5 Principles of Documentary Filmmaking to Use on Your Next Film

When people are first starting out with filming they tend to want to start off with film shorts.

Eventually they try to work their way into the big screen and be a big name movie maker.

What they tend to notice pretty quickly is that they need to have a good camera to do this with.

You will need to have a camera that is ready to go in any situation and during any weather condition, so it definitely starts with your equipment.

Key Takeaways:

  • A good documentary camera should also have solid stabilization for going handheld, good battery life, and easy-to-use controls for working fast and on-the-run.
  • You also don’t always need the newest, fanciest versions of many of these cameras. Instead, opt for reliability on long productions and find those with proven track records.
  • In narrative filmmaking, you want to use lighting to create emotions, express your characters, and direct the audience’s eye to particularities.

“When you think about narrative filmmaking, you usually think of working in highly-controlled environments. You also traditionally might think narrative lends itself to pristine image quality, huge amounts of light, and cinematic shallow focus compositions.”

Read more: https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/documentary-filmmaking-principles/

Lance Carr

Lance is a fully qualified video editing tragic and renowned techno-struggler. He has put in the hard yards working out all manner of things technical... so you don't have to!

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