DOCUMENTARY: Scripting and Storytelling

Scripting

- All programming is to a lesser or greater extent

- Factual programmes face particular ethical challenges when it comes to how far they should be scripted

Working title

- Sells your film to its audience - 'tease'

- Encapsulates what your film is about 

- Focuses you as a producer/directer on the real meaning of your film

Treatment

- Should be no more than a page, but anything up to 3 or 4 page, outlining HOW you intent to tell the story:

- Main characters/interviewees

- Locations

- Style/format

- Narrative structure 

- Whether using a presenter/reporter

- Transmission

- Target audience 

Documentary scripting can utilise any of the following:

- Sequences

- Interviews

- Reconstructions and dramatisations

- Actuality 

- Cutaways/GVs

- Sync

- Commentary

- Music

- Archive/stills

- Graphics

SHOW and TELL not just tell!

STAGE 1

Shooting script

- Written before shooting

- It forms the template for the finished film

- It should be informed by your research and allows you to effectively through your film's picture and sound content and basic structure

- Write to pictures

- Start by writing commentary and interweave with a summary of each person's sync e.g. Fred describes his life in London (RESEARCH inform your comm).

Scripting conventions

- COMM or V/O commentary 

- SEQ sequence

- ACT actuality

- C/A cutaway

- SYNC interview clips

- SFX sound effects

Developing the story

- Finding a narrative is essential

- A central thread of some kind which will hold your story together e.g. Day in the life/journey of exploration

- Central thread could involve the process of investigating the answer to a particular question or theory

- The films narrative is influenced by the character, location, period of time it is covering and the events presented

- BEWARE - time based narratives cannot be fractured - ensure you check the logic of the story and keep to it

Narrative - light and shade tension

- Consider how you will inject LIGHT AND SHADE - it is important to consider the overall experience of watching your film

- Tension - key element of storytelling - should be identified during the research process if poss. 

Commentary

- Facts/background

- Intros

- Helps audience form opinions 

- Help tease out tension and sum it up

Actuality driven - this is a term used to describe more observational type films who's structure and storytelling develops around what happens - the developing of events drives the story and provides the narrative e.g. 'One Born Every Minute'/'Cops With Cameras'. 

Characters are needed to make the subject less 'dry'. 

The script can then form the shot list and we can prepare for the edit!

RESEARCH: listen to and review in journal http://guru.bafta.org/structured-reality-corrupting- documentary-0 


'GANG GIRLS' BBC3

Presenter - Livvy
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04ly102

Scripting

PIX Archive CCTV	SYNC/COMM COMM: Intro Music	DURATION
GVs/urban land	COMM Stats – context
Title	COMM Stats
Actuality - driving	COMM Stats