What Are Some Creative Storytelling Ideas For My Documentary?

by Peter
(Switzerland)


Question: I am writing to you from Switzerland. I started to make a documentary about my country. The film shows the history from the Ice age, up to today.

I find that narration for the film (about 75 Min.) only by one person would be boring.

These are my questions:

I would like the film to be narrated by a figure like a Bird, a comic figure or another subject which would appear in the video from time to time.

Do you know of any documentary which has such a figure to explain the Video?

Or do you have any suggestion, how to go about to create it? Or a program to use?

I hope you will understand my (bad) English and thank you for any help you will be able to give me.

Peter



Hi Peter,

That's a great question. Mixing up your narration is a great idea to keep the story interesting and fresh.

One example that comes to mind is a documentary called I Want Your Money. It's been a while since I've seen it, so not sure that's exactly what you had in mind, but it's an example of how cartoons are used to keep a serious subject funny and light.

Since you mentioned birds, the Flock of Dodos documentary might be an interesting watch for you.

Other creative storytelling techniques involve using stop motion, reenactments (with actors) and animation such as in the Oscar winning documentary Searching For SugarMan.

You can either hire an animator like Brian Jenkins did on his documentary "Answering The Call". Read about his project here. Or you can try out some animation software yourself. Just google "free/open source animation software".

Hopefully that gets you started. Maybe others can will comment below with more ideas.

Click here to post comments

Join in and write your own page! It's easy to do. How? Simply click here to return to Ask a Question.

7 Day Documentary Crash Course

Ready To Make Your Dream Documentary?

Sign up for our exclusive 7-day crash course and learn step-by-step how to make a documentary from idea to completed movie! 



Return Home