The Documentary Filmmaker’s Intuition: Creating Ethical and Impactful Non-Fiction Films

This book is an introduction to the art and craft of documentary filmmaking with a focus on ethics and impact from development through distribution. Author Shannon Walsh explores point-of-view storytelling, writing for nonfiction, and the art of social change documentary.

Offering an overview of the documentary filmmaking process - from idea to pitch to a final film and impact campaign - this book provides nonfiction filmmakers with the methods required to find a voice, style, and cinematic approach to documentary filmmaking. Key areas covered include definition of styles and genres of documentary film; project development and proposal writing; basic elements of documentary storytelling such as interview techniques, vérité filming, use of archives, stills, and point of view; the process of preparing and delivering a project pitch; pre-production; and finding the necessary elements to tell a story cinematically. With a specific focus on ethics and character-driven storytelling, Walsh shares her own personal insights on talking to strangers and the importance of empathetic listening skills and intuition and provides useful worksheets that filmmakers can use for their own projects.

This book is ideal for both students of documentary filmmaking and aspiring documentary filmmakers who are interested in creating ethical and impactful films.

Shannon Walsh is a filmmaker, an Associate Professor in Film Production at the University of British Columbia, and a Research Associate at the South African Research Chair in Social Change at the University of Johannesburg. She has written and directed six feature documentaries. Her films have been theatrically released, broadcast on networks such as ARTE, Al-Jazeera, CBC and Netflix, and screened at film festivals and museums globally. She has also published two edited books and many articles and chapters exploring issues such as inequality, social justice and visual methods. She was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2020, and awarded the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Art in 2023.