Writing the Short Documentary Script

1. Writing the Short Documentary Script Old Dominion University Film Studies Program

2. Some Tips from the Experts • Dylan Pank - I have these recommendations: • nail your narrative down as much as possible • Don't make the mistake of being clear and linear and boring, or being experimental and pretentious. • Use your time to explore something in detail; rather than skim over something big of which you'll barely scratch the surface. • Make sure your showing something new or unusual. • Every year at least one group of students want to make a film about a student who is also a DJ, as if that was something new and revolutionary that had never happened before. Old Dominion University Film Studies Program

3. Some Tips from the Experts • Pre-Interview! • If you're doing interviews, then pre-interview first, make notes and prepare questions. • Decide whether you want your questions to be heard in the soundtrack or not. • Write a script, even if you don't know all the subjects answers yet, imagine what they might be, research with pre-interviews would help you here. • The script should contain visual as well as verbal information Old Dominion University Film Studies Program

4. Some Tips from the Experts • Transcripts and Paper Edits • once you've done your interviews, do a transcript and then a paper edit. • Don’t waste your time (let alone your editor’s!) while you wallow in all that footage as you search for a story. • You can always improve on the paper edit, but it gives you the equivalent of a script to work on when you go into the edit room. • It seems like a drag (the transcript and paper edit) but it will save you loads of time. You can always improve upon the paper edit, but it gives you a map to work with. Old Dominion University Film Studies Program

5. Some Tips from the Experts • And finally, the above is, as the man said "more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules." • ...Except the bit about paper edits. • That's a rule. Old Dominion University Film Studies Program

6. Some Tips from the Experts • Richard Alvarez • I like to write out the script, including what I expect the interviewees to say. Then, when I am conducting the interviews, I ask questions that will result in the sorts of answers I am looking for. • Is this 'objective'? It is as objective as your advocacy is. You still have to be flexible enough to follow the answers wherever they might lead. Old Dominion University Film Studies Program

7. Some Tips from the Experts • The term "DOCUMENTARY" is a generic label for anything that's not 'narrative'. • Within that label are investigative reports, issue docs, advocacy docs, expose's, biographies, etc. etc. Each of these subsets has a specific point of view going in. Old Dominion University Film Studies Program

8. Some Tips from the Experts • Michael Plunkett • A beginning, a middle and an end is a noble starting point and it should be no different for any film regardless of size. Old Dominion University Film Studies Program

9. Some Tips from the Experts • Barry Hampe • From the very start of the scripting process, your research, planning, organization, and writing must be pointed toward answering the question, What will the audience see? • As writer of the script, you have to show to the client, the director, the camera operator, and the video editor—and through them the audience for the video—the images that make up the story you want to tell. • You do this with a well-visualized, coherent script which clearly communicates your intentions to the people who will read it. Old Dominion University Film Studies Program

10. Some Tips from the Experts • The more specifically you can describe your script in terms of concrete images, the better your chance of communicating through video. • Similarly, the more abstract or interpretive your idea is, the more important it becomes to build up evidence for the idea through concrete images. • To be recorded on video, an image has to be solid, tangible. • Images are described with concrete nouns and action verbs. • A concrete image can be understood in a single shot. Old Dominion University Film Studies Program

11. Some Tips from the Experts • Field research is so important to a scriptwriter. • You can't describe what you haven't seen. • And you can't use as visual evidence what you don't even know exists. • As a scriptwriter, you not only have to think in pictures, you have to learn to see like a camera. • When you are out scouting a scene, a setting, or a location, you have to learn to see what is actually there. • Otherwise your brain may instruct your eye to filter out whatever the brain considers unimportant. Old Dominion University Film Studies Program

12. The Documentary Script Format • The following slide is an example of the typical format used for documentary scripts. • It’s as easy as using the tables menu in MSWord. Old Dominion University Film Studies Program

13. The Three Column Format Old Dominion University Film Studies Program

14. Final Thoughts • Field Research Before You Write. • Write Before You Shoot. • Paper Edit Before You Edit. Old Dominion University Film Studies Program