[Frameworks] Scriptwriting for Documentary

[Scott Dorsey]

I have worked on documentaries that were carefully storyboarded shot by shot
beforehand.  I have also worked on some where the camera crew was told to
"go out and get shots of that event" and the script was put together after
the fact, looking at the footage that came in.

Good docco cameramen think of the story as they are shooting and they stop
and try and gather bits and pieces of scenes that fit together.  This makes
it easier when they come back to figure out how to make them work, because
they were shot to work that way.  

I have seen storyboards, film-style scripts, and two-column scripts, and 
all have some place somewhere.

The best book I know of on docco production is "Filming TV News and 
Documentaries" by Atkins and Willette.  It is somewhat dated even by 16mm
production standards, and it's not exclusively about screenwriting, but
the nature of documentary production is that all of the different jobs are
mashed together and the lines between them are blurred.
--scott