Ending Up in the Edit Room with Nada

One of the most heartbreaking scenarios I see over and over again in my work as a story consultant, and one that we ensure that our graduate students at UC Berkeley’s acclaimed documentary program avoid, is when filmmakers overshoot for their documentary, without knowing what the story is.

As Sheila Curran Bernard says in her excellent book Documentary Storytelling, “It’s possible to shoot everything and end up in the editing room with nothing.”

Are you one of these well-intentioned filmmakers who hope that the story will emerge during shooting? In other words, you have an idea what your film is about, and you passionately interview experts and other people on the topic, sensing that the structure will emerge through the interview and footage. Does that sound like you?

It certainly sounded like me several years ago, when as a relatively inexperienced filmmaker I spent two years shooting a film about relationships. I knew I wanted to make a film about falling in love, and after shooting 225 hours of footage, I still knew I wanted to make a film about falling in love, but I really wasn’t much closer to the story structure.

It took me six tedious months just to log the footage and another year to edit it.  That’s way to long to edit a feature documentary!

I’ve come a long ways since then, as I made becoming a specialist on documentary story structure my passion.

If you want to avoid logging hours upon hours of footage, the exorbitant expense of paying an editor to watch it all, and the prospect of still not having a film, you’ll want to get focused, at a minimum, on what genre and structural template will work best for your film.

My new program, The Ultimate Guide To Structuring Your Documentary helps you get clear on your film’s structure as soon as possible.

If you are in pre-production, The Ultimate Guide To Structuring Your Documentary will help you avoid costly mistakes by seeing which story structures are getting funded these days–and which of these makes the best vehicle for your vision.

If you are in production, you’ll swiftly figure out what you still need to shoot in terms of scenes, as well as what you need to ask in your key interviews give your story a strong structural backbone, one that will keep your viewers intrigued. Don’t forget, you can always go back and do a pick-up shoot armed with the key questions you need to tell a good story.

And if, my dear filmmaker, you are in post-production and still hunting for your structure (remember, I’ve been there), the Ultimate Guide to Structuring Your Documentary will save you time, money and that awful sinking, confused feeling. You’ll quickly weed out extraneous mountains of footage. You’ll hone in on the appropriate story structure and supporting footage to edit a riveting documentary.

I invite you to find out more about The Ultimate Guide to Structuring Your Documentary by going here:

https://newdocediting.com/land/ultimate_documentary_guide/

As a bonus, I’m giving you a great audio guide to “Crowdfunding,” the new trend in quickly raising money for your film.

Note that I’m only accepting 30 qualified filmmakers into this new program, and spots are going quickly.

I wish you all the best on your projects, and I look forward to helping you!