By Rhys Davies-Santibañez
Lessons from Col Spector
Contents
Sutton Filmmakers runs club meetings twice a month, all year long, to a committed membership base. The winter months (stretching into the next year as even February’s weather seems determined to be wet and cold, as opposed to the rest of the year’s being merely wet) are quietest as members quite understandably have to battle through their workday and commute home before heading out to Church hall in Cheam again. But this week’s turnout might be the largest of the year (which is saying something considering we’re only in month two of twelve).
This Tuesday, Sutton Filmmakers was treated to a brilliant evening about documentary filmmaking from the documentary consultant Col Spector. Col has won awards including the RTS Award and Best British Short Film at Kinofilm, has directed documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4, and teaches documentary filmmaking at the NFTS and Raindance.
Col’s journey into documentary filmmaking is reassuring for anyone let down by formal education. Film school taught him little in the way of practical, technical, or storytelling skills. It was in unemployment that he worked on himself to overcome that skills gap. It forced him to figure things out for himself, and ask a question that’s guided his work ever since:
“Where can I make a difference?”
Story And Emotion
If there’s one thing Col hammered home, it’s that the heart of any good documentary filmmaking is story and emotion. Not equipment. Not technique. Not even subject matter, really, because the subject is just the raw material. The real craft lies in asking yourself “how do I turn this subject into a story?”
For those starting out, Col recommends getting your bearings with short documentaries of ten minutes or less. Start small, scale up later. This will teach you the foundational skills which will act as building blocks for longer-form documentaries.
He also had some practical advice for new directors: don’t self-shoot your first projects. When you’re first learning how to produce, structure a story, and how best to talk to your your subjects, the last thing you need is all the technical complexities of kit complicating things.
Separate the skills. Master them one at a time.
Col’s Five Rules for Documentary Filmmaking
1. Don’t make “an inquiry into…”
Vague is bad.
A documentary that sets out to “explore” or “investigate” a topic without a clear destination is already in trouble. Col drew a great analogy here: improvising a performance takes mastery. For the rest of us, go in with solid choreography. Know what you’re making before you make it, even if you have to adjust later to fit with the reality of what you’ve filmed.
2. Find your hypothesis
WHAT is your story about and HOW are you going to tell it?
This is your unique angle, your selling point, the thing that makes your documentary this documentary and not someone else’s. And ask yourself if you’re making a great film, not just another documentary.
3. Find the conflict
Don’t panic — this doesn’t have to be a fight or a dramatic confrontation.
Conflict, in storytelling terms, is simply two elements at odds with each other. Hope and circumstance. Success and failure. Identity and expectation. That tension will be your engine driving the film forward.
4. Decide what you want the audience to feel
Do you want them MOVED or ENTERTAINED?
Col boiled it down to two broad categories: documentaries either try to move the audience or entertain them. Know which one you’re going for, and build everything towards that goal.
5. Ask a question you don’t know the answer to.
You are the film’s first audience. If you don’t feel it, neither will anyone else.
To make your film feel alive, you need to be genuinely discovering something as you make it. Too often filmmakers shoot to confirm what they already believe. But if you know the ending going in, the audience will feel it.
A Few More Gems
In a Q&A session at the end, Col presented a handful of ides worth keeping in mind.
One perennial challenge in documentary filmmaking work is presenting visually ideas too abstract to record directly or events that have already happened. Too often the answer is talking heads and b-roll, and while those tools have their place Col challenges all filmmakers push ourselves to do better.
Remove the word ‘interview’ from your vocabulary, and just have a chat. Treat your subjects like people and you’ll get spontaneous, human answers that will liven up your films.
And finally, one of the best pieces of storytelling advice in any medium: don’t tell the audience what to think. Give them 1+1 and trust them to do the rest.
That’s All, Folks
If you want to up your film skills, come along to a free taster nights and see what Sutton Filmmakers is all about. Meetings are held every first and third Tuesday of the month.
And if you become a member, you’ll get access to the members-only area of our website.
Col Spector is available for documentary consulting at www.thedocumentaryconsultant.com
