I’ve become completely obsessed with Netflix original programming. ‘House of Cards’ and ‘Orange is the New Black’ are two of my new favorite shows. I also love having access to such an amazing library of film and television and have watched some truly enlightening documentaries.
I like giving music-themed gifts. I’ve given a couple of music documentaries to boys. Especially if they don’t have the same taste as me, I try to infiltrate their mind with my favourite bands.
When making documentaries, the most important thing I learned was to listen, observe gestures and facial expressions.
I did a few documentaries as co-director and cameraman. I started off shooting a film about the war in Rhodesia. Then I did a film about an ‘around the world’ yacht race with a friend, and we spent nine months on a yacht. The film was about how people get on in confined spaces under extreme stress.
People have said to me, ‘Oh, you are much nicer making documentaries than you were in politics.’ So I should be. If you are making a documentary, you are having fun. You are not under any pressure, normally.
’30 for 30s’ are amazing. They’re little documentaries and can be anywhere from half an hour to an hour-and-a-half – great sports stories.
The documentaries are one thing – I was highlighting someone else’s work, someone else’s genius. Once I had to find my own voice, I’m glad I was a little bit older and had some confidence and had all these great inspirations to draw from.
The notion of what is public and what is private has been dissolved. My children see documentaries; they see Instagram. Everyone is very open: it has become less taboo to expose lives.
I try to learn from both, from features and documentaries. In both cases you have to find a way to make the camera as discreet as possible, and flexible enough to be able to capture the moment when it happens. I know from documentary how to not have a preconceived idea of what the scene could be.
I love documentaries and the computer. I am a little addicted to the computer, and that relaxes me. I find information, I shop, and I look up people I worked with to find out if they’re dead or alive.
You can only shoot small movies and documentaries for so long if you want to have a family that you support; eventually, you need to get let into the big leagues.
My paid gigs allow me to pay for my documentaries, like a drug habit, I suppose. If I’m lucky enough to be working steady, however, it leaves little time for the documentary hobby.
Once you recognize that all documentaries are performance, it’s not a matter of ‘if’ they should be performance. They are performance, and they are performance precisely where people are playing themselves.
In terms of so-called fly-on-the-wall documentaries, there’s a claim that the camera is a transparent window into a pre-existing reality. What really is happening is that the film crew and the subjects are collaborating to simulate a reality in which they pretend the camera is not present.
I don’t spend too much time on my phone, laptop or television. However, I do occasionally watch documentaries and shows on streaming platforms.
Documentaries shouldn’t just reflect the world: they should try and explain why reality is like it is.
I’m not necessarily scanning for clues when I make documentaries.
The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve gotten a little precious about music-related films as it comes to biopics. I kind of don’t want to see it; I’d rather see a documentary. And this is just coming from me. I love music documentaries; I kind of don’t want to see people embodying those people.
Because in this business, as you know, you don’t get that many bites at the apple, so I make documentaries for HBO and that’s what I do.
I watch documentaries and travel the world and see all sorts of life.
Sound is the most important thing on any film, especially documentaries.
When critics talk about Three, they talk about ‘Don’t Tell the Bride’ and ‘Snog Marry Avoid?,’ but we’re also making important documentaries. We take hard-hitting issues and make them accessible.
I want to do more documentaries and travel to places I haven’t been. That is where I think I can be fulfilled.
I’m a big watcher of sports, consumer of sports content, so I love documentaries; I love the format.
My philosophy as a filmmaker is to inform and entertain at the same time. And when I went away from documentaries into miniseries like ‘Roots,’ I did the reverse. Instead of just entertaining, I want to inform at the same time.
I love to see the rarest movies, the most talked-about movies and documentaries. I read all the reviews and compare them to see if it’s worth going! I have a secret movie critic blog I have shown no one or promoted, and I intend to keep it that way.
I don’t think I’ll be making documentaries my whole life.
I like documentaries because there’s nothing to nitpick or criticize about scenes if they aren’t just right. It’s about honesty and real-life circumstances coming out. Granted it can be swayed by how people tell that story, but overall, I like it because it is true.
We never see any journalism or documentaries on the oceans and what we’re doing on this Earth and how it affects the oceans and how important they are. I’m intrigued by it. It’s almost an untold story.
I know it might be kind of ironic, but I like funny films and documentaries.
My father was a television director and producer, working on documentaries and current affairs programmes including ‘Panorama,’ and I didn’t think he’d find acting a sensible option. But as soon as I’d finished my A-levels, I got on a train to Edinburgh, and that was it.
There’s no money in documentaries.
I thought that, as a black audience member, I would like to see something that reflected an experience that’s not normally exhibited in documentaries, or is so much about black people as victims in this country, and black people not taking control of their own lives and their own destinies.
I watch documentaries for information. I watch films to be entertained.
Documentaries require an enormous amount of grit and empathy – and that is something women are incredibly strong at.
It’s hard to make a living doing documentaries. Frankly, if it takes you five years to do a film, and that’s the only film you’re doing, you’re in trouble.
Too many documentaries are intellectual exercises. I want documentaries to be alive.
No, I worked a lot for European television, doing documentaries in Brazil.
I’ve always been weirdly interested in food documentaries.
I’d really likely to shoot wildlife documentaries. I watched so many of those as a child, and I’m quite into wildlife and love photography as well, so that’s something I’d like to do.
I don’t normally make documentaries. I’m a drama director. I’ve made a few short docs, but I don’t like talking heads or ‘voice of God’ narrators.
Some of the History Channel’s documentaries involve docudrama segments and are highly speculative – but there seems, on the part of the producers, to be a real determination to get at the history behind our past – not the sex, which is left to drama shows and entertainment channels.
I just like documentaries.
I earn a lot of money in England doing voice-overs, especially in documentaries. Turn on the Discovery Channel here, and you’ll hear my voice a lot. It subsidizes my vice of acting in the theater.
Coming from documentaries, my biggest challenge was to understand actors’ psychologies. American actors take it all very seriously; British actors don’t enter into all this methody way of doing things.
At home, I watch fights and documentaries – that’s it. If it’s not about the birth and death of stars, ‘Frozen Planet,’ or someone getting punched in the face, I’m probably not watching it.
If you’re not doing it for the right reasons, then you’d be dumb to be making documentaries.
In fiction film, there are so many trappings – money, glory, champagne and supermodels – that attract the wolves. But in documentary film, there’s none of that, so the wolves stay away. The only people who make docs are people who are curious about other people and just like making documentaries.
I did not want to prance around trees singing and dancing. I had to make a living and for that I started with documentaries for government agencies on subjects such as adult education, child welfare, and so on.
I make short films, little documentaries, about the co-evolution of humans and technology.
I never got into making documentaries for any kind of success, because documentary careers are generally ones of prolonged failures.
I played a doctor on ‘Counterpart’, so that was about studying and watching documentaries and reading and trying to learn.
I’ve done several commercials and I’ve done voiceovers for documentaries.
I love watching documentaries on people like ‘clean freaks,’ because it’s just so interesting to me for some reason.
For a while I had a little company and made corporate videos, did some little documentaries, almost, for court cases and mediations.
Even though I was making documentaries, my films had fictional elements to them. I think I like blurring those distinctions because so much of what we see on television purports to be the truth, but it’s often largely imaginary – or wishful thinking, or any number of less honorable things.
