Quotes & Sayings About Documentary Filmmaking

Ridiculous. You guys are going to have the most boring documentary on earth," I said and stormed inside.
"Could you walk in the building again, but slower and don't slam the door," Hugo called after me. — Heather O'Neill

News makes things black and white. Documentary filmmaking should do the opposite. — Robert Greene

When I started my filmmaking journey 17 years ago, I honestly didn't know what a documentary film was. — Tony Kaye

Especially when you talk about the power of documentary filmmaking, you can't really have a slant; financially, you can't have a slant on the end goals. — Amy J. Berg

Feature filmmaking is a different kind of complication as documentary comes in the editing room. — Nicholas Jarecki

The best documentaries are independent. They don't exist to serve interests, philanthropic or otherwise. — Nick Fraser

In documentary filmmaking, there's a tradition of telling stories about victims. We often do that from a very patronizing place, but mostly we do it from a very selfish place, to reassure ourselves that our lives are in sympathy and solidarity with the victims. — Joshua Oppenheimer

I wanted to describe the world at the same time, through image, express what I felt. It was the time of the great documentary filmmakers: Richard Leacock, Joris Ivens. Today, television has put an end to this type of filmmaking. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

I became a documentary filmmaker because I wanted to make socially conscious films. I never studied filmmaking - everything I have learned has been on the field. — Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

Thhe essence of documentary filmmaking is how you manipulate the material to create an emotional impact, as opposed to just delivering information. — Richard Ray Perez

Documentary filmmaking ruins you for real life, because you learn to be extremely attentive. — Frederick Wiseman

Celebrate your victories and mark your defeats. Ultimately documentary filmmaking is not a job, it's a calling. — Pamela Yates

I'm a curious guy. I can't turn away from an investigative story, when it comes to the forensic analysis. I've done 33 dives, to the titanic wreck site. I've spent over 50 hours piloting robotic vehicles at that wreck trying to piece together what happened during the disaster. How the ship broke up, comparing the historical record with the forensic record. Documentaries are kind of my new life. I love documentary filmmaking. — James Cameron

What's great about documentary, it seems to me, is that it can be experimental filmmaking. You have a license to do a lot of diverse things under the umbrella of 'documentary.' — Errol Morris

Documentary filmmaking has all the challenges and hardships of narrative filmmaking without any of the infrastructure or support. That's both a blessing and a curse. — Brian Lindstrom

My advice to emerging documentary filmmakers would be: try to find other people, a group, a cooperative that you can work with. Filmmaking is hard and lonely and decidedly unglamorous. Find like-minded souls and share the joy and the misery. — Pamela Yates

With portable cameras and affordable data and non-linear digital editing, I think this is a golden age of documentary filmmaking. These new technologies mean we can make complicated, beautifully crafted and cinematic films about real-life stories. — Lucy Walker

At times doc filmmaking feels more rewarding creatively. Because you are creating something out of pure cinema - instead of narrative cinema, where you've got a script and a cast and you build from your foundation, whereas in documentary, you're building out of chaos. — George Hickenlooper

My background is in filmmaking, and my mentor is Dusan Makavejev, who combined fiction and documentary. — Joshua Oppenheimer

I think documentary filmmaking is a braver way to make films because it's real, and you're really there. — Jamie Bell

I began filmmaking in high school, at the Chicago Academy for the Arts. My first documentary was about a dysfunctional obese middle-aged carpet cleaner named Bill, who lived with his Mom, and his love affair with Anna, a drug-addicted prostitute. I made that when I was 16. — Yony Leyser

Investigative journalism has been relegated to a very, very tiny space in America. We don't really have much investigative journalism left. And the last refuge for it is documentary filmmaking. — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.