Ought to your model learn to create its personal mini documentary movies? Study why mini docs are highly effective, and the way Vidyard made one concerning the Bandit Tour.
On my method to Dreamforce, I hitchhiked 1,000 miles in a painted caravan full of individuals with jackets that learn “Bandit Tour.” The working joke was that anytime strangers within the cities we handed via requested if we have been a band, we stated sure and made up a spot we have been taking part in that evening.
There was a variety of laughing. However there was additionally a variety of holding again tears. As a part of the tour, we volunteered for nonprofits and did all the pieces from stuff backpacks filled with clothes for foster children to tear out clumps of invasive scrub grass from California’s Humboldt county seashores.
I can’t recall feeling so touched. Or so shaken to my core by acts of uncooked human kindness. Or so grateful that Vidyard’s CEO Michael Litt, Group Engagement Program Supervisor Laura Galbraith, and I have been requested to hitch the tour, and I (because the Video Manufacturing Supervisor) to make a documentary concerning the expertise.
This text is about how you can make documentary movies, nevertheless it’s additionally concerning the particular documentary I made concerning the Bandit Tour for Good and the way it got here collectively. It covers all the pieces from what gear to purchase (love me that DJI Osmo Pocket Gimbal) as to whether you have to be making a documentary in any respect. If it leaves you with one new concept, it’s that companies can create nice documentaries and use them to do good.
What’s a Mini-Doc?
A mini-documentary or “mini-doc” is a ten to 30-minute nonfiction video aiming to doc actuality for schooling. It’s shorter than feature-length but in addition for much longer than the standard two-minute advertising video on which the world appears to run. Mini docs are time-consuming to make and watch, however I believe they are often immensely worthwhile.
What separates documentary-style movies from most advertising movies is that they intention to teach, encourage, and rework for their very own sake. They join us as individuals. Whereas company documentaries might have tangential advantages, like permitting an organization’s message to piggyback on what’s in any other case pure leisure, they work finest once they’re based mostly on motives which might be pure.
The Bandit Tour Mini Documentary
Bandit Tour is a volunteer expertise organized by Traction on Demand and held yearly since 2013. On it, individuals from the corporate journey from Vancouver to San Francisco for Salesforce’s Dreamforce convention. Alongside the best way, they volunteer for nonprofits like Teen Feed and A Higher Life Basis. In that collective act of generosity, I noticed a narrative a couple of tradition, a staff, and a bunch of individuals present process a transformational expertise collectively. That’s the stuff nice model documentaries are produced from.
Michael, Laura, and I joined the bandits on a tour that took seven days. In that point, I captured six hours of footage (about 1.5 hours of interviews) which I minimize down into an 18-minute movie.
Watch the 18-minute documentary I made concerning the 2019 Bandit Tour for Good version.
Tips on how to Make a Documentary Movie Step-by-Step
In case you watch feature-length documentaries, you’ve in all probability seen a number of similarities. First, the movie or trailer often begins proper in the midst of the story or the motion after which jumps again to elucidate to viewers how they obtained there. (Type of like how I began this text—proper in the midst of the motion.) That out-of-order intro is your hook.
Extra broadly, the entire documentary usually follows a traditional storytelling arc of battle, rising motion, falling motion, and determination. You see this in in style documentaries like The Largest Little Farm, This Adjustments The whole lot, Shark Water, and even in Disney Nature’s documentaries the place, for the sake of connecting viewers to prairie canine, they provide rodents personalities and narrate their struggles.
1. Begin with Pre-Manufacturing and Planning
The planning section usually accounts for 50% of your time on a model documentary (or any form of doc). It’s that vital. The higher you put together right here, the smoother filming and modifying go. For example, if you understand precisely what photographs you’re on the lookout for, capturing them is fast and requires fewer edits.
Ask your self, “What’s the purpose in your model documentary?” Don’t simply shoot blindly—have a thesis stepping into. You don’t at all times know the complete story, particularly for those who’re overlaying an occasion that hasn’t occurred but, however you often have an inkling.
On the Bandit Tour, I used to be given little or no course. I used to be merely requested to seize it and make sense of it. However I did know we’d be touring, so I’d must seize secure footage of our autos on the street for B-roll. (That’s filler footage, extra on that later.) I additionally knew individuals could be having emotional experiences throughout their volunteer work, so I’d have to be there and able to interview.
Typically topics have requests or preferences that you need to respect. For example, the Traction on Demand staff kindly requested me to not seize nighttime footage when individuals have been unwinding and attending to know one another over beers. So, I solely filmed in the course of the day, and that had surprising advantages.
2. Collect Your Gear
The higher you understand your gear, the extra you’ll be able to focus within the second. Nothing’s worse than seeing the chance for an ideal shot however fumbling to get the digicam on the suitable setting.
You’ll need a light-weight package for those who’re on the street like we have been on the Bandit Tour. Cameras aren’t any good in the event that they’re large, cumbersome, and never with you when the motion’s taking place. On the tour, I introduced a DJI Osmo Pocket Gimbal, a tiny handheld digicam that I might maintain in my jacket pocket. I additionally had a better high quality Sony A7III which might shoot as much as 4k video. Collectively, that was sufficient.
Don’t suppose you want to exit and purchase a ton of pricy gear. On the degree of kit I carried, it’s onerous for individuals to inform the distinction between that footage and higher-quality footage. The exception right here, nevertheless, is sound high quality. Individuals will forgive grainy footage, however they won’t forgive uneven sound.
A Normal Documentary Movie Package:
- DJI Osmo Pocket Gimbal
- Sony A7III
- Lenses
- Lavalier microphone x 2
- Monopod
- Headphones
- SD playing cards
- Moveable onerous drive
- Additional batteries
3. Focus On the Story, Not the Gear
Excessive-quality footage is good. However you need to guarantee that the story you’re trying to inform is in place excess of you want to use flashy gear. So, once more, keep on with a light-weight gear package.
On the Bandit Tour, I used to be only one individual. In that state of affairs, you need to determine how you can make a documentary by your self, and you may’t be lugging a trunk in all places or have sufficient time to set it up and break it down.
Would I like to have a RED cinema digicam and seize these items in 8K? Undoubtedly. However anyone that’s labored with a RED cinema digicam is aware of how finicky they’re to arrange. It’s not likely life like for an on-the-fly shoot if you want a quantity assortment versus hoping to nail one good shot.
4. Acquire a Number of Pictures
Documentaries are a collage of various photographs. You don’t at all times know what you want, supplying you with (or your editor) many choices. When you have a powerful sense of how documentaries are constructed, you’ll know what photographs to search for and may have a psychological guidelines. For example, “Oh, I would like a powerful opener and a powerful nearer. The place are these items?”
On the Bandit Tour, I did have some backup. Sacha Vanhecke from Traction on Demand was filming their very own model documentary concerning the startups we’d helped. Although we have been engaged on totally different tasks, typically we’d ask one another to seize B-roll from no matter we have been doing.
Widespread Varieties of Documentary Pictures:
- Speaking Head: Somebody talking to the digicam.
- Vlog: A casual shot of a narrator—presumably the cameraman—talking right into a digicam that they both arrange or are holding.
- A-Roll: Your finest footage, usually of interviews, which narrate the central theme.
- B-Roll: Contextual footage for transitions or to chop to whereas persons are talking.
Plus, within the reducing room, you’ll be able to add:
- Animations: Watch The Largest Little Farm, and also you’ll see that they animated a lot of the introduction, in all probability as a result of they didn’t have all the suitable footage.
- Textual content Overlays: Titles and subtitles assist viewers orient themselves in order that they know the place and when the occasions are going down.
The place Ought to I Use B-Roll?
B-roll is fantastic footage to point out whereas persons are speaking. A speaking head section can get monotonous, so minimize to b-roll of the encircling space or, even higher, one thing associated to what they’re speaking about.
In the course of the Bandit Tour, I knew the street journey could be central to the theme, so I captured plenty of B-Roll of the automotive, the bus, and all of the branding components on the autos. We’d use walkie-talkies to get a few of it so I might inform the opposite autos in our convoy, “Decelerate the bus so I can drive previous you and get a cool shot.”
Whenever you watch a documentary interview, you see only a tiny fraction of all of the conversations. When you have a superb sense of the place your documentary goes and what elements you want to flesh out, you should use your inquiries to information individuals to debate stuff you wish to cowl. Listed below are some interviewing ideas I’ve picked up over time:
- Select settings which might be conducive to dialog
- Select interviewees who’re emotive
- Select good lighting
- Check your sound beforehand
- Go off-script—the query checklist is your security internet, however the gold comes from the in-between stuff
- Don’t look down at your notes an excessive amount of; you disconnect from the interviewee
- Interview individuals earlier than, throughout, and after occasions: Anticipate, describe, mirror
That is one in all my favourite interviews from the documentary. It was with Braden Ford, UX Design Lead from Traction on Demand, and I believed he had an fascinating story to inform. In the course of the tour, he spent his birthday giving again to a company that basically wanted the assistance, which was a really distinctive expertise for him.
5. Every Evening, Offload Your Footage and Arrange It
Don’t lose footage you labored onerous to gather. I offloaded my media playing cards every evening onto a laptop computer with a cloud storage backup. That method, a spilled drink couldn’t spoil all my work. As soon as it was on my pc, I organized all of the photographs in chronological order for every day.
If I’m being actually particular, I lay all of my footage per day on a video timeline in my video modifying software program. Then I comb via, trimming the fats and transferring the usable content material up one degree on the timeline. That method, it’s already been meticulously picked via once I convey the nice footage in from the subsequent section of my modifying (when all the times are spliced collectively).
I’ll usually have every day clustered by itself group on my grasp timeline, and if there are widespread components like “driving photographs,” I’ll cluster these collectively, so I do know the place to drag from.
6. Assemble the Story in Put up-Manufacturing
The magic occurs in post-production. Typically you go into it understanding you’ve obtained unbelievable footage and precisely the way you’ll assemble it. Different occasions, you haven’t any clue, and also you uncover these unbelievable, inspiring quotes that you simply’d completely missed since you have been so centered in your checklist of questions.
Put up-Manufacturing Steps
- Re-read your pre-production objectives. The individuals you deliberate to have interviews with—have been these the suitable topics? Did you get sufficient time with them?
- Conduct a primary edit. Undergo all of the clips daily and trim out the great things, leaving the remainder behind.
- Conduct a second edit. Choose the perfect clips from these remaining. Organize them into an fascinating story. By this stage, I had the Bandit Tour all the way down to 34 minutes of principally interviews.
- Conduct a 3rd edit. Add b-roll, which provides context to the story and helps cowl up leap cuts in your edit. That was my footage of sand dunes, of individuals laughing, and of vehicles passing. b-roll helps paint an image of what your audio system are speaking about.
- Add transitions and animated chapter titles. You see transitions all through the Bandit Tour doc. Transitions and titles give audiences a second to breathe and assist set up the setting. They’re additionally helpful for those who didn’t get a shot of a street signal like I forgot to do in Tigard & Coos Bay.
- Finish it on a philosophical be aware. If the purpose of your documentary is to teach, encourage, or rework, depart individuals on a be aware that prompts them to suppose. That could possibly be an interviewee asking a strong query or clips of everybody reflecting. Within the Bandit Tour documentary, I ended issues on a shot of the staff all standing on a giant seashore rock with the ocean breaking round them. (The footage, curiously, wasn’t mine. It got here from a DJI Mavic Drone offered by Greg Malpass, Founder, and CEO of Traction on Demand.)
- Construct a trailer. Trailers are brief, two-minute teaser movies for the mini-doc. Take your cues from Hollywood: Pack the trailer with probably the most fascinating stuff. Attempt to convey how thrilling the documentary is with out giving all of it away.
7. Share and Promote Your Documentary
You’ve spent a variety of time and power making a documentary, now it’s time to ship it off into the world so individuals can see it. There are a ton of various channels you should use to share your video, so take into consideration who could be eager about seeing it and the place they’d be almost certainly to return throughout it.
Model Documentary Examples
Now that you simply’re serious about them, you’ll begin to see model documentary examples in all places.
1. Jabil
The manufacturing companies firm Jabil gave its staff the editorial freedom to research the way forward for sustainable packaging and produce a documentary.
2. MailChimp
The e-mail software program agency MailChimp produced a sequence of mini-documentaries about small companies and the passionate individuals behind them.
3. Patagonia
The environmentally-conscious clothes firm Patagonia is a prolific creator of documentaries. Under is a Patagonia mini-documentary concerning the tales behind our clothes.
4. NETSCOUT
The cybersecurity firm NETSCOUT partnered with legendary documentarian Werner Herzog to inform the story of the web in “Lo and Behold.”
5. Volvo
Automobile maker Volvo filmed a documentary a couple of father and son staff who, regardless of having no farming expertise, obtained into agriculture and remodeled the trade.
6. Coors Gentle
Coors Gentle despatched photographer Ruben Wu and his journey to seize the blue ice partitions of Peru’s largest glacier in a play on its iconic mountain-shaped brand. (It’s a mini-mini documentary—simply 4 minutes lengthy. Of all of the documentary examples, that is my favourite.)
7. American Categorical
The bank card big American Categorical produced a mini-documentary concerning the 70 million Individuals with out entry to conventional banking companies.
My Suggestions for Making a Documentary-Type Video
1. Discover Your Total Narrative
I’m a mid-tier planner. Some individuals wish to script a documentary to a T. Others do zero planning and wing it. I’m within the center.
In case you’re capturing one thing just like the Bandit Tour, you’ll be able to’t script or storyboard it as a result of it hasn’t occurred but, and also you wish to doc actuality, not direct individuals.
By my questions and the individuals I select to interview, I’m always guiding them to reply what I think about are the massive questions the documentary considers. Within the case of the Bandit Tour, that was, “What does it imply for an organization to actually give again? And the way does that allow some fairly superb nonprofit organizations to be much more impactful?”
Traction on Demand sends 110 of its 800 staff to Dreamforce annually, and people on the tour dedicate a complete week to volunteering. How fascinating is that? How usually do you’ve gotten a possibility to unplug like that? I requested individuals to mirror on that theme, and we obtained plenty of nice stuff.
2. Earn Your Interviewees’ Belief
Vidyard CEO Michael Litt, Laura Galbraith, and I obtained dropped into the Bandit Tour with out understanding anybody. In that case, you’re ranging from zero belief.
Because it turned out, Traction on Demand’s request that I not movie at evening was actually useful as a result of it gave me this good alternative to get to know everybody off-camera. Then, they trusted me on digicam and have been much more open.
3. Keep Recent
Filming on a regular basis is exhausting. Take breaks, set down the digicam, and keep sharp in order that when fascinating issues occur, you discover and seize them.
4. Be Current
Typically in documentary work, you’re a part of the expertise you’re recording. There was a second once we have been all in a forested space close to the grass-covered dunes, and everyone was instructed to shut their eyes and take a breath. Nicely, if I did that, I’d miss capturing the shot of everybody doing it. My job is to convey that visually, so I needed to shoot as a substitute of breathe.
5. Obsess Over Your Audio High quality
Unhealthy audio bothers individuals lots worse than dangerous high quality video. I extremely advocate that for those who purchase no different piece of documentary gear, you spend money on a microphone that clips to your interviewee’s shirt. First rate ones might be as low-cost as $50 on Amazon.
Glorious audio comes from simply concerning the high of the speaker’s chest. Lavalier mics sit there and supply for nice resonance. In addition they scale back ambient noises from coming into the microphone, so that you keep away from popping P’s or hissing S’s, which may occur when the microphone is correct in entrance of the speaker’s face.
6. Don’t Neglect the Wrap-Up
As soon as the occasion you’re recording is over, maintain the digicam rolling. Get everybody’s tackle what occurred, their expertise, and their in-the-moment reflections. Are they thrilled? Upset? How does what simply occurred change them?
7. Keep in mind That Not The whole lot Has an ROI
Counsel one other format for those who’re being requested to create a documentary with an ROI. Within the case of the Bandit Tour, what’s the return on doing good? Or on making a documentary about doing good? There have been plenty of prices concerned, however I’ve to consider they have been far outweighed by the expertise of the staff doing good. However simply because you’ll be able to’t affix a greenback quantity to the result doesn’t imply it wasn’t worthwhile.
8. Shut Your Documentary on an Expansive Notice
The bus we used on the Bandit Tour, in addition to the airstream and the Trans Am, are all packed away in storage now. Dreamforce is over. The staff has returned to on a regular basis work. What are we left with? Simply the residual emotions of understanding that in our ultra-busy fashionable lives, a bunch of us took every week away to volunteer and actually sit with the concept that we are able to all make time to provide again if we wish to. And by giving again, we find out about all of the superb individuals doing unbelievable, heartfelt work each day and develop nearer to these round us.
I’m grateful to have been invited. I received’t overlook the Bandit Tour, and I hope others find out about it and select to not overlook both. I hope persons are impressed and signal as much as change into bandits. And if this documentary does something, I hope it spreads that message.
Company Documentary FAQ
We’ll shut out with among the most regularly requested questions associated to company or business-focused documentaries that I get requested.
Can I point out my product?
Attempt to keep away from it except it’s important to the story. For example, go forward if viewers received’t perceive what’s taking place with out you explaining it. However the focus needs to be on the topics and their experiences.
Is making a mini-doc costly?
It doesn’t must be. A lot of nice documentaries are made with gear that prices a whole bunch of {dollars} somewhat than 1000’s.
How ought to I promote my documentary?
Simply since you make it doesn’t imply individuals can discover it. Work along with your advertising staff to create a video touchdown web page and a promotional technique.
