Chapter 9

 Planning a documentary begins with the documentary idea. And the documentary idea may begin with nothing more than a vague urge in some direction. A documentary idea is some sort of notion of what the film will be about. As the idea evolves, it will come to  determine, more and more, what will be shown on the screen in the final print of the film. A documentary idea especially one that involves filming human behavior or documenting a unique event is a plan.

Chapter 8

A lot happens in between coming up with an idea for a documentary and the day you wait in a darkened room while an audience views your finished project. There can be no documentary until footage has been recorded. Shooting film or recording videotape for your documentary can occur in quite limited time and space or may require months or years in many different locations. Preproduction is full of hopes and dreams. Production is all potential . But it is in postproduction that you have to deal with reality.

Chapter 7

A behavioral documentary is shot in an actual situation, not on a staged set, with actual people, not actors, doing whatever it is that they actually do, not acting out a script. The resulting documentary can have such immediacy that both documentarians and the audiences who view their work have often made the erroneous assumption that the documentary showed reality.