Considering the Creative Approach to my Documentary Project: Chapter Review

The chapter "Creative Approach" in Documentary storytelling: Creative nonfiction on screen (Bernard, 2016), discusses the creative choices that go into interpreting a subject for a documentary format. Bernard discusses how different filmmakers can take the same topic but create entirely different documentaries based on stylistic and narrative choices. She gives many considerations for creative approach, including how to represent a story that occurred before current technology was available, what elements of the story or interviewees are of interest to you, what/who will tell the story or drive the narrative, how formal your interviews will be and how they will be edited, how much third party footage is available and how you will use it, what effect you want your final product to create, and overall how the presence of the filmmaker will factor into the film. She also gives some tips or techniques for deciding on creative approach, including watching documentaries and taking notes about what parts you like and don’t like, and considering how to arrange the elements of the story you have and fill the gaps that the content may create. Throughout the chapter, Bernard provides examples of different approaches and how they manifested in the films. She discusses how narrative can be driven by the filmmaker themselves, or interviews, titlecards, narration or reenactments, third party footage or a combination of all of them. She also mentions the technique of creating an event for the purpose of observing it in the documentary, which helps visualize the themes the film discusses.

Overall, I found this chapter really helpful as a guide for conceptualizing my documentary. I think that it is important for me to shift my thinking from the theoretical side to the practical side at this point in the process, so that I can feel more prepared for the production process. I feel that I have reached immersion in my research, but not as much in the practice and process of documentary filmmaking that I will dive into very soon. I don’t think that I’ve made any real decisions on my creative approach yet, but I’m beginning to get a better understanding of what I do and don’t want my project to be. I definitely don’t want to make a stuffy, PBS-style documentary with interviews and overlaid images that lacks any real character or spirit. In fact, I think that my biggest priority with this project is to capture the spirit and tone of the horror hosting genre and what makes it so special. Bernard made some points that really resonated with me, about deciding what is interesting about your topic and going with it, and working within the world of the topic you are focusing on. I thought her point about creating events or situations for the documentary was really interesting, and I’d like to potentially incorporate it. I have been thinking it would be really cool to take the approach of learning how to become a horror host and then creating a character and ending with a hosted drive-in event. However, I’ve been a bit torn about whether I want to take that approach, because I think it would be hard to also incorporate the expository content alongside it. Maybe I could frame it as learning about horror hosting from the perspective of those involved in it. So I could hear from horror hosts and fans alike about the character of the genre, and incorporate it into creating the horror host-iest horror host of them all (very meta). I have overall been struggling with how to combine my theoretical framework with my actual project. I think that a good approach would be to create a characterization of the genre based on my research, and then figure out ways that I can incorporate those elements into the approach, style and techniques of my documentary overall. It’s felt at times that the conventions of documentary are at odds with capturing the horror hosting genre. But Bernard’s writing made me feel more optimistic that I can incorporate what I’ve learned without stating it outright. The decisions that I make when producing my documentary can still speak to my research, and I can publish my research in an academic context later on if I want to. I am realizing as I write this that I need to begin viewing my research as contributing to my documentary, and not my documentary as contributing to my research. Reading this chapter felt like it opened up a lot of possibilities for my project, and I am definitely realizing that I need to shift my priorities from creating something academically rigorous (I’ll do that in my paper anyways) to creating something that captures spirit and tone in an authentic way.

This past couple of weeks I have really had my hands full with production on a short film for another class, but I have continued to read sources about my topic and build my theoretical framework. I have also learned a lot of skills through the short film’s production process, and made a lot of connections that will serve me well for my master’s project too. It has helped me shift to a more production-focused mindset and I’m beginning to have a clearer picture of what my project will be, not just what the topic is.

References

Bernard, S. C. (2016). Creative Approach. In Documentary storytelling: Creative nonfiction on screen (4th ed., pp. 89–99). Focal Press.