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 #1: Learn and practice, learn and practice
I shot my first film, 30 Frames A Second, in 5 days. I then spent a few more days writing a script, and edited the doc in 7 days (I’d rented an edit suite and [...]
Lean Team Pro Tip #2: Eliminate Barriers, Get Close
It seems obvious, doesn’t it? Getting close in documentary filmmaking literally means putting your body and your camera as close to what you’re filming as possible. But it also means getting emotionally close to your [...]
Lean Team Pro Tip #3: Visualize Your Film
First you'll visualize the kind of film you want to make, and then you'll be tempted to define it. Where does it fit within the myriad of sub-genres of the documentary form? There are environmental [...]
Docs in Review
‘Till Madness Do Us Part
‘Til Madness Do Us Part Director/Wang Bing Watched on MUBI Rating 4.5/5 Chinese filmmaker Wang Bing’s singular gaze in 'Til Madness Do Us Part is fueled not only by his humanism by also by [...]
Hal
Hal Director/Amy Scott Watched on Amazon Prime Rating 3/5 Amy Scott’s Hal suffers from the same pro forma banalities as most other celebrity or “troubled artist” documentaries. It is both overly produced and under imagined. [...]
Of Fathers and Sons
Of Fathers and Sons Director: Talal Derki. Watched on: Kanopy. Rating: 2/5. After spending 99 minutes with the radical jihadists and their young male offspring in Talal Derki’s Of Fathers and Sons, it may be [...]