Speak to Multiple Worldviews

In Episode #2 of The Art of Documentary Storytelling, the BBC producer Vicki Leslie and I explore a timely question: how could we frame her rough cut to expand her audience? Specifically, how could we speak to viewers from multiple worldviews?

Not an easy task given her film’s divisive topic: the politics of nuclear power!

Episode #2 takeaways include:

• How to expand a film’s audience beyond the choir
• Three techniques to add climactic oomph to a film’s ending
• Combine story-driven and essay-driven structures
• Evolve a metaphor or motif throughout the film’s arc

When Leslie told me, “I got obsessed about different worldviews,” I knew she was on to something “post-polarization”. She wanted audiences to explore another map of meaning–without feeling so reactive that they stopped watching. 

Warning: it’s difficult for any documentary to single-handedly change someone’s worldview–though most of us filmmakers try!

In “The Deadly Denouement…Plus, Speak to Multiple Worldviews”, our story consultation explores an “integral” approach that speaks to the three major worldviews at play today: traditional, modern, and progressive.

As I told Leslie, “If a documentary can present multiple worldviews…it can do something astonishing: expand beyond its target audience.”