What does a documentary director do?
You film real people's lives and then decide, in an edit, what their story was — and they have to live with the version you chose.
Also called: factual director, documentary filmmaker, series director.
A day looks like
- 1You spend far more time building trust than filming, because the filming only works afterwards.
- 2You explain, honestly, what the film is and where it will go, before anybody agrees to anything.
- 3You get something extraordinary on camera and have to decide whether you are entitled to use it.
- 4You cut a person's six months into eleven minutes and try to make it still true.
Hardest part
The most compelling material is usually the material somebody gave you when they had stopped thinking about the camera, and using it is a decision about them rather than about the film.
Best part
A contributor watching the finished film and recognising themselves in it.
How you actually become a documentary director
- At schoolAny production work — researcher, runner, self-shooting — plus judgement about people.
- TrainingMostly experience; film school helps and is not required. Compliance and duty-of-care training matter.
- How longFive or more years from runner to directing your own films.
- Your first jobResearcher or assistant producer on factual programmes.
Frequently asked questions
- What is informed consent in documentary?
- That the contributor understood what the film is, where it will be shown and how they will be portrayed — not merely that they signed a release. Because films change during production, consent has to be revisited.
- Can a contributor withdraw?
- Legally, often not once a release is signed. Ethically, serious documentary makers treat a withdrawal request as something to be understood and usually accommodated, because the person's life continues after the broadcast.
- Is documentary just filming what happens?
- No — the edit is where the film is made. Choosing which of a hundred hours becomes forty minutes is an act of interpretation, which is exactly why the ethics matter so much.
More from Arts & Media
Journalist
You find out what happened and publish it, and the whole job is the gap between what you have been told and what you can actually stand behind.
Fact Checker
You establish whether something is true before it reaches an audience — and the volume of things needing checked is growing faster than anything else in media.
Photojournalist
You have to be physically present at the moment something happens, and then decide what you are entitled to photograph.
Broadcast Engineer
You keep the signal going out, and when something breaks you have seconds rather than minutes to decide what to do about it.
Conservator
You look after objects that cannot be replaced, and most of your decisions are about doing less rather than more.
Audio Describer
You describe what is on screen or on stage for blind and partially sighted audiences, in the gaps between the dialogue, and the gaps are about three seconds long.
Stage Manager
You run the performance from the book — every lighting, sound and scene change happens because you said go.
Live Sound Engineer
You mix a performance live in a room whose acoustics change when the audience arrives, and there is no second take.
Sign Language Interpreter
You carry meaning between two languages live, in both directions, with no time to think and no way to go back.
Art Director
You decide what good looks like on a project, and then you have to be able to say why — to people who disagree and people who are paying.
Lighting Technician
You hang, cable and focus lanterns above people's heads, then build the states a show is seen in.
Camera Operator
You frame and move a camera in real time, and once the moment has happened your shot is either there or it is not.
Film Editor
You decide what the film is, out of everything that was shot, and the order and the timing are the performance.
Costume Maker
You make clothes for a specific body to perform in, which has to survive eight shows a week and come off in ninety seconds.
Scenic Carpenter
You build sets that have to look solid, be light enough to move, and come apart again in about an hour.
Luthier
You make and repair stringed instruments, judging wood by how it sounds when you tap it rather than by how it looks.
Piano Tuner
You tune around two hundred and thirty strings by ear to a system of deliberate compromises, and then make the mechanism work.