Documentaries are generally considered more journalistic works than cinematographic works. The artistic content of documentaries is generally not affected. However, nothing says that documentaries cannot be good cinematographic work; nothing prevents a documentary from being a good way to tell good stories.
The director of the documentary “Purgatorio”, Rodrigo Reyes, has three important tips to share that we will see next. For those who don’t know Purgatory? is a documentary about the lives of those who live on the border between the United States and Mexico. Trade magazine, Variety, called the film “a stunningly beautiful ode to the underworld surrounding the US-Mexico border. “
- Documentaries can have broader access to the characters they describe and can interact more with both sides.
- The viewers and those on screen.
- The seventh art has many facets and documentaries can be one of the most exciting.
- A documentary can have several aspects.
- And present several correlated stories.
- To enjoy all that documentaries can offer.
- Let’s see what tips Rodrigo Rodrigoes has chosen to help us.
What follows is only a small part of the entire repertoire and advice you need to give us on how to make more film documentaries. Let’s start with some very important advice on filming rules.
Having strict filming rules
Usually, filmmakers trying to dably make documentaries do not have a well-defined list of rules as in a fictional shoot. Due to the circumstances, many documentary filmmakers choose not to have rules. It may be good because it gives you more freedom, but it can be as bad as opening a Pandora’s box. According to Rodrigo Reyes’ own comment:
“We made the rules and that helped me a lot. The absence of limitation is the worst enemy, isn’t it?At least according to Orson Welles? I decided what I was looking for in terms of aesthetics for filming and I didn’t let myself out of this format. It helped a lot to give a stylistic structure to the film, all the scenes had the same format and did it help a lot ?.
Write your characters before looking for them
Making documentaries has always seemed to be more the spontaneity of the moment than something written and sketched in fiction cinema, but it doesn’t always have to be that way, and this documentary has shown it, you’ll still need a lot of improvisation. to be able to make a documentary, but if you have something written, even in a rudimentary way, you will have more creative freedom to work, in the words of Rodrigo Reyes:
“Documentary makers are not supposed to use a script anymore, they have to go out and find a story. I did the opposite. I wrote everything. I knew it would take four weeks, and I know it would take four weeks to achieve certain archetypes. These archetypes are two-dimensional on paper, but once there, you leave room to breathe so they can become a full character.
Don’t just look for the facts
As mentioned above, many documentaries tend to be good news where you need to present facts and take a political or social position, you don’t have to be just a traveling newspaper page, full of facts and versions of facts. history without lens or perspective imbued in your mind, Rodrigo Reyes has this to say on this subject:
“Right now, the most interesting films that are being made that advance in the film recipe are documentaries?are films with many different views on our reality. The most interesting are those that are motivated by ideas. “We want to explore this, have this conversation, enter this world. “Why pursue the facts?