Documentaries-a-plenty
We are currently working on 2 long-term documentary projects at the same time, which is keeping us exceptionally busy. The first is called Life Goals and is the story of a former Premier League footballer who has a really interesting back-story and life journey. You can read more about it here. The second is called The Cancer Garden and what a story it will be, following a team of landscape gardeners preparing a competition garden for the world-famous Tatton Flower Show, themed around the journey of a cancer survivor. Ultimately, the garden will be dismantled and re-assembed at Clatterbridge Hospital and along the way we will meet various key people, all with their own cancer stories. More information will follow on this shortly.
A documentary is perhaps the ultimate story-telling platform and that’s why we love making them. What may at first appear to be a fairly simple storyline usually develops as the key players are identified and background research is carried out - everyone has their own tales and like a spider’s web, things begin to intertwine. Eventually, it’s up to the filmmaker to pull it all together, make sense of it all and also add some creativity to make it look, sound and feel dramatic and interesting.
For instance, in telling the life journey of Andy Turner (the footballer at the centre of Life Goals), we quickly decided that we didn’t want to make yet another football documentary. It had too much of a message underlying - that of how young sports people cope when their dreams are torn away. Some fall apart, others are more fortunate and have battled through the adversity, leading them to redefine what success means to them. Everyone we’ve interviewed has their own powerful message on the subject and as well as being a nostalgic trip back in time to the start of the Premier League, we want the film to be a warning, a resource, a rollercoaster or emotions and, ultimately, a message of hope.
Danielle, one of the key people in our film The Cancer Garden. Her own back-story could be a documentary all of its own!
What are the roles involved in putting together a documentary without a big team? Well, that would be all possible roles! The obvious ones are the filming and editing. That’s standard. With a documentary, there’s so much more involved in the process than there is when making a promo film.
FIrst, it’s having the idea - this could be brought to you by someone else or you may have the idea yourself and need to pitch it. We knew we wanted to make the Andy Turner Life Goals film and we took it to Andy himself to get him onboard.
Next, it’s uncovering the key people. Through a lot of background research, you delve into the main story and all of its possible tributaries. This can take weeks or even months and the more work you put in at this point, the richer your story is likely to be. A lot of time is spent online, emailing people, trying to get through management agencies and good, old-fashioned reading books! For Life Goals, we contacted the author of a research book and asked him for an interview. That quickly led to other contacts and 2 other important interviews that we would never have got without going down that route.
Location scouting for interviews is important. Sometimes, it’s enough to interview someone in their own home or workplace. Other times, you need a public location to set the scene. One of our interviews for The Cancer Garden will take place on a mountain top at sunset - this is not random and has a deeper meaning for the interviewee as well as creating a beautiful and dramatic backdrop.
Tony was interviewed for Life Goals and his narrow boat made the perfect backdrop!
Creative graphic work can add a lot to a film. Do we want chapter titles? Lower thirds to introduce the characters? Timelines? Are these just going to be plain text or can we be more creative with them without being gimmicky?
Music is a massive decision. What is the direction we’re taking with this - drama? fun? epic? touching? uplifting? The right music at the right time can set the tone and get your audience feeling what you want them to feel.
Finally, distribution is a beast that we haven’t got to grips with yet. That is something specialist that we cannot do in-house other than simply putting the film out there on YouTube or Vimeo etc.. and then marketing it through social media. To achieve better reach, or get paid for the rights to the film is another level and one which we are working on presently. Our idea with Life Goals is to do some private screenings at Official Supporters Club events, maybe a film festival or two and then look at a more general release. For The Cancer Garden, all of the people involved have their own businesses or charities and they can use those networks to gain reach. The hospital itself is well-known and the film will hopefully be a fantastic legacy of the project but also allow them to show their funders where the money went and the impact it made.
Follow progress with our documentaries here, and get in touch if you have a story you think might be worth exploring.
