There’s not a lot of information available for those interested in writing a biographical documentary screenplay. In this post, we offer our top five tips to make you successful!
Garbage In/Garbage out. Research is a continuous process and supports script refinement and character development. It can uncover new media (imagery) and bring up new, interesting questions. The Library of Congress, Archive.org, state and local historical societies, Wikipedia, museums and educational institutions are all fantastic resources with a wealth of information available at your fingertips. Keep a log of captured media, note its licensing, and any attribution requirements. Just remember that you should be digging in and corroborating material; especially, personal accounts. Dig like a journalist and you may be surprised at what you find!
“Final” Draft? As you can tell by the first tip, you’re never done rewriting until the film is all in the can. To start preproduction, you’re gonna need a script. My recommendation is to get all your thoughts on paper. Do not burden yourself with the rules of a screenplay, formatting, or even typos. Just get it ‘on the paper’ (or ‘on a screen’). Once complete, you can transpose into the proper format. I use to leverage Amazon Storywriter as it was a free, online resource. Since they closed the project, one can use Studiobinder’s Screenwriter software for free! A cheaper alternative is to do all this manually in Google Docs or MS Word.
“Final Final” Draft? You’re never done rewriting. Sound familiar? At this stage, you can focus on story structure. After watching many courses on the subject (not to mention podcasts), here are my top three tips:
Starting off with a 3 or 4 act structure will at least ensure you have a beginning, a middle and an end.
The hero’s journey is really tailored to mythology, but it can help you with your beats. Having said that, you are better off watching films and reading scripts of the same genre; then, try to mirror their tempo. This includes non-fictional biographies and even fictional novels of the same genre. For films, pay attention to the number of scenes and their duration as it may help you determine necessary run-time and timing of plot points.
Identify the audience that you are trying to entertain. This will determine the tone and can even suggest the duration. For example, posting a half hour video on YouTube will more than likely deter those on their phones. Regardless, you need to hook the audience and get them engaged in the first few minutes. There must be emotion, likeable characters, and tension/conflict in your script.
Trim the fat. Map the available, no cost media to their appropriate script lines and look where you have gaps. These holes may help inform your editing decisions. Discard verbose narration, exposition or extraneous (non-essential) characters. Is it cheaper to buy stock footage or shoot your own B-roll? The latter you can resell as editorial or commercial stock footage! Remember that by removing characters and unnecessary lines of dialogue, you are also reducing voice-over narration costs who often charge per word.
Cut the cord. How long does your documentary need to be and what is your distribution plan? PBS docs run at 51 minutes 50 seconds. Forty plus minutes earn you the title of “feature” by AFI/BFI or the Academy. Note that the SAG minimum is 80 minutes. Sundance likes doc shorts in the 15 (preferred) to 20 minute range. With other festivals, you may be better off with just 10 minutes.