Get Close: Lean Team Documentary Filmmaking

A refreshing new practical approach to documentary filmmaking, Get Close: Lean Team Documentary Filmmaking equips new and veteran filmmakers with the knowhow to make artistically rewarding documentaries for less money, less hassle, and less time. Author and veteran filmmaker Rustin Thompson shows that by stripping away, sidestepping, or reassessing the entrenched industry hurdles-long waits for funding, the unwieldy crews, the unnecessary gear, the gauntlet of film festivals, pitch forums, and distribution networks-filmmakers can move quickly from idea to execution to finished film. Throughout the book, Thompson demystifies and de-clutters the way docs are produced today, illustrating the use of a few simple and accessible tools and techniques while still engaging with the aesthetic possibilities of the medium, its creative opportunities and its satisfying rewards of giving back to the world. Using the essential lessons in Get Close, filmmakers will learn to eliminate physical
and financial barriers between themselves and their subject matter, ultimately leading them to tell more artful, illuminating stories and find the joy in documentary filmmaking.

Rustin Thompson is a writer and filmmaker who has made six feature length documentaries, beginning with 30 Frames A Second: The WTO in Seattle (2000), which won several Best Documentary awards and was named one of the Top Ten films of the year by the American Library Association. He is a former CBS News cameraman and national Emmy award winner who, along with his wife and filmmaking partner Ann Hedreen, own White Noise Productions, where they’ve made more than 150 short documentaries for non-profits. Thompson is also host of the popular Americana radio program Road Songs on KBCS.FM and is a graduate in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Washington. He lives in Seattle.