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Best books on how to make documentaries

May 13, 2008 · 4 Comments

I’ve been looking through books on how to make documentaries (that is, how to write, prepare, shoot, post-produce and sell documentaries). They were all interesting but I chose The Shut Up and Shoot Documentary Guide: A Down & Dirty DV Production. At first it was the less attractive of all, but it ended being the most adjusted to our needs: how to film on a low budget and less yada yada on how to sell your story or how many technicians you need to pay. It also has some info on how to use new generation digital video cameras.

Just for the record, other interesting books were:

There are a lot of books with many good (fake?) reviews out there, I mention these because: Documentary Storytelling emphasizes on the storytelling. While most books emphasize on budget managing or how to sell your documentary, they don’t explain the language of documentaries. And telling a good story is better than anything else. The second book, Directing the Documentary, is simply the Bible for professional wanna-be documentary directors.

Amazon is also shipping to Spain some books I mentioned in my last post:

Categories: Books · The Movie
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