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 #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 [...]
Lean Team Pro Tip #5: Evaluating Your Project’s Story-Part One
You have eliminated the fat from your team, stripped your camera package down to its essentials, and defined your film. Now you need to evaluate whether or not you can make your movie by adhering [...]
Lean Team Pro Tip #4: Curiosity or Passion?
In Lean Team Pro Tip #3, I wrote that "I always keep my goals as a lean team documentary filmmaker front and center when asking" what kind of film I want to make. "If I [...]
Docs in Review
Roll Red Roll
Roll Red Roll Director/ Nancy Schwartzman Watched on P.O.V. Rating 3/5 Schwartzman’s film examines the rape of a high school girl by two of her classmates, football players from the local Steubenville, Ohio team. [...]
The Edge of Democracy
The Edge of Democracy Director/ Petra Costa Watched on Amazon Rating 3.5/5 The title of this film is misleading. Brazil isn’t so much on the edge of democracy as the edge of totalitarianism, or [...]
No Data Plan
No Data Plan Director/ Miko Revereza Watched on MUBI Rating 1.5/5 As much as I admire the young Miko Revereza’s insistence on his unadorned technique, his one-man band filmmaking strategy, his no-frills three day [...]