The Face of Time - POV - Aarhus Universitet

114 p.o.v. number 13 March 2002
made on the same basis as the short fiction film – this limits the
degree to which you should be inspired.
The preparation phase is very time consuming in the documentary
genre. It requires thorough research on your topic or source of
inspiration. In order to get a fairly good understanding of your
person and his or her story you need to visit him or her and make
some test interviews. This will give you an impression of the
person's limits and boundaries, and what s/he is willing to talk
about.
If possible, bring a video camera (to the first meetings) to find out
how the person reacts to the camera, and to let him/her get used to
its presence before the actual shoot. It also gives you a chance to
map the different locations and thus plan more precisely what you
want to be in the film (a test film is the basis for working out a fairly
accurate storyboard/preliminary script.)
As regards the screenplay, there are different ways of structuring
the material in a documentary. In "Looking Two Ways" (1996) Toni
de Bromhead examines the different forms of narration in a
documentary film. She draws up four narrative principles
(modalities). 1) The Linear Narrative Form, also known as classic
Hollywood storytelling; 2) the Discursive Narrative Form, which
gives priority to information, facts and logic; 3) the Episodic
Narrative Form, which juxtaposes situations that have no narrative