Directing the Documentary, 5th Edition

Chapter 22Values, Ethics, and Choices

The thought and planning you invest before shooting and the degree to which you anticipate problems all help ensure a trouble-free and creative shoot. Regularly review your working hypothesis in the light of your mission and its values, and amend it as necessary. Seasoned filmmakers seldom rely on spontaneous inspiration because once you start filming the pace and demand of the work are all-encompassing. Werner Herzog, questioned after a screening about “the intellectual challenge during shooting,” replied caustically that “filmmaking is athletic, not aesthetic.” Most filming, he told the startled audience, is so grueling that rarefied thought is all but impossible. François Truffaut makes a similar point ...