Film consists of sounds and pictures but can also be described in words. Most documentaries begin as verbal descriptions and most such descriptions are written down. Written accounts of a prospective film can range from cursory notes to a fully worked out treatment. The progress from one end of the range to the other parallels the film-maker’s development of the production’s shape, from the first glimmerings of the idea, to being ready for the camera. While the process can be contained entirely in the mind, and some documentarists prefer to keep it so, as with arithmetic, working out the details can be greatly helped by putting them down on paper.
An idea of the finished film is the starting point of all documentary making. The film-maker may begin by knowing none of the film’s details, neither the characters, nor the locations, yet in some sense he or she will already have in mind an idea, a design, a shape, a form; psychologists might call it a Gestalt. The form is like the armature of a sculpture but it is, at the start, invisible. It cannot be seen or described in words. It is little more than a feeling. But a feeling with a shape, if there can be such a thing. And it only comes slowly into view as the sculptor adds clay to it, piece by piece.
For most film-makers, the production process consists of filling the details into just such an imaginary yet unimagined form. Only when the work is finally complete can the form be seen. Only then can the film-maker know how close he or she has come to achieving his or her aim. The process is difficult to describe, but somehow one knows whether the final film matches the initial unvisualized, idea. The pre-production process: the preliminary research, the writing of an outline, the further research, the writing of a treatment, the preparation for shooting, all are ways of ensuring that the footage captured by the camera is the material which will best bring the form into reality.
The initial, unvisualized form can be sparked off from many quarters. A television documentary may begin with a programme-maker’s idea; an in-house communication may start with a checklist of information to be included; a commission for a corporate publicity video may start with a specification from the public relations department. If lucky, a documentary maker may be asked to put in a proposal to fit a television channel’s given brief.
The documentarist’s first response to the initial idea, wherever it comes from, will be to investigate, to immerse him- or herself in the subject. Books will be read, newspaper clippings checked, but most of all people will be sought out. The film-maker will wish to get a feel for the subject at all levels, particularly the detailed experience of those most familiar with it. Sometimes, when the subject lies in an area with which everyone is familiar, this will suffice. In other cases, the film-maker will go to experts for their opinions. In yet others, the results of public opinion surveys will be consulted. No one can tell how long the process of familiarization should be. It will take as long as necessary for the film-maker both to get a grasp of the area of concern and to form the beginnings of a feeling for what the film should be.
Of course a few days, weeks or even months immersed in the subject will not make the film-maker an expert. But that is not the point. The film-maker does not have to be an expert but a perceptive observer and a sympathetic listener, with a concern to notice the unspoken, detect the unperceived, and pick out the significant details which form the pattern of events and relationships that will be the substance of the film.
It is at that point, the point at which the film-maker forms a notion of the film that he or she will begin to set down an outline on paper. Even those documentarists who take the most stringently observational approach to their subjects start with an outline in their minds, even if it is never actually committed to paper—writing it down can seem limiting and prejudicial to those who prefer to think of documentary making as an objective empirical scientific enterprise. But most of us find that setting down our thoughts on paper rather than keeping them only in our heads helps us to look at them critically.
Creating an outline is the essential first step in pinning down the initial idea and giving it some concrete substance. In this sense, writing an outline is like an experiment, a series of tests, to find out where the boundaries of the unvisualized shape may be, or like a painter’s first attempts at a sketch, an effort to pick out and make concrete an invisible drawing from the blank surface of a sheet of paper.
To begin with, the initial outline need be no more than a simple list of elements which may go to make up the finished film, put in order. At this stage, with none of the details yet known, a filmmaker will be no more than probing the formless idea. Like the artist trying out a line on the paper to see whether it matches the imagined drawing, the notes which make up the first outline will only be tentative. Yet even now they will begin to tell the filmmaker something about the finished work. Like a painter’s sketches too, a film’s outline is disposable: it gets constantly rewritten, sections are erased, are changed, are switched around.
Like the armature of a sculpture or the sketch for a painting, the outline makes a framework which gives the documentarist his or her first view of the overall structure of the final production. The importance of this cannot be over-estimated. For when documentaries fail, it is as often as not because of failings in the structure of the film, rather than in the execution of the filming and editing.
These first attempts will already be set down in filmic terms. They are not literary ideas. The outline is not the framework for a theoretical presentation. The style of outline used in some quarters, which begins with the intellectual content of the piece in words—set up the opening premise, develop the argument, reach the conclusion—can lead a film-maker to ignore the fact that the completed work is to be a film experience rather than a written text. To go down the wrong path at this stage can lead to a documentary which is little more than a lantern lecture. So the entries in the outline list will be shorthand for film sequences like perhaps: ‘ski slopes with music—fast cutting;’ or ‘moody night scene in airport—prospective emigrants;’ or ‘band rehearsal in drummer’s bedroom—beer cans and cigarette smoke.’ Added to the shorthand description will be notes about what the purpose of the particular section is to be: ‘to show subject’s skiing skill;’ or ‘to meet subject of film for first time’, or ‘to witness the first stage of developing the band’s musical arrangements.’
The notes in the outline will contain references to the subject to be treated, the locations envisaged, the characters to be filmed, the atmosphere to be sought. In short a breakdown, in order, of the sections of the film, with an indication of their content.
The notes in the outline will give the first indication of what the shape of the final film might be and how the theme, story, or argument of the film might be handled. Even though they are but a highly compressed, economical shorthand for ideas that are still vague in the mind of their creator, the outline will yet say something about the completed project. Even at this stage one can ask questions of it: Can the film achieve its aim? Does the form work? Is the content too much or too little to be contained within the envisaged length, is the theme too simple or too complicated. Is the line or thread of argument through the film clear enough? Do the stated elements add up to some kind of whole? Does the completed film have a point to make and if so does it succeed in that aim?
The individual sequences will be studied too. The first question to be asked is: is the idea for this section of the film the obvious one or is it original. Many documentarists make a practice of discarding their first idea, and sometimes their second and third, on the grounds that those are the ideas everyone else will have had too.
Again, the film-maker will want to make sure that the sections of the film can do their job in a visual way, or else will recognize that they need support by interview or commentary. Some filmmakers go so far as to demand that a film should be able to be understood without any sound at all. Only that way can it be said to depend on entirely filmic values. But that goes too far. Film has had synchronous sound for some seventy years now. It is as much part of the art of film as the images are. But synchronous sound is not the same as commentary. If film needs constantly to be explained by a voice-over, it is probably not doing its job.
A third question which the film-maker will ask of the sections of the outline is about their feasibility. At this stage the film-maker will not necessarily know any details of locations and personalities. But it will be possible to know whether a sequence falls within the bounds of achievability. If a particular point can only be made by some means which is not within reasonable grasp—an elaborate computer animation perhaps—then the film-maker may have to think again.
The importance of having these notes written down at this stage now becomes clear. For right at the start, when no expenses have been incurred and no commitments given, the film-maker can adjust, change, alter, elaborate, switch round, lengthen or shorten the items which will go to make up the completed work. In other words the shape of the idea can be massaged until it adopts a satisfactory form. Already now, the documentarist can see whether the film is balanced, whether and where there is too much exposition and too little enaction, whether the pace is likely to be maintained or if longueurs are already evident.
The question may well be asked: how can one write an outline before detailed research has shown what characters, locations and events are available for filming. The answer is to use the imagination. At this stage, where nothing is yet fixed and no decision is unchangeable, the film-maker has the opportunity to dream up any sequence he or she feels will do the job. The outline is at first only a statement of intention and nobody will hold the film-maker responsible if the very first intention cannot, in the event, be realized.
Of course a framework of knowledge is essential even to begin the outlining. But a film-maker does not need to start with more than an overall grasp of the subject he or she proposes to film. In fact many film-makers feel that too great a knowledge of the subject too early on in the process can be harmful. What is needed for outlining is an overview, not a fine-grained image. A documentary must necessarily simplify the complexity of the world in order to encapsulate it. In any case, the film-maker’s work will be communicating with people many of whom may know little or nothing about the subject. It is useful at this stage to be in a similar position. That way the film-maker will not be taking prior knowledge by the audience for granted.
It is quite true that a documentary maker, representing him- or herself as a seeker after truth, would be reluctant to admit to having a mind already made up even before exploring the reality in any depth. But, to admit for a moment the scientific paradigm of the documentary maker’s work, even in a scientific experiment the scientist must first propose a hypothesis to be tested. No physicist or chemist for example, begins a research project with a completely open mind and unformed opinion, not having any idea of what the results of the investigation might be. In fact most scientific papers begin with the hypothesis which is to be proved or disproved.
The key issue is how much the film-maker is prepared to change his or her mind in the process of researching and outlining. The process is an iterative one: outline, research, rewrite the outline, more research and so on. As the work progresses, the documentary’s form is defined ever more clearly until the filmmaker is satisfied that the form and shape of the project is as close as possible to both what he or she understands to be the truth as well as the original, unimagined, form in the film-maker’s mind.
In the process of going round and round the outline-research cycle, the outline will grow in size as more and more details are fixed. Locations will be decided on, interviewees selected, stock footage and archive sequences traced, events to be shot will be pinpointed and entered into the production schedule. By the end of the process, the structure of the film and the items through which it is to be realized will be fully determined.
At this stage, the film-maker will be able see in his or her mind’s eye a much more detailed picture of what the final work will be like. The outline has turned into a treatment.
A treatment is a full description of the completed film, scene by scene, sequence by sequence, couched in the ‘historic present’ tense. Many documentary film-makers avoid writing a treatment, feeling that the image of the film in their head is sufficient to take them forward to the shooting stage, and fearing that to fix too much detail before the shooting begins might limit their response to the actual location. Others find that the discipline of describing the specifics of what the final production will look and sound like, is an important help in developing their theoretical ideas and making them practicable.
A treatment, if suitably written, allows a film-maker actually to run the movie before it has been made: to ask questions of it; to determine the balance of different elements; to see whether it is successful in its aims; even to determine whether it is interesting or enjoyable to watch. A treatment is, in effect, a virtual film—with both the advantages and disadvantages of any form of virtuality. It is protean, can change its shape, can be altered, switched round, manipulated, all with no cost and little difficulty But at the same time, it is of course not real, and demands a leap of the imagination to experience not so much its content, but its associative, emotional, sub-intellectual impact.
A treatment fully written out will face the film-maker, even at an early stage, with the reality of any problems, conflicts or paradoxes hidden in the outline and covered over by slick and easy forms of words. Vague ideas, attractive in their feel, will seem very different when the film-maker is faced with the task of turning them into concrete realities. It is easy to specify for instance: a sequence showing John Smith wrestling with the controls of his aircraft. But what does that mean specifically? Writing the treatment will make it clear how the scene will begin and end, how long it should be, how its atmosphere will be captured, what kinds of sounds the viewer will hear, precisely what sorts of shots are required, and a host of other features which go to make up the completed sequence. It is of course true that clever editing can in the end make almost anything ‘work’—though editors are well known for protesting about missing shots, wrong sizes, inappropriate framings. But there is no doubt that solving such problems at this stage, before any footage has been shot, can avoid the need for first aid and intensive editing care later on. Solving problems in advance is almost always better than leaving them to find their solution later on. Most film-makers know that sufficient thought and preparation put in at the start can repay its effort by saving a day’s or even a week’s work later on.
The treatment will not just be an account of what the shooting will need to include but will take the process forward to the editing, dubbing and beyond. As a virtual film, it will be a description of the finished work, ready for viewing after everything has been completed. It will therefore imply what needs to be done to achieve that completion, not only in shooting, but in all the stages of post-production.
That is not to say that writing a treatment is a literary exercise. Film-makers are not, and do not have to be, writers. The excellence of the style in which the virtual film is composed is not an issue—unless, as is sometimes the case, a condition of the film-maker’s contract with the broadcaster or other commissioning body demands the delivery of a full treatment before shooting starts. Occasionally film-makers have engaged professional authors to write treatments. Jean-Paul Sartre is reputed to have once written a 600-page treatment—albeit for a fiction film—though there is no record of the film ever having been made. But in such cases it is more the writer’s concept of the subject that is being sought rather than an impression of how the film will look and sound. A filmmaker’s treatment is primarily for the film-maker’s own eyes, not another reader’s. So how well or not it is expressed in words is irrelevant for the task in hand, which is to concentrate the film-maker’s own mind on what needs to be done to realize his or her vision.
Later on, during production and post-production, the documentarist may find it useful to show the treatment to other collaborators: the cine-photographer and editor, perhaps. Certainly many cameramen and -women welcome the opportunity to get an idea of the complete film on which they are working. It makes it possible for them to make suggestions and add their own contribution—as happens all too infrequently in the television industry. Film and video editors, on the other hand, often prefer to work only with the material with which they have been presented. At that stage, they believe, the producer or director’s original vision is no longer relevant to the task in hand, which is to make the best possible film out of the material actually shot. However, since there are at least as many ways to edit the same material as there are to play a duplicate hand at bridge, it surely cannot do any harm for everyone working on a documentary to know what the film-maker has throughout been striving for.
A treatment is not a shooting script. A treatment is the description of a completed film, while a script is the detailed instruction manual for shooting it. Of all the documents written in preparation for a documentary film shoot, a script is the least often used. And if a form of script is compiled for a scene, it will be most likely not be a shot by shot chronological description but more of a shopping list, noting a selection of images which will probably be needed.
For a documentary maker to work exclusively from a shooting script, a condition sometimes imposed by contract, particularly in the corporate video field, is to put on a set of blinkers. It restricts the film-maker’s ability to respond to the scene as it plays itself out in reality, it prevents the camera from seeking out previously unobserved details, it makes it impossible to adjust each shot in relation to what happened in the previous one. As long as the documentary maker has a clear image of the scene in mind, the shots which are required to create it will usually be determined in the course of an interactive process: the way each shot goes will lead the film-maker to respond with a decision about the next.
A shooting script also pre-empts the editing process and risks tying the editor’s hands. Most film-makers will make allowance for the fact that deciding precisely which shots to use, for how long, and how they are to go together is best left until later. The construction of an individual sequence depends to a great extent on the sequences on either side; its exact delineation must wait until all the shooting, for all the sequences, has been completed. Unless the film-maker does all his or her own editing, a second person’s eye on the material, as from an editor, almost invariably improves the end result. Even novelists benefit from the suggestions of a book editor; a film-maker is no different. To preempt such a process by rigidly defining the film in advance with a script can condemn the work to mediocrity.
Preparing a shooting list, if not a shooting script, is a useful exercise as long as it is not regarded as definitive and complete, and as long as the film-maker feels free to depart from it as necessary. A shooting list, rather than a script, is an advantage in circumstances where following a scene or an event will need the film-maker’s full attention and concentration, with the risk that certain indispensable shots may be forgotten in the heat of the moment—a disaster which happens all too frequently. A list can also help to decide on the order in which to carry out the filming. Where time is short, or circumstances are difficult, shooting must often be planned with the precision of a military exercise.
The critical difference between a treatment and a shooting list is that the former is usually written—at least in its first version—even before any locations have been identified and visited, before contributors have been selected and spoken to, before any of the concrete details of the shooting are known. A shooting list depends entirely on the reality of the location, its appearance and topography as well as the individual characters to be shown inhabiting it. Consequently it will be the very last matter to be attended to before the shooting begins.
Writing a shooting list, or a shooting order, can be thought of as a kind of recorded rehearsal, as the film-maker proceeds through the process of shooting the sequence in his or her imagination, trying to foresee all the images that might be needed in the course of assembling the sequence, and trying to predict and therefore to forestall any untoward eventuality which might occur during the filming. But of course not every possible occurrence can ever be foreseen. The shooting list can never be more than a foundation, a rough preparation for the real thing.
Naturally, none of these limits apply to the shooting of dramatized sequences. Where filming to a written script is concerned, whether with dialogue or not, a full shooting script, prepared in advance and discussed with the artists wherever possible, is always beneficial if not essential.