How to Avoid A Comatose Documentary Opening

I recently had the opportunity to watch several documentary shorts produced by first-time filmmakers. Ninety percent of them had what I call comatose openings. They featured wide landscape shots with natural sound or music.  These scenes lasted upward of 20 or 30 seconds.  I zoned out.

However, one documentary opening in the bunch stood out. We see a night scene of a cargo ship and hear a narrator tell how one evening the ship silently slid into a harbor. Within the first minute, we hear from three people who tell us about awakening one morning to a stench that made them gag.

Immediately the filmmaker has staged a sense of mystery–and conflict–that engages not only our visual and auditory senses but also our sense of smell.

The opening of your film is so important to setting the stage for your audience’s viewing experience that you want to think carefully about your strategy.

However you decide to open your film, your primary goal is to hook your viewer. Whether you do that through mystery (“Man on Wire“) or conflict (“The Times of Harvey Milk“) or showing humorous engaging footage (“Spellbound” or “Sicko“), you need to invite the audience to keep watching.

For more strategies to keep your viewers glued to the scene, check out my new program, “The Ultimate Guide to Structuring Your Documentary. Go to https://newdocediting.com/land/ultimate_documentary_guide/.