Preface to the Fourth Edition
The phrase “documentary storytelling” has become commonplace since this book was first published in 2003. It describes the powerful merging of visual and literary narrative devices to enable media makers to reach and engage audiences with nonfiction content. But the need for “storytelling” is also sometimes used to justify nonfiction work that is overly sentimental or sensational, poorly researched, poorly crafted, or dishonest. That’s not what this book is about, and it’s not what the filmmakers featured in these pages do.
Instead, good documentary storytelling is an organic process through which a filmmaker approaches a subject, finds (as opposed to imposes) a story within that subject, and then uses a wealth of ...
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