The Documentary Approach: On set with Mango & Kate Moss

Sometimes people have a hard time appreciating the great differences between commercial and documentary approaches to video production.

Part of the difference stems from the historical need of the documentary filmmaker to adapt to the realities of working within limited budgets – budgets that simply wouldn’t work within a traditional commercial approach. Since much of the work done in the documentary domain has been labor of love, it has been a situation of  “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” For example, it’s typical for documentary filmmakers to rise before dawn so they can film in beautiful early morning light, rather than set up huge lighting. They tend to focus on a well-crafted interview and capture people in their natural element in conversation rather than spend weeks developing scenes with scripts and storyboards.

You may recall Mark Plotkin’s book, Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice, where the Harvard ethnobotanist is surprised to learn how the Amazonian shaman, with no access to modern medicine, is able to diagnose diabetes. Simple. He tastes the urine of the patient for sweetness!

Luckily, we don’t have to go to these lengths, but we are often as perplexed as the shaman was by the complexity and cost of the approach that our commercial production cousins take to filmmaking.

Watch the “Making Of” video of this 30-second commercial Mango spot featuring Kate Moss to see what I mean.


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