Documentary Story Structure Workshop

Documentary Story Structure Workshop: Learn the Text-Based Approach the Experts Use

If you’ve ever sat helplessly in the edit room with hours and hours of documentary footage that you don’t know what to do with, this is the class for you. 

Learn the method developed by many of today’s best working documentarians to edit their footage, using a text-based plan to craft their stories from their footage. And, even better, after you learn this plan, you can deploy it while shooting, streamlining both your shooting plan and your post-production plan later. So, this class is also for you if you haven’t yet shot anything and would like to approach your next documentary project armed with a script-based approach to help guide you. 

The instructor for this documentary structure class is Renée Silverman, an award winning documentary filmmaker who has also worked as an archival producer on Oscar nominated documentary, RBG, the HBO documentary, United Skates, and Carol Channing, Larger than Life for PBS.

DAY ONE

On day one, we’ll dive head-first into the 3 Act Structure, focusing on the short verité documentary, the Oscar winning film, Period. End of Sentence. Here, you’ll explore the fundamental elements of the documentary story: introducing the main idea and supporting themes, the inciting incident, the character arc and how to maintain a strong second act and build towards a satisfying climax and denouement in the third and final one. 

Renée will also walk students through additional considerations, like archival materials, recreations, animations, and explore musical scoring as a story element. Using her short documentary film Refugee Kids, you’ll be provided with hard copy examples of loglines, selects, outline, and script to use as a reference in planning your own film. 

For homework, you’ll watch RBG and The Cave, noting the three-act structure in each film. 

DAY TWO

On day two, the class will use the Oscar nominated, The Cave, as an example of the verité feature documentary to guide conversations on strategies for a strong opening; introducing and developing characters; balancing tragedy with the personal and the political.

As a class, we’ll revisit RBG discuss how to deploy and organize archival footage for the historical or biographical film. 

Finally, the class will cover different genres of documentary film, including first person, investigative, essay, and archival / biographical genres. 

Renée will leave time for discussion of class questions and concerns, so bring your ideas and questions!