Basic Guide to Make a Documentary Film

This guide is an attempt to think and order the different phases of the creation of a Documentary film and that to reach it we will first carry out the research process. Despite being a bit extensive, I highly recommend that it be read by anyone who wants to make a documentary. At the end of the text, I'll even leave a link with tips for the same production, nothing more than more practical advice.

The search and the discovery of an idea are the cause and the starting point to start a documentary film.

And that to get to it we will first carry out the research process. Before starting a documentary film if one does documentary filmmaking courses in India then it will be a great idea.

The search and the discovery of an idea are the cause and the starting point to start a documentary film. When do we realize that we have a good idea? It will be when it invites us to the potential development of a story; a good idea will show us characters, places, words, images. If this is only a statement or a simple thematic enumeration it will be static, lifeless, without movement and it will be in vain to work on it.

Scenarios and Characters

This phase begins when the filmmaker knows a lot of the characters and places, when he visits the site of events for the first time and can breathe, observe, walk inside the story he wants to narrate. Everything changes here Reality is responsible for confirming the previously written work or overcoming it, denying it and/or transforming it. The theoretical premises take second place when they appear, for the first time, the real characters of flesh and blood. A fairly quick process begins to rearrange situations, characters, scenarios and other unforeseen elements. Sometimes the previously conceived work becomes a thing quite different from what we thought and we are building the film by doing as if they were pieces of assemblies. Film making institute in Delhi helps to know how to select the best character for the film.

Choose the characters

  Ø  The choice of characters in the documentary film with help of Best documentary making courses is a complex and wonderful process; it is an exploration and sometimes a journey inside the protagonists. It is perhaps the most important task of the production team and the added seasoning will be discovering scenarios that rise as narrative characters so that they enjoy a great presence in the audiovisual story. It should not be the cumulative search of some people linked to the subject but a thorough search and a choice where we will build the characters cinematographically. Thus the character or the main characters will be the fundamental tool to motorize the central idea; they will sustain the hypothesis and defend it at times until the end. They will be the spokesmen for the script, the guiding thread of the story and the raw material of the documentary.

  Ø  A narrative decision in front of the characters will be given to provoke the crossing between the protagonists and the antagonists, that is, the search for people who come into conflict and contradict each other, always looking for counterpoint, so that the theme flows by itself. This decision, which is not the only one that we can narratively take, will make our escape from what we must always flee from the explanatory documentaries that have an omnipotent narrator that underestimates the viewer without letting the latter receive the information and reflect on what is watching and listening.