Filmmaking Craft
Documentary sound from location to delivery: room tone, ambiences, wild lines, foley ethics, dialogue editing, noise reduction, the mix, loudness and stems.
Read the pieceWe write about documentaries and independent films the way a good programmer talks about them in the lobby: what the film is actually doing, who made it and how, and why it might be worth your evening. Some pieces are reviews and essays, some are practical guides to festivals, funding and the craft, and a fair number come back to Canadian screens, where so much of the world’s documentary tradition was invented.
A guide to American Revolution documentaries, from Liberty! to the Ken Burns series, with the Canadian side: Halifax, the Loyalists and the Black Loyalists.
Keep readingWhat a documentary appearance release should cover, from likeness and territory to minors, locations and archive, and why Quebec protects image more firmly.
Keep readingHow to choose a field recorder for documentary sound: handheld or bag recorder, how many XLR inputs, 32-bit float, timecode and sync, headphones and power.
Keep readingFrom the NFB's wartime reels and Churchill's Island to the fight over The Valour and the Horror, how Canadian documentaries have remembered the world wars.
Keep readingA climbing documentary guide to Touching the Void, Free Solo, Meru, The Dawn Wall and more, with notes on filming risk and how cameras get up a wall.
Keep readingWhich SD card for 4K video, which portable SSD for editing, and how to offload, verify and back up a documentary shoot so that no footage is ever lost.
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