Making Documentaries

While I love watching good documentaries, I prefer the idea of making narrative features over the idea of making documentaries.

Note: I’m NOT opposed to making documentaries; I might create one or more in the future. It’s just I’m more likely to make narrative movies.

Many of the storytelling techniques are the same. Both rely on finding a good structure, with emotional highs and lows. Both require decent production values to be effective. For “real” stories, the main difference is that documentaries tell the audience what happened whereas narrative movies show what happened.

While watching Ken Burns’ documentary about Leonardo da Vinci, I realized that it would be difficult to tell the story of James Clerk Maxwell in a similar way. Although I could interview experts, show where he worked, and present his ideas, the content would be more academic than emotional.

I would enjoy seeing a great documentary about James Clerk Maxwell. But I would rather make a movie like Infinity, which tells an emotional story about Richard Feynman.