Story and structure of the documentary

PLOT AND STORY

Me and my partner are developing a documentary series about artists from Eastern European countries and their experiences, challenges, and triumphs. Each episode will focus on a different country and discuss each country's art scene and the struggles that artists go through to be known and to make a living. As our documentary will be educational, we want to be careful for it to be family-friendly as we expect kids to watch it as well. We decided to do the first 5 minutes from an episode, which will focus on the country we live in, more exactly, Romania.

Our strategy will be to look at different cities within each country and how the local context influences the artistic experience, these can vary from social contexts to financial ones. In order to achieve this, we plan to make these interviews to learn not only about the professional problems that these artists face but also about their lives and how they create their art. We also want the interviews to not feel forced and between the interviewee and the audience to be a free space of expression without any restriction on the conversation. The episode will include visual arts, sculpture, music, and theatre, among other forms of art, to give a clear picture of the cultural scene in the region.

After further planning, we decided that the part we were going to produce would include only the visual artists ( painters ) as we had already set up two interviews with painters from Romania of two different calibres and genres. We want to tell the story of how artists make a name for themselves and how they work in the industry through their careers. In the end, we want to give the audience an idea of what it is like to be a creative person in Eastern Europe and the struggles or advantages that come with it.

The responsibilities will be divided, with my primary focus on the project's production elements and hers on the interview questions, conversations, and planning.

How did we come up with the story?

As we said from the beginning, Rianna came up with the initial idea of involving art and our country in the documentary by doing something in that direction. After many coffees about different topics that we can attack to have a stable direction in which the series will go, I came up with the idea of using Eastern Europe as a reference point. I did this because most of the Eastern European countries are poorly seen by more developed countries like France, England, and Germany. Therefore, I wanted to see why this is the case and to discover if your geographical position influences Art. Also, I have seen many cases from my friends and family of kids my age that don't know what they want to do in life, they have a passion for the arts, and think that they can become an artist overnight and make a living out of thin air. This documentary will be made to educate children about the reality of becoming an artist. I hope that with this I will be able to positively influence people's lives. She agreed with the direction I was going towards and started working on the script and story in more detail

DOCUMENTARY SCRIPT LEARNING AND FINAL

I have attached a few paragraphs that I find good for learning the process of creating a script from different sites that explain it.

"When you’re making a documentary, it’s easy to think you don’t need a script. After all, documentaries often capture real-life events and unscripted moments. However, a well-crafted script is essential for shaping your narrative, ensuring you stay focused on your key message, and effectively communicating your story to the audience. Without a script, you risk your documentary becoming a collection of random footage without a cohesive storyline." 

- Docfilmacademy

"A documentary script is a meticulously crafted blueprint for a documentary film, detailing the narration, dialogue, and visual elements that will be presented on screen. It serves as a comprehensive roadmap, guiding the filmmakers through the filmmaking process to ensure a coherent and compelling narrative. This script can also encompass more than just the interview dialogue. It can also include the visual sequences, archival footage, and any other multimedia components integral to the story. By providing a structured framework, the documentary script helps maintain the focus and flow of the documentary, ensuring that the final product effectively conveys the intended message and engages the audience."

- Docfilmacademy

"There are lots of different ways to structure a documentary script, just like there are for film treatments. If you’re documenting your story as it happens, then a fleshed-out film treatment might be the closest thing to a script that you can create (and a valuable pre-production tool). That’s because you never know exactly what’s going to happen until you’ve wrapped up the shoot." - Boords

"One of the most well-known formats for writing a documentary script is to break up the visuals and audio into two columns." - Boords

From the research I did by googling and watching YouTube videos, I understood the importance of a good script for every movie/documentary. I also realized that my future documentary will be done in an A/V script format, which separates visuals and audio into two separate categories. This gives the documentary a more professional look and feel as the equipment can be focused on a more specific task, like recording only the audio or only the video. I have also done this already in the preliminary work, but I was not prepared as I ran into the problem of syncing the audio with the video. I already did the questions, but again, we do not base our documentary on them as we want it to have a natural feel. Therefore, for the script, we did not want to do anything else except some questions of reference to avoid pressure on the interviewees.

STORYBOARD

Doing a storyboard for a documentary is very difficult as it doesn't follow a script, and the footage is flexible and not really planned. A storyboard plans for certain shots and looks before the shooting starts so you are prepared to shoot certain frames. In our case, we are able to plan an intro as we are doing the first 5 minutes of an episode. We have seen many examples, and we want to inspire ourselves from them to create a storyboard for the intro.

She began by drawing a storyboard on paper with a simple intro

After this draft, we discussed and rewatched some of the documentaries that we analysed. When we arrived at George Condo: The Way I Think, an idea struck my head of a clean and simple intro that would have a nice and professional look. Inspired by George's documentary, a seetrough Title with a possible subtitle will appear for a few seconds and then fade into the image inside the letters. After agreeing with Rianna on this idea, she made a storyboard using Procreate.

Another feature that I wanted to add was letterboxing, which I discovered by rewatching the Netflix documentary Abstract The Art of Design. This gives a wider aspect ratio look, which creates a more industry-standard look that we are looking for.