Well, like any time you're shooting documentary stuff, you've got to be in the moment, and you've got to be able to be in control enough to capture what's happening.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I did documentary film for a long time, and I spent a lot of time behind the camera, fervently wishing that the reality I was filming would conform to my narrative propriety. But you can't control it.
That's the only way I can control my movie. If you shoot everything, then everything is liable to end up in the movie. If you have a vision, you don't have to cover every scene.
When you're making a film all by yourself, that requires you to have quite a bit of a point of view in order for anything to get done.
If you're an actor, you're at the mercy of a script. You've got far more control if you're the photographer.
I film quite a bit of footage, then edit. Changes before your eyes, things you can do and things you can't. My attitude is always 'let it keep rolling.'
Unless you're the director on the movie, or putting up the money for the movie, you really don't have a lot of control.
That's one of the things about theater vs. film - with theater, actors have a little more control, and one of the disappointing things about films is that once you're done shooting, anything can happen, you know?
If you acknowledge that filming is an occasion where people express things they might not otherwise express, that offers a much more insightful analysis of why documentaries - even of the fly-on-the-wall variety - are powerful.
Filming is a witnessing process. You don't try to control it, even though sometimes you wish you could because it can go really, really wrong for you.
In film work, you do the best you can under the given circumstances, but you don't have control. At least, I don't.