Planning an Unscripted Documentary

We came across an article by Tony Levelle (writersstore.com) about planning an unscripted documentary. This help because it gave us an insight into how you can create an effective documentary without a script.

Levelle talks about a well known filmmaker Dorothy Fadiman, who has been making successful unscripted documentaries for 30 years. She gives him useful and helpful advice as to how she goes about creating a documentary thinking about what story she plans to capture in her documentary, how she gets started, where she would like to shoot, the situations and events she would like to unfold in the document and how she wants the story to essentially evolve as we watch.
The key things we took from her advice was:

1. Allowing your footage to tell you where to go
2. Allowing things (unplanned) to happen
3. Let the story evolve
4. Allow yourself to be open to surprises, making necessary changes as you go
5. 'Free association' during interviews (interviewees more likely to share ideas that feel alive to them)

This really changed the complex of how we are intending to film now. This means that the footage we are going to capture will differ from our original plan which could mean we take a different route to achieve the last paragraph of our treatment.