Fahrenheit 101

I worked briefly as a camera assistant and co-director of a short documentary film on homelessness in Little Rock, AR. I found that despite the chaos of a shooting day, I had much more control over a narrative film. Any magic could be manufactured. Documentaries require you to find the magic beneath the layers of regular mundane existence. The arched eyebrow, the impromptu smile, the silly walk, the strange turn of phrase, the quiet moment. You tend to shoot much more footage, because you don't know what gems you might accidentally capture.

Documentaries were also much more challenging legally. In a narrative film, you can always fall back on, I just made it up. In a documentary, you are capturing and rearranging pieces of reality. And sometimes, reality is not something people want exposed.

I found this lovely site that discusses some of the legal issues documentary filmmakers face. There are some excellent examples of Fair Use, which is vital to making a documentary that doesn't consist solely of talking heads spewing facts.