Making a Documentary Video

I have made over one hundred YouTube videos in the past few years. However, I've never considered any of them that great. Perhaps it was because my methodology was backwards. Or maybe I'm just too much of a perfectionist. Probably 90% of my videos are about travel. I would shoot photographs or video on vacation and upon returning home make my YouTube video from these. 

Ken Burns

In my most recent video, the SO Young Story, I had began collecting data, still photos, documents, and video clips pre-production. That's moviemaking speak for: "getting your stuff together".  My normal process. I had an idea of what I wanted to do, and that was to tell the story of my great grandfather. As a part of my ongoing educational process, I watched a video about film editing featuring Richard Speziale. Then I realized I had no definite plan. I wrote a script, something I had never done before. Previously I added commentary after I completed the

Casey Neistat

video part of the project. Now I set to work using photos, video, etc. to illustrate that script. I found that one of the secrets is to get more material than you can possibly use. Part of the difficulty in making this video was that I had only three photos of the subject of the video. I had to come up with new and interesting methods to present information. In any work of art whether painting, film or book you must create interest and entertain the viewer/reader. For example, when I told of my ancestor buying property I showed the bill of sale of the property with money laid bill by bill on top of the bill of sale. The documentary filmmaker Ken Burns shows considerable creativity in his films. A procedure for filming still photographs is called the Ken burns Effect. On perhaps the opposite end of the spectrum Casey Neistat uses creative yet different techniques than Burns. I borrow from both.

The most important part of the process is to never forget that the purpose of the video is to tell a story.

This is my most recent video.  This was the first video I wrote a script for before beginning. The S O Young Story video is special and personal.

This video I made, which has no narration (it isn't necessary), was made after I found interest in paper engineering. The video is quite short  I had learned the importance of brevity.  Television commercials tell a complete story in 30 seconds. But it is hurts to discard footage ( to use film nomenclature). One must CUT, CUT, CUT and cut some more.