-
Tips for a Documentary?
I’m filming a documentary for my film class, and was wondering if anyone has any tips. For example, somewhere where I can download a cool “plate” where the name and occupation of a person being interviewed is displayed, etc. Maybe a tutorial on a nice intro? Anything that might be useful.
-
7 Replies
-
First, a good tip would be to try and post this question on a site that is documentary related… you’ll probably get a better response… but, more than likely you will be able to search the documentary posting based forum for your answer.
Secondly, I would suggest you NOT use After Effects for your documentary editing. You should use an editing program and not a compositing program like After Effects.
-
My bad, my bad…I was actually wondering what kinds of special affects I can put in it, but alright.
-
The only major special effect for documentaries I can think of would be interviewing participants in front of a green screen, so as to add a impressive background picture or something. Wouldn’t recommend you do that as it’s lots more work for no real benefit at all.
As for name captions and occupation I’d suggest just use the title features available in Premiere (Or whatever video editor you use). They’re fairly simple to use and work perfectly for your requirements. As for the intro I’d sugest keeping it simple, and again using the title features of your editor over filmed footage with no big exciting effects as that’s far more stranded for the documentary genre.
-
Special effects in a documentary depends upon the kind of documentary… but, in general… special effects are seldom used in documentaries except for text animation.
What is the subject matter of the documentary?
-
I’ve done quite a few documentaries over a number of years. I’m not sure you need much in the way of AE that you could not do in Premiere.
One suggestion I’d offer for anything other than a speaker you put font over – defocus the background slightly. If it’s a screen with a lot of font, slow the BG video down and darken it as well, so it’s less distracting. Motion behind text makes it hard to read.
Other than that, just tell the story in as straightforward a manner as you can. Put your lower thirds over your speakers without a fancy background – the simplicity will (rightly) help focus attention on your subject matter instead of your technique.
-
Thanks so much for your help, guys, I’ll take your advice. I suppose you’re right; not much you can use special affects for in a documentary…The documentary is actually a mock-documentary (comedy genre), since all my other films have been on a very, well, gloomy note.
-
Emmy Award winner Steve Audette uses AE extensively as Senior Editor for Frontline at PBS. Here is one of his lectures.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up