This article is intended for documentary filmmakers who, for reasons of access or budget, work alone, or nearly so. Hiring a professional sound person is essential in many situations, but too often the presence of an indifferent technician is a liability. Non-technical filmmakers can master enough of the basics to get adequate sound. I've chosen the Sennheiser G3 to explain the steps in setting up a wireless system because it is the most common system in use at this level. Why not use the fully automatic units that are coming out, like the Sennheiser AVX? The AVX has a couple of fatal flaws
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Things are rarely black and white in the realm of nonfiction, but when it comes to social justice in these United States, events can seem to align like pieces on a chess board. So, it may not come as a surprise when a racial divide is gradually revealed in Brett Story's latest documentary, The Prison in Twelve Landscapes. As for just when this revelation becomes apparent, and the effects of said revelation upon the viewing audience, well, answers may vary. Story and her team have crafted a film that allows its audience to learn about the industry of incarceration in the US without forcing
The It's All True Festival, Brazil's first documentary film festival, introduces a new variety of short and feature-length productions selected from recent titles of national and international filmmakers. Simultaneously taking place in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the 22nd edition of the festival opened April 19 and continues through April 30, and is one of the few cultural events that doesn't seem to have been severely affected by the crises faced by the country over the last few years. That the festival has survived and even thrived is attributable to its two decades on the cinematic
Essential Doc Reads is a weekly feature in which the IDA staff recommends recent pieces about the documentary form and its processes. Here we feature think pieces and important news items from around the Internet, and articles from the Documentary magazine archive. We hope you enjoy! According to Anthony Kaufman at Indiewire, there has never been a more profitable time for documentaries. You could call it the "Netflix effect." With the rise of the global VOD giant and its increasingly voracious appetite for nonfiction films, the documentary industry is anticipating a busy spring season at the
The International Documentary Association (IDA) announced a newly formed Advisory Committee for the IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund comprised of eighteen industry experts. The committee will include, among others, award winning filmmakers Ted Braun, Katy Chevigny, Shayla Harris and Bernardo Ruiz. Supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, IDA's Enterprise Documentary Fund will provide grants totaling $1 million annually for four years to support the production and development of documentary films taking on in-depth explorations of contemporary stories through a
With nearly 15 years under its belt, Columbia, Missouri's True/False Film Fest is officially a destination event in the world of nonfiction film, and it offers a newcomer like myself a bounty of expected pleasures: across-the-board, high-quality programming; a charming, walkable downtown; an easily navigable ticketing system; and an engaged and hospitable local community that includes over 900 enthusiastic volunteers. True/False's mission avoids the term "documentary," instead staking out the "permeable, in-between land" of "creative nonfiction." Every film screened at the fest presupposes the
Essential Doc Reads is a weekly feature in which the IDA staff recommends recent pieces about the documentary form and its processes. Here we feature think pieces and important news items from around the Internet, and articles from the Documentary magazine archive. We hope you enjoy! From IndieWire, three filmmakers of docs about the crisis in Syria weigh in about the recent bombings and attacks. "In Last Men in Aleppo, I documented the Assad attack on civilians in Aleppo from 2013 through 2016. Most of the victims were children and there were no serious actions to stop this. One of the
True South By Jon Else Illustrated. 404 pages. Viking. $30. A corollary of the old adage, "You can't tell a book by its cover," may be, "You can tell a book by the length of its subtitle." At 17 words, the subtitle of documentary filmmaker-turned-author Jon Else's indispensable and richly layered new book, True South, is a long one: Henry Hampton and "Eyes on the Prize," the Landmark Television Series That Reframed the Civil Rights Movement. But given the multiple tasks that Else has set out for himself, it is also justified. With True South, Else tells both the behind-the-scenes story of the
Essential Doc Reads is a weekly feature in which the IDA staff recommends recent pieces about the documentary form and its processes. Here we feature think pieces and important news items from around the Internet, and articles from the Documentary magazine archive. We hope you enjoy! At The New York Times, sociologist Eve L. Ewing considers why authoritarians attack the arts. We need the arts because they make us full human beings. But we also need the arts as a protective factor against authoritarianism. In saving the arts, we save ourselves from a society where creative production is
The 2009 Sundance Film Festival opened in the Bush Administration and concluded in the Obama Administration. Eight years later, Sundance straddled two starkly different administrations again, as the dread and anxiety that underscored November 8, 2016, arrived in its full-throttled manifestation on January 20. Park City - always a bright blue spot in a deep red state - got its activist groove on, as thousands of Sundancers marched down Main Street, joining millions around the globe for a This Is What Democracy Looks Like proclamation. But despite this tsunami of hope, the Age of Dystopia had