Tips for shooting a documentary

A great discussion about making documentories showed up on TheForce.net fan films forums:

Jedi Council Forums - Tips for shooting a documentary

Many of the same principles can be applied to filmmaking in general. Here are the important points:

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You still need to show a story, or some type of evolution. Even Animal Planet documentaries have this. If you don't have a story line you'd better have plenty of opinions on a single subject to tell. This is why films about the advancement of something, for example, space exploration, are easier then "state of" documentaries, a documentary showing the current state of space exploration. If you're following a band around then this shouldn't be such a problem.

I'm assuming you're going to have interviews, or atleast a voiceover (if you make a good doco without either of those then you are a better film maker then I). Well you can't just show interviews straight through, you need something to keep the attention of the audience and that is visually relevant to the topic in the dialogue. This is where "B-Roll" comes in. This is what you edit in over interviews and such. A band member talking about how awesome it is to preform to an energized crowd? Get a shot of the crowd band interaction, people cheering, crowdsurfing, all that sort of stuff.

While I'm thinking of them- the quick tip "duh" basics

-Pan from something, to something
-Hold your shots for atleast 8 seconds (this includes before and after the pan)
-Keep the composition in mind, the 1/3's grid is the most visually appealing for documentaries as well
-Lighting. Make it good.
-If you are filming in an uncontrolled enviroment, look through the view finder with the right eye and use your left eye for situational awareness
-Always have your camera (battery) pressed against your face, so if someone smacks your lense or tries to push your camera away, it can't crack you in the face.
-Use a tripod
-Whitebalance
-Buy a good microphone
-Do not use Micheal Moore as inspiration for your journalistic integrity.
-Tape is cheap, shoot anything that catches your eye, you won't have a second chance.
-Try not to cross "the line"
-Use supers to tell us who's who. If I don't know someone or thier credentials in a documentary, I really don't get a darn about them.
-EDIT: Log all of your shots at the end of the day, and keep all of your logging together. I know FCP has a logging organizer that's just great for this, and you'll thank yourself for this later. If you don't do it, then you'll get so disheartened trying to edit that I doubt you'd finish.

Ok, the super b-roll stuff is in the sequences. Image to convey- guitarist tuning his guitar. Imagine a sequence like this:
Establishing shot that shows the guitarist in his entirety> Medium close up of face with hands visible > Close up of the hands > Reaction shot of the face > Maybe an over the shoulder shot.
All of these edit together very nicely.