How do you produce documentaries in the digital age?

Documentaries are a great way of understanding the most complex and challenging issues, themes around us, which we normally won’t see in the mainstream feature films. Digital platforms enable us to create immediate, short and replicable creative pieces to be engaged by a wider audience. If your documentary isn’t reaching the people or communities or places you highlight in it, then you failed your purpose. A documentary screened only behind closed doors for a privileged audience is detrimental to the entire foundation of making documentaries. Digital tools enable us to reach to the last individual on their phone. That is the goal you should aim for. Technology is there to support your pursuits as a documentary maker.

At any moment there are lot of discussions on many issues, already too many people talking about too many things. If you find an issue that you seriously believe in, if you think that you can make a profound contribution to make a difference to the contemporary conversation on the issue, and if you think that later on you will have regret if you didn’t raise your voice on that issue then please go ahead and create a documentary on it. Your Documentary is your voice. Films as a medium have the unique ability to touch people without they realizing it. So your documentary is a very powerful voice if it is crafted well. Always remember to stay away from the urge to be over the top else it becomes like a contemporary propaganda channel.

1. Idea Development and Research: Choose a compelling topic: Select a topic that is relevant, interesting, and has a story worth telling. Research: Dive deep into the chosen topic. Use online resources, books, articles, and interviews to gather information and perspectives. 2. Planning: Create a documentary proposal: Outline your documentary's concept, target audience, goals, and potential impact. Budgeting: Plan your budget for equipment, crew, travel, licensing, and post-production expenses. Storyboarding: Visualize the flow of your documentary through a storyboard. This helps in organizing your shots and sequences.

Doing thorough research is vital. You need to be able to look at a topic from various angles and not simply one perspective if you want to give a realistic representation. Doing your research will give you informed insights from which you can build the outline for your documtary. Research will also throw up contributors you might want to interview, locations to visit and so on. The more research you do, the more unique your documentary will be once you decide on the story you want to tell and who you want to tell it to.

Equipment is important and should be selected with care. For eg. while filming in the forest, it becomes difficult trek with huge amount of equipment. At times our equipment can compromise our safety and I have had falls leading to injuries, equipment damaged etc. So there is no standard rule as to how big or how expensive a camera ought to be to shoot a documentary. Once while shooting for HBO Real Sports, I went close to an athlete who was crying as she had won the gold but had missed the National Mark. Immediately she noticed my big camera and lens, hid her face and I lost the shot. In that situation a smaller camera would have been less intrusive. On another instance a villager got tongue tied at the sight of the cinema camera & light.

When considering production quality, it is easy to trap yourself creatively in financial constraints. While a recording device and source of clean audio are pretty foundational, complicating a documentary setup can be a slippery slope. When planning your documentary, I recommend dedicating your project to the story first and the equipment second. Consider HBO’s “How To With John Wilson”: a professional camera and a high quality microphone, but overall the style is noticeably and intentionally run-and-gun, similar to how an early documentarian’s work might look. While a recording foundation is necessary to make a documentary, expensive equipment isn’t necessary to research and ultimately tell a great story.

Don't overcomplicate this. Depending on what kind of documentary you're looking to make (interview style, verite style where you're filming things as it's happening) will dictate the type of gear you should have. But your mobile phone can be extremely powerful. If you buy 1 piece of gear, get some wireless mics. Clean audio is way more important than high res video.

Your audience will forgive a certain amount when it comes to your production but you must have clean sound. Whatever you use to record your documentary, consider using a decent mic and, if applicable, always have a tripod to help stabikise your shot. For interviews, having your subject nicely lit will lift production values immensely.

One should always plan so that shooting becomes easier. However, documentary filming is also an exploration. While filming certain types of subjects like wildlife, tantra, culture etc you find certain questions which need to be answered, some other people need to be interviewed or different locations and even same location in different season need to be visited. If you are passionate about the subject then you are likely to come back even though the budget needs to be expanded. If you are shooting for a big channel, then that decision is not yours and you need to stick to schedule as agreed upon and drop the new leads. At times you may drop your phone, battery may die so having a print out of questions and phone numbers, permissions help

When we are talking about production planning, one of the method I normally use is backward scheduling. We work backward from the delivery date. Put in the dateline of the project, followed by all the processes - from post production to pre-production in the timeline. Don't forget to add buffer time for each phase - if you need it.

Ensure that everyone involved has all the information they need - communication is key. As well as the things already mentioned, consider what might help the production to go more smoothly and keep everyone happy ie can you arrange location parking for your crew? You'll definitely get Brownie points if you have flasks of hot drinks when filming outdoors and so on...

Documentary editing has been getting a lot more manageable with recent tools. Now you can use text-to-video editing tools to get your interviews transcribed, edit the text, and instantly have your video edited to match. Tools like Descript and Adobe Premiere Pro can do this.

In my recent hour long documentary "Leopards: The Last Stand" it was a bit complicated. I was showing travel to 5 states and lot of interviews and sub stories. I wrote the narration in parts on a paper. Brought some yellow post it stickers and wrote and pasted in the wall. Then moved things around to create a better flow. I didn't have video to text conversion tools when I started so I had to do the hard work and created subtitles directly. It helped me cut better. Several times I recorded changes to narration by recording audio directly while editing and it helped smoothen the process. I showed the entire film to a select group to get their views, made changes and then recorded official VO & completed the film.

In the digital age, documentary production involves concept development, funding acquisition, digital shooting and editing, online distribution, marketing, legal compliance, accessibility, and various monetization methods. Store project files securely for future reference.