I think the greatest thing about making a documentary is your ability to just follow the story and the subject.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
You know, the process of making a documentary is one of discovery, and like writing a story, you follow a lead and that leads you to something else and then by the time you finish, the story is nothing like you expected.
But I can say what interests me about documentary is the fact that you don't know how the story ends at the onset - that you are investigating, with a camera, and the story emerges as you go along.
I've always been interested in how to present something that relates to our reality - which is not really... I don't even know if documentary itself does as good a job. It has its own problems in trying to get at the reality of the situation.
I think what I love about the documentary process is that you bring yourself to the documentary. And hopefully that makes you ask good questions, and hopefully that makes you reveal a little bit about yourself as well.
Documentaries are a powerful and effective way of bridging the gap between worlds, breaking through to new audiences that wouldn't otherwise be engaged - in essence, not preaching to the choir.
To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.
I like the idea of the documentary as a portrait. There's not a chronological beginning, middle, and end structure. You build something in the editing room that's shaped by getting to know the person and digging deeper, unpeeling the layers of them as you get to know them.
Documentary people have to know that, particularly nowadays, they have to be on a mission. And part of the mission is to - is to be like good journalists: search for the truth, have an open mind, listen to as much as you can of different sides of things.
I think documentary filmmaking is a braver way to make films because it's real, and you're really there.
What's great about documentary, it seems to me, is that it can be experimental filmmaking. You have a license to do a lot of diverse things under the umbrella of 'documentary.'