Documentary Videos

A documentary videographer captures real life stories in an organic nature. Very often filming with minimal natural light and less processed setups. This helps create a more authentic film.

Story is at the heart of documentary videography, focusing on an engaging must watch narrative.

Documentary videos can be shot by a small 1 person crew or a bigger team. Many documentary films enjoy the benefits of smaller crews. As a result you can capture more natural moments.

I have personally filmed a great number of different documentary films. These documentaries have taken me all over the world. A few of my highlights are as follows:

Tuscan Oliveto
This film focused on the wonderful story of an English man who moved to Tuscany and bought a house with an olive orchard. He slowly learnt the process of producing olive oil along with helping hands from his friends.

I filmed this project as a one man videographer. Kit wise I used just 1 x Sony video camera with 1 x Canon 24-105 lens. The benefit of this setup was the range the lens offered to not miss moments. The camera offered super slow motion at 100fps in 4k. This was a hige benefit for filming olives falling form trees.

When it came to sound I used a Rode NTG2 microphone which was perfect to get a direct sounding recording. I prefer to use direct microphones compared to lapel mics. They just seem to have a deeper and richer sound.

When it came to moving the camera, of course I had a gimbal to hand. A mix of moving shots with locked of well composed frames just works so well. This was my vision for this film.

A Voyage in the Working Thames

This was a film commissioned by the National Maritime Museum which took the audience on a journey down the river Thames. We followed the journey of an aggregate ship from Colchester into central London. This journey was a privilege to capture as a videographer. After all it's not every day a videographer can film London from the middle of the Thames.

This project was filmed over two days, with one spent for on land interviews and a second day spent on board the ship for over 12 hours. When preparing camera kit for such. long shoot you always have to have consider several things. Battery life for your camera is a key consideration. With this in mind I took 6 x large Sony batteries which I knew would last beyond the 12 hour period they were needed for. The other consideration was card space. All experienced London based videographers will carry substantial memory card supplies. I carry over 1000 hours worth of space as standard filming in regular 4k mode. Being on board a vessel means you dont have a chance to charge, off load footage or grab additional kit for your vehicle. We were ready for the filming on this one and ensured we had a good nights sleep to cope with the 3.30am wake up and 10.30pm finish.

The result was a fantastically unique film that ended up winning an award.

Faceless, Forgotten

This was a documentary film focusing on the refugee crisis within Europe. The story takes the audience through London, France, Greece and Macedonia.

We were a small crew for the filming. Myself as the DOP and videographer, a director who doubled up as the presenter and a producer. Having a small crew for this was a huge advantage. Thus enabled us to be unintuitive was is incredibly important when dealing with such a sensitive subject.

Camera wise I actually filmed this on a Sony A7S in the days before the A7S mkii and mkiii. This small camera with great low light capabilities made for the perfect camera for this project. Sometimes it's nice being forced to film with less kit. The result was a more authentic classic documentary video style. Being a videographer based in London, projects like this are just fantastic.

A London based videographer and cameraman usually charges anywhere between £450+VAT and £1250+VAT. This rate will vary depending on kit provided. How many cameras, sound kit , rigs such as gimbals and lenses will all alter the day rate of a videographer. Expenses would be on top depending on how far you would need a videographer to travel. The giong rate is 0.45p per mile. You should also expect to cover travel time for anything over a 4 hour round trip.

Documentary videos can vary in length from mini-docs around 2 or 3 minutes to full length of over an hour. Each project is different and documentary videos can even be hybrids of corporate video and documentary. For example if a business wanted to tell an authentic brand story, this might be classified as a corporate video. However it could be done in a documentary video style. With this in mind, documentary video can work for such a wide range of scenarios and video projects. As long as you have a top videographer leading the project, you can bring your vision ot life.