Get Close: Lean Team Documentary Filmmaking
by Rustin Thompson
Now available from Oxford University Press
In this book, I encourage new and veteran filmmakers to make artistically rewarding documentaries at a fraction of the runaway costs of making these films today. The book helps you learn the skills to take creative risks, to find your authorial voice, and to spend less time making each film so you can make more films. This book emboldens you to pursue documentary filmmaking for the joy of it.
Debra Zimmerman, Executive Director, Women Make Movies
Lean Team Pro Tips
Lean Team Pro Tip #8: Evaluating Your Project’s B-Roll
As of this writing in December of 2019, I’m excited to see a new film I’ve only read about it (I don’t count seeing the trailer; I’ve stopped trusting that trailers will ever accurately convey [...]
Lean Team Pro Tip #7: Evaluating Your Project’s Story-Part Three
The next step in evaluating your project is to think about who (or what) your main character or characters will be. As I wrote in Lean Team Pro Tip #5, a character doesn’t always have [...]
Lean Team Pro Tip #6: Evaluating Your Project’s Story–Part Two
I ended Pro Tip #5 with a question from filmmaker and teacher Barry Hampe (Making Documentary Films and Videos), who asks if your film is posing a question or making an assertion: “A question leads [...]
Docs in Review
Island
Island Director/ Steven Eastwood Watched on MUBI Rating 4/5 Director Steven Eastwood spent one year filming in and near a hospice on the Isle of Wight, chronicling the deaths of four people facing terminal [...]
The Rest I Make Up
The Rest I Make Up Director/ Michelle Memran Watched on Kanopy Rating 2.5/5 I was disappointed to discover that the Wikipedia entry about Maria Irene Fornes contained far more detail about her art, life, [...]
Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins
Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins Director/ Janice Engel Watched in Theater Rating 2.5/5 After seeing this documentary with my wife and daughter in the arthouse Roxy Cinemas in Missoula, Montana, [...]