Advice — advice

How do you make a documentary when you have no script? I was faced with this problem when I shot my first unscripted documentary for a class in documentary filmmaking. We had the assignment of making an 8–12 minute unscripted documentary. I started by visiting a friend's farm and shooting some footage. I quickly filled up 3 one-hour tapes. Wanting to make extra sure that I had enough footage, I shot more, and more, and more. I ended up with 30 hours of tape.Unfortunately I had a day job, and no time to log, much less edit all of it....

The interest in story is greater now than it has ever been, and - putting aside for a moment the movie business, television, book publishing, other major producers of story and their consumers - that interest now extends to every facet of our society. Heavily funded, major research projects now exist throughout government, the sciences, and the corporate world. And everywhere that interest is growing. Everyone - from stock brokers selling derivatives, lawyers trying to convince a jury, preachers trying to save our souls, and neophytes looking for employment - wants to be able to effectively tell their story -...

I've been doing exactly what you do, writing, for a long, long time. I've taught and critiqued screenwriters for almost that long, and, lo and behold, I discovered that all beginning writers make the same mistakes. So I wrote a book, a checklist of stuff to do to your script before you send it out. Here's an excerpt from Your Screenplay Sucks!, 100 Ways To Make It Great. I hope it proves helpful as all get out. *** One fine sunny Los Angeles afternoon, I was sitting in an assistant's office, waiting for the producer, and her door was closed....

Shamans were the first master storytellers. As the preeminent narrators of our age, screenwriters can share in this venerable heritage. And in so doing, you can help reverse movie making's current disastrous trend of taking us deeper and deeper into ever more shallow waters. Key to Shamans' authority is the sheer scope and acuity of their consciousness. Ritual healers, they are the ones sought out to restore harmony to their villages whenever needed. Their knowledge embraces not only the stories of individuals, but how these stories nest in the larger tales of the clans and the tribe and so on...

Imagine being able to learn about something as complex as the Art of Cinematography in only half an hour or a weekend. Isn't that what we all want today, in our new millennium, instant gratification world of the Internet, High Def, GoogleEarth and YouTube? As we look back to the very origins, to the dawn of the Cinema and Cinematography, it's always amazed me, that filmmakers base their entire lives and careers on some thing that is totally intangible, something that is only the projection of the illusion of movement onto a screen. The very first camera was invented by...