As far as the balance between being a journalist, being an artist, being a storyteller - documentary filmmakers are all three of those things. The balance between them is affected by the film itself, the topic of the film.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
If I were writing an article for the newspaper, it would be thesis statement, information, information, supporting arguments. That would be the setup. When I'm making a documentary, the pacing of the film and the way that you sort of switch from character to character - all of those are more about storytelling than straight journalism.
In documentary films, you're a storyteller using found objects. You still have to have a story arc and all the elements that make a good story. It really helped me mature as a storyteller.
Whether I'm telling stories in songs or if directing is the next step, being a storyteller is what I like doing.
Stories, as we're taught in journalism school early on, are told through people. Those stories make our documentaries powerful. You can explore someone's culture, you can explore their experience, you can explore an issue through human beings who are going through it.
The reason I call myself a documentary photographer is the idea of how photographs contain and participate in history.
If you want to tell stories, be a writer, not a filmmaker.
I've always been a fiction filmmaker and I've been heading in the direction of fiction filmmaking, doing documentaries along the way.
This is indeed not only relevant to Documentary but is evident is most type of film making. The film often mirrors the experience, understanding and politics of the director.
I was always a filmmaker before I was anything else. If I was always anything, I was a storyteller, and it never really made much of a difference to me what medium I worked in.
A storyteller is basically what actors and writers are.