggle or the trial but if you are making a film that's 20 minutes in length 30 minutes in length 40 minutes length you really do have to have a struggle you really do have to have a trial why because it's not interesting otherwise because people want to see us overcome something people want to see even if you're shooting a nature documentary you want to see the seal you know escaping the shark or whatever that is it's important to understand that this idea of heroics whatever the whatever the case somebody overcoming something somebody achieving something somebody learning something new this is really the backbone of what makes a good documentary interesting and obviously we see these examples over and over again in history which is what makes history such a great subject for documentaries now i think one of the key components when you're actually diving into the filmmaking process is thinking about how do you let these moments really ring true and i remember very very specifically having a conversation with jimmy chin actually and he he mentioned something to me that it really always stuck with me he said he's like you know if you have the opportunity for the viewer to just sit with the silence don't try and you know overcrowd a scene with a ton of music or a ton of audio or a ton of narration if there's a scene that feels heavy that feels kind of daunting that feels whatever that feels like there might be some emotion there you let that scene just play out and you allow the viewer to really be there to really sit with it why because that's where the viewer forms that connection that's where the viewer forms that opinion that's where the viewer feels in some way like they can relate and i think that's a key and really critical part of of what it takes and what it means to make a successful documentary film because you're hoping that you're not adding all these theatrics and adding all these moments that they would take away from the true raw real emotion now i think one of the the key components here is that if you're out there everybody who might be watching this and you're thinking i've got a documentary idea in mind awesome let's talk about that let's break that down um what does that look like well again the best way that i can describe it and is through my own experience so i'm going to take you through a newer project that that is something that i got funded filmed and now it's touring and festivals and by the time you watch this it might even actually be out for public viewing purposes it's a film called under now i've i've taken this kind of you know rise from making surf films to making more in-depth surf films to doing a lot of commercial work to working on a lot of friends projects coming on as a director co-director producer and and what have you right i've worn a lot of different hats over the years and i've been lucky enough to make a whole number of projects over the last 10 years this project for me this newest one is my most personal intimate favorite project i've ever worked on why because what happens is through the process of making films you you start to realize something really important and this specifically boils down to the documentary idea is that you are always going to be more invested in a film that you feel emotionally connected to if you have no emotional connection to that film to that project the chances of you being willing to stay up late wake up in the middle of the night go shoot those northern lights when it's freezing cold stay for that interview forever are going to be slim to none why because if somebody's coming to you saying hey there's a project i really care about and i want you to really care about it it's really hard to find that same emotion find that same connection to it now that being said what does that mean well ultimately you need to be kind of letting these stories be born out of your own experience right what are you passionate about do you play football do you play sports are you all about um advocating for social justice movements what is what is your passion burning inside you and what stories do you want to tell find that story pull upon that thread and that's where you'll find the story's most meaningful that's where you'll find the stories that you won't give up on because let me tell you one thing making a documentary of any sort requires some element of never giving up my latest film is called owner growing up i spent every free moment outdoors [Music] and it's the story of a good friend of mine ellie thor and his daughter who basically he has been raising as a single parent and struggling with the trials and tribulations of pursuing what you love and living a life that's close to nature with basically the pressures of society and early in ellie's life he endured a massive um near-death experience that that almost killed him and his perspective has changed incredibly from that and so that's the premise of the story that's the elevator pitch right now why is this story important well i was able to go and make a story on my friend somebody i care about it's a story that i relate to because i am a parent and i i struggle with these same thoughts it was a story about his his love for photography and surfing things that i care about and he has this beautiful daughter that he's basically giving an incredible life to and she has a passion for being in the water and surfing too so all of these things i relate to and resonate with me so again that's kind of i guess a good recipe a good beginning for how you can start to think about a documentary film and how it might be able to relate to you now ellie and this film when we went into it our goal was everything is hearsay this is like colloquial it's a story right somebody's telling you about their experience and you're trying to bring it to life so how do we do that well first case scenario usually is always to do an interview even if it's a close friend of yours even if you know the story get that interview recorded right this is the actual steps we took before we film before anything we did an interview i hired a good friend of mine matt mcdonald a writer to interview ellie and what he did is he interviewed him asked him about his whole story about his life everything and he extracted these little tidbits so that we could put on this whiteboard here's all the themes here's the struggles here's what he loves you know this that and then we we started to extract the story that way and then we started to write out a mood board like okay which scenes we need to shoot well we need to shoot the kayak scene and the waterfall scene and the scene um kind of of him drowning or where it happened um we need to show ellie living in a tiny a-frame cabin and the the trials that come with that the space restrictions we need to show kind of um his relationship with his daughter and and sort of being a single parent and trouble the struggles there and also the joy they share together so this was the whole package right how that was going to come together we had no idea but that's okay because we already broke this down and we knew that we'd have enough parts to support the whole and and again this is a challenging situation because we weren't going out and making a documentary about a uh you know a cliff jumper jumping the biggest cliff in the world and you're shooting all like the stressful moments in between it's more like reality tv this is like a recreation of something that happened and so you're trying to do that with as much tact and as much care and concern as possible and so this is really where for me this is where the creativity comes in because again there's these kind of two types of documentary filmmaking one being when you're going out you're shooting everything in the moment as it's happening and you're unloading this piece by piece and you're basically just kind of trying to document a person or a subject or a team or a band or whatever in every moment or you're taking something that's been told to you a story and you're formulating that visually right now that can be a little more challenging and this is why you extract the story you build out the scenes beforehand because you're gonna go there right at that point obviously we got funding we source funding from sony and billabong to help underwrite the trip that could be a whole another class a whole other lesson and i'm sorry that i'm not sharing that today but um but that was an important part of it i put together a deck that laid out the storyline how it would how it would appeal to those brands what the roi was going to be what the outreach was going to be and what they could expect from it so with bringing these brands on board the point there really is to make sure they understand and explore and know full well the return on investment the roi right what they're going to get out of it and what you can hope to kind of provide for them now the beauty here is that with this project again the goal was simple it was to go there it was to kind of create enough assets to help tell the story visually and hopefully beautifully so that whoever watches it feels in some way like they're there now let's stop right there and think about something ellie almost died in a kayak accident so does that mean that we're going to go recreate that kayak accident no are we going to try and do something cheesy and show somebody drowning no what we're going to do is we're going to take creative liberties and we're going to shoot a scene that feels kind of esoteric and moody and and has a lot of jump cuts with water and feelings or or visions that you might see firsthand if you were underwater if you were suffocating if you were scared for your life behind a waterfall that's just something that takes time and effort and energy and it takes going out and recreating some of these moments in the most natural um way you can we jumped behind these waterfalls we showed rushing water we shot downs water swirled through rivers we shot these longer emotional shots we we cut it up really fast and made your heart beat so again we never had to show a singular moment of ellie actually being under the water with a kayak or something like that we had to try and recreate this in the most honest and real way possible by showing you hopefully scenes that related to the emotion of it right now um this project came out really well there's actually an amazing bts cut that you'll be able to see soon and it really it really helps to illustrate the vision of kind of what we were going for i would say that with this project um one of the the dreams and scenarios here with a lot of documentaries is why why do you do them right this is kind of the backbone here you're not usually doing them to make money i mean unless you're at the upper echelons of your career but for me i'm not doing it to make money and i guess this is a subject i should have addressed in the beginning but the reality is everything you do whether it's working on a book working on a film working on whatever if this is a personal project or if this is something you're doing for sort of personal value it's best to work backwards and what i mean by that is identify and figure out what your goals are going into it with all the films that i've done they've been a supplement piece or or a part of a project that supports the greater parts of the whole right so with this film this documentary film owner that we made the goal here was to basically create something that can go to festivals and that could be spread around the world get a lot of views right which hopefully again can be meaningful it can fulfill i think a lot of people watching it it can spread a lot of joy but also from a business perspective it can then put my name in the ringer for bigger and greater projects by being the director on this piece and by being one of the dps in this piece as well as a producer et cetera it allows me to kind of check one more notch in my chain so that i have the ability to kind of put my hat forward for bigger longer form projects right or when i go to a brand personally and i say hey i've got this idea they can look back at my track record like okay well the last two films you did last three films you last were on itunes and netflix and yeti like they know that there's a lot of success there so that's kind of one of the key com key components here um i want to talk a bit with you guys and i wish that we were in person because i love the idea of asking questions and having this integration here um i want to talk a bit about the experience of kind of like what it's like to shoot on these projects right how do you kind of go about that well let me just say here i mentioned this in the beginning but when it comes to documentary filmmaking man if you even just have your phone right this is a great tool to use i mean that the reality is you don't need some massive huge billion dollar camera system a lot of what i've shot my films on have been tiny small sony alpha mirrorless cameras like what i'm shooting this on now right the goal there is that the less space you create between you and your subject the more intimate it's going to be and what i mean by that is that i mean that in the the truest most realistic of ways there is going to be actual closer distance so if you're trying to get these intimate moments and you're trying to get moments that don't throw people off that don't throw people out of their their world i mean keep in mind i'm talking about whatever you're shooting if you're shooting behind the scenes documentary of metallica's epic 2020 tour the the bigger camera gear the more flashes and lights and strobes and this and that the less real and raw it's going to feel and the point of a good documentary should be a rawness a textural quality that feels like wow i'm there and that can be achieved a lot of times by a small camera whether that's a phone whether that's a dslr whether it's a tiny rx100 or whatever don't don't ever try to tell yourself that the the quality of the camera is what dictates a great project or a great narrative or or a great creative piece in general so often it's really more about your access as a filmmaker and your access as a filmmaker is dependent usually upon two things one of them the size of your crew the size of your camera second thing being how well you know that person now let's address both those so documentary film crews are kind of known as these small sleek uh you know get in get out everybody wears a lot of hats when we went to shoot a lot of these films it was usually myself and two other filmmakers or two two dps a drone pilot and then maybe a dp i'm directing but i'm also picking up a camera i'm also shooting time lapses i'm also flying drone you're wearing a lot of hats because you don't want to have a crew of 10 people why it's hard to mobilize it's hard to move around it's hard to grab stuff you're toting around all this luggage and crap and what happens is when those great moments happen it's nearly impossible to pull out a camera and actually shoot it now what do i mean by that well let's think about this you are trying to shoot this incredibly intimate experience of somebody doing something in a documentary film and that one tiny moment where you know you're doing a camera swap or a lens swap or your memory card runs out that moment's happening and you're not there that's a bummer right and so i think that that kind of coincides with the intimacy that you have with your subject and the intimacy you have with your subject comes back to that original idea of how close are you how how much did you pull on that threat are you telling a story about somebody you know something about a story about something you are connected to are you telling a story about somebody that's alive right all those things are going to be greatly increased by your relationship with that subject it really dawned on me at a certain point you know within the last you know almost 10 years that i've known him that like this is a story i had to tell this is one that was so near and dear to me was so precious to me was so important that like if i didn't do it i didn't think anybody else could and so i i called upon some of my closest friends ben weiland jeff taylor and an amazing crew of people to help on this and i said you know i think it's time i think we have to go for it this is why oftentimes the greatest documentaries are shot by people who are in some way connected or in some way feel close to that subject or that subject matter and that's really where i want your minds to be i want you to think about that concept of like what are the stories i want to tell okay write that list and then what are the stories i want to tell that i i know well or i've put the time into or i know this person right and that's really a great place to start i mean to be honest this is one of the most heroic things and when you are shooting these things one of the the kind of tips and tricks that i would say when it comes to a great documentary is there are a lot of ways to get around the idea of oh man i don't have that footage oh crap we i missed that moment you can use animation um actual animation right that's a cool way of storytelling there are no rules no rules in documentary filmmaking you do what you want you can do anything you want that's the beauty of it right use animation i love to use photo manipulation or photo animation a lot of my films you'll see images come to life by extraction and detail that really is we go to a 3d animator and they work on that um there are great other forms of kind of tools we've used we've recorded phone calls that we've recreated with me and like a captain of a tr of a boat to kind of make it feel like this wasn't a something that happened months months prior right um so these are these are interesting tactics and tips and tricks but one of the greatest things i would say is that this is just something that really takes time to understand is that if you're shooting this subject and you're shooting this person right and they're having this experience it's oftentimes that old adage where you know you're looking at the sunset and it's beautiful and it's warm and it's tonally gorgeous and everything but that's not the moment the moment is when you turn the camera around and you shoot your subject and it's all about their emotion and their face and the glow that's on them and making sure not to forget those moments because those are the ones we've all seen the sunset we all know how beautiful that looks but the expression of on someone's face like the emotion they're going to that's what you connect with and that's really really what you're looking for when it comes to making a documentary film so as i've gone through this workshop you guys i've really tried to touch on as you can tell kind of like the overarching themes and qualities of what it's like to work on a documentary film i mean i could spend days weeks months talking to you about audio camera systems you know like what type of frame rate do you want to shoot in yada yada i don't want to weigh you down with that why because in the end it's not important what's important is being passionate about a project and being willing to tell the story and then learning and figuring out the style in which you want to do it and now what i want you to think about as i kind of wrap up here is how do you push go on this project how do you how do you like start right well again you think about those concepts that are important to you that are significant to you what is that story you've always wanted to tell do you have an in with that person with that place is this a historical story where you're going to have to talk to you know are you going to make a film about ansel adams right let's use this for an example well he's passed on but there's a lot of footage i'd start looking into who owns the rights to that footage who can i use to collect that who do i have to reach out to the family to get permission do i have to reach out to the trust who do i have to talk to to get access to that stuff and then what's the story that's been that's not been told that i want to tell what's the angle is it the story of ansel adams from um one of his relatives is the story of ansel adams from the perspective of yosemite what's the way to make it interesting great great documentary that i think anybody here could appreciate is fellow sony artisan ben moon's denali it's about a story of him and his dog and the relationship they had when he had cancer and then his dog got cancer it's only eight minutes it'll make you cry i promise it's amazing and yeah in the truest sense it actually is a documentary it's obviously a recreation of a lot of moments and scenes but yes this is it now with that project what made it so interesting again perspective it's from the dog's perspective how cool is that right giving us this story of connection and opportunity to to really take the creativity to the 18th level from the dog's perspective why is that cool well let's think about this if the story's coming from me from my words from my lips i can only say so much i can only share so much but if a story is coming from a baby a dog an inanimate object a place you can say whatever you want you can use you know songs and lyrics and rhymes and and words that don't even make sense it gives you the ultimate freedom so think about the story think about the perspective of the story who's it being told from and then once you do that i mean ultimately it's really start about extracting those details getting those details down what do you know what do you not know where do you shoot this where does it take place and then you think about funding okay you have to put in the time before you think about the funding you have to put in the time to create sort of this boilerplate storyline and how you want to get it out there and in that case you'd create a deck or you'd create some sort of a pdf or adobe spark or an indesign document and you'd share it with maybe some brands who might want to get on board with it or if you're making a documentary for netflix for an amazon you want to share that with a network hey got this great documentary piece it's about a cult that lived in oregon i don't know and then you would pitch them on that right and you're like guess what no it's not a film it's a series okay and ultimately this needs to be compelling right how does something become compelling well there needs to be the hero's journey and even if there are no heroes who who's suffering through this who's learning who's growing who is fooled who is mistaken who was taken advantage of those are all the things you need to consider right and ultimately as a filmmaker your goal should be when it's month number 10 and i'm so burnt out or i'm stuck in my tent it's freezing outside what's the project that's gonna make me willing to get out of that place and go shoot what's the thing that's gonna make me be willing to push record that's what i want you to think about and ultimately i think that is the perfect recipe for making an excellent documentary and what i would say is start small all of my greatest projects i think have in many ways started with a small simple idea and some of those films have been two to three minutes and some of them have been an hour or more and i would say that the the smaller you can start and the closer you can start working with great creatives the better collaboration is the key to any successful documentary right working with a dp a producer a assistant photographer an ac yada yada yada that will help you get the job done right you need people you can trust people you can work with in close quarters because as many of you know making documentaries usually aren't funded well right you're out there you might be kind of working out of a sprinter van camping whatnot but it doesn't mean the quality of the film or the footage can suffer so i would i would look forward to building that team building that team that can help you bring this vision to life and really starting to understand what that vision is and how you are going to make it happen folks thank you guys so much for joining me on this documentary filmmaking short course there's so much more i want to go into and dive into and i wish we were in person so i can answer all those questions but either way i know this will give you some tips and tricks for how you can get started thanks you guys for joining sony cando online we're here in my gallery right now in pismo beach and i hope to see you all in person and join me for my other course at sony cando cheers [Music] you

Channel: Sony I Alpha Universe

Views: 140,545

Keywords: documentary filmmaking, documentary filmmaking techniques, documentary filmmaking for beginners, documentary filmmaking tips, documentary filmmaking masterclass, how to shoot a documentary, emotional storytelling, documentary storytelling, storytelling, chris burkard, sony, sony alpha, sony alpha universe, sony kando, kando everywhere

Id: 3TCNgF_0Apk

Length: 36min 8sec (2168 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 01 2020