The way I actually do it. Not theory. Not film school. The real process, from the first idea to the final frame.

Pritesh Khare

Every time someone watches a documentary and says “wow, that was beautifully made” — what they are really responding to is the finished product of an incredibly long, layered, and sometimes exhausting process. The polished frame, the seamless edit, the music that hits you right in the chest — none of that appears out of thin air. It is built, piece by piece, decision by decision, long before the camera ever rolls.

I have been working as a cinematographer, director, and screenplay writer for years now. I have shot commercial documentaries for organisations, brands, and agencies. I have sat in edit suites at midnight, second-guessing cuts I thought were locked. I have walked into spaces I had never seen before and had to create a frame in under three minutes because a senior official had exactly that long before his/her next meeting. I have learned this process the hard way — not from a textbook, but from doing the actual work.

This guide is my honest attempt to walk you through that process — all five phases of it — the way I actually experience it. I am not going to dress it up or make it sound more glamorous than it is. Documentary filmmaking is equal parts creative and logistical. It demands patience, preparation, technical skill, emotional intelligence, and above all, a genuine respect for the story you are trying to tell. If you have that, everything else can be learned.

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Before We Begin

Personal vs Commercial Documentaries — Know Which One You Are Making

Before we get into the process, I want to address something that a lot of people gloss over — the fundamental difference between a personal documentary and a commercial one. They look similar on the surface, but they operate under entirely different rules, and confusing the two is one of the most common mistakes I see aspiring filmmakers make.

A personal documentary is something you make because you want to. There is no client, no brief, no approval process. You choose the subject because it matters to you — a journey you took, a person you find fascinating, a community story that nobody else is telling. The timeline is yours. The creative direction is yours. The story can evolve as you shoot and edit, and nobody is going to send you revision feedback on cut three. That freedom is genuinely wonderful, but it also means that the only person holding you accountable to quality is you.

A commercial documentary is a different beast. Someone has hired you to tell a specific story for a specific purpose — to showcase a brand’s legacy, document a CSR initiative, capture an institutional milestone, or communicate something to a particular audience. There is an objective. There is a vision that belongs to someone else. And your job — even when you disagree, even when you think you have a better idea — is to serve that vision first.

Here is the important part: whether you are making a personal documentary or a commercial one, the technical process is identical. Research, screenplay, shoot, data management, editing — all of it applies equally. The only real difference is whose creative brief you are working from. In a personal documentary, that brief comes from inside your own head. In a commercial one, it comes from a conversation with your client.

Most of what I am going to share in this guide is drawn from commercial documentary work, because that is where the stakes are higher, the constraints are tighter, and the lessons are harder earned. But if you are making something personal, every single thing here applies to you too — just remove the client from the equation and hold yourself to that same standard.

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Phase 1

Pre-Production — The Foundation That Everything Else Is Built On

If I had to pick one phase that determines whether a documentary succeeds or fails, it would be pre-production. Not the shoot. Not the edit. Pre-production. Because every problem you solve at this stage is a problem that does not blow up in your face on a shoot day or in the middle of an edit.

The First Conversation — Listen Before You Think

When a client comes to me wanting a documentary, the conversation usually starts the same way. They tell me about their brand, their legacy, their unique selling points, a project they are proud of, or a milestone they want to document. They are excited and they have a vision, even if that vision is not fully formed yet.

My instinct as a filmmaker is to immediately start generating ideas — to picture shots, to think about structure, to imagine what the opening frame might look like. I have learned to resist that instinct completely. The first meeting is not for ideas. It is for listening. I sit across from them and I ask questions. Lots of questions. What is the story they actually want to tell? Who is this documentary really for? What do they want the audience to feel when it ends? What has never been said about this subject that needs to be said?

I cannot begin writing a screenplay or making any meaningful creative decisions until I can see the project clearly in my own mind. And that clarity only comes from deep, honest, patient conversation. There is no shortcut to this step, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either overconfident or has not been burned badly enough yet.

Research — Do It Yourself, Independently

After that first conversation, before I write a single line of the screenplay, I do my own research. Not just a Google search. Actual research. I read about the organisation, its history, its people, its challenges. I look for existing content about the subject — other videos, articles, reports. If I can visit the location before the shoot, I go. I try to speak to people on the ground — not just the PR contact or the marketing head, but the actual human beings whose stories might end up in the film.

Why do I do this independently rather than relying on what the client tells me? Because clients, no matter how honest they are, will naturally present their story in the most favourable light. That is human nature. My job as a filmmaker is to find the fuller, more layered truth — not to contradict their narrative, but to enrich it. The questions I am trying to answer at this stage are:

• What is the real story here — not the official version, the human one?
• Who are the people whose faces and voices can carry this story with authenticity?
• What has already been documented about this subject, and what gap does this film fill?
• What do I want someone sitting at home to understand or feel after watching this?

Aligning on Vision — The Most Important Meeting You Will Have

Once my research is complete, I sit back down with the client for what I consider the most important meeting of any project — the vision alignment discussion. This is not a pitch. I am not presenting ideas. I am asking them to articulate, as specifically as possible, what they want this documentary to achieve. Who is the audience? What is the core message? What tone are they imagining — emotional and personal, or authoritative and informative? Is this for internal stakeholders, the general public, investors, or all three?

When these questions have clear answers, everything that comes after becomes easier. The screenplay has direction. The shoot has purpose. The edit has a north star. When these questions are left vague, every subsequent decision becomes a negotiation, and those negotiations always happen at the worst possible time — usually on set or halfway through the edit.

The Hardest Lesson I Had to Learn — It Is Their Vision, Not Yours

I want to be honest about something here, because I think it is one of the most important things any filmmaker working commercially needs to understand. Early in my career, I used to push my own creative instincts very hard. I had ideas about how something should be shot, how a story should be structured, what the film should feel like. And my intentions were always genuine — I truly believed I was fighting for the best version of the film.

But I was wrong. Not about the ideas themselves, but about whose ideas should take precedence. When someone commissions a documentary, they are not just paying for your technical skill. They are trusting you to tell their story the way they imagine it — not the way you imagine it. Your job is to take their vision and execute it at the highest possible level of craft. There is enormous creativity in that. It is just a different kind of creativity than imposing your own aesthetic.

The shift I made — from pushing my own vision to genuinely investing in theirs — is one of the biggest reasons I am still passionate about commercial documentary work after all these years. Every project is a new world, a new challenge, a new way of seeing something. That is endlessly interesting if you allow it to be.

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Phase 2

Writing the Screenplay — The Most Underestimated Part of the Entire Process

People often assume that documentary filmmaking does not require a screenplay — that you just show up with a camera and capture reality as it unfolds. That might be true for a certain kind of observational documentary. But for any project with a structure, a narrative arc, an argument to make, or a story to tell — the screenplay is everything. It is the document that holds the entire film together before a single frame exists.

What a Documentary Screenplay Actually Is

A documentary screenplay is not a script in the way a feature film has a script. Nobody is reciting lines. But it is a detailed written plan of how the film will unfold — scene by scene, moment by moment. It describes the locations, the subjects, the camera approach, the tone of each segment, whether a scene will carry voice-over or breathe through ambient sound, how the story moves from one moment to the next. It is the map I use on set when everything gets chaotic, and it always gets chaotic.

Without a screenplay, you arrive on a shoot with footage in your head and hope. With a screenplay, you arrive with clarity. And on a real shoot — with limited time, limited budget, subjects who have other places to be, and light that changes every twenty minutes — clarity is the only currency that actually matters.

How I Actually Write — It Is Not a Linear Process

My writing process looks messy from the outside. I do not sit down on day one and write the screenplay from beginning to end. I move forward, I go back, I change things I thought were settled. I might be deep into writing a sequence that happens twelve minutes into the film and suddenly realise that the way this scene is unfolding gives me a completely different idea for how the documentary should open. So I go back and change the opening.

That is not indecision. That is how good writing actually works. The screenplay is a living document. It evolves as your understanding of the story deepens. The only mistake is locking it too early — committing to something before you have fully explored it. I have changed the structure of a screenplay four times before arriving at the version I finally brought to set. And every one of those changes made the film better.

• Each scene described with location, subject, action, and intended camera approach
• Notes on sound design for each scene — voice-over, ambient, interview bytes, or music
• Transitions marked — how does the story move emotionally from one moment to the next?
• Shot types indicated — wide establishing, medium interview frame, close-up detail, cutaway
• Pacing notes — which moments need to breathe, which need to move quickly

There is a real difference between imagining a shot and writing it. Imagining is easy — your mind fills in every detail automatically. Writing forces you to be specific. And specificity is what separates a vague creative intention from something you can actually execute on set with a crew and a camera.

Why I Involve the Client’s Team During the Screenplay Stage?

One of the most practical lessons I have learned over the years is to bring the client’s marketing or creative team into the screenplay process early — not after it is written, but while it is being written. Because the people who understand the brand’s messaging, tone, and communication goals are not always the same person who commissioned the film. The marketing team knows which faces represent the brand well on camera. The creative team knows what language the brand uses and what it absolutely avoids. Getting their input at this stage takes time, but it saves enormous time later.

The further into production you get, the more expensive changes become — in time, in resources, in the energy of everyone involved. A change at the screenplay stage costs you an afternoon. The same change after the shoot has happened costs you a reshoot. Get the alignment early, always.

The screenplay is your north star. When you are on set and something is not working — the light is wrong, the subject is nervous, the location looks nothing like you imagined — the screenplay is what keeps you anchored to the story. Never go to a shoot without one.

I have not studied in a Film School to learn Screenplay in detail but the book The Foundations of Screenwriting by SYD Field is what I recommend you read to synchronize you intutional and technical creativity

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Phase 3

Data Management — The Unglamorous Phase That Can Save or Destroy Your Project

Nobody talks about this, Nobody makes YouTube videos about it. It does not look impressive and it does not feel creative. But data management is, in my experience, one of the most critical disciplines in documentary filmmaking — and the consequences of getting it wrong are severe enough that I want to spend real time on it here.

A single day of documentary shooting can generate fifty to a hundred gigabytes (gb) of footage. A multi-day project can produce several terabytes. This footage represents weeks of planning, days of travel, hours of interviews with people who may never be available again, and irreplaceable moments that cannot be recreated. Lose that data, and you do not just lose files. You lose the project entirely.

How I Manage Data During a Shoot?

I carry a minimum of six to eight memory cards on any documentary shoot. As soon as a card fills, it gets offloaded and backed up — I do not wait until the end of the day, because a lot can happen between when a card fills and when I get back to my workspace. Every single card is labelled before the shoot even starts — date, location, shoot number. This sounds tediously simple, but when you are managing footage from multiple shoot days across multiple locations weeks later, that labelling is the only thing standing between you and complete chaos.

And the rule I never break: no card gets reformatted until I have personally verified the backup. Not delegated. Not assumed. Personally confirmed that the footage exists on the backup drive and is playable. One corrupted backup has the potential to wipe out an entire day’s work, and I have seen it happen.

• Minimum six to eight memory cards on every documentary shoot
• Cards backed up as they fill — never waiting until the end of the day
• Every card labelled before the shoot: date, location, shoot number
• No card reformatted until the backup has been personally and physically verified

How I Store and Organise Footage After the Shoot?

A documentary can shoot across weeks or months. During that entire period, the footage is the project — it is the one thing that cannot be replaced. I maintain at least two offline copies on separate hard drives, stored in separate physical locations. I have a cloud backup of all interview bytes specifically, because those are often the hardest content to recreate if something goes wrong.

Folders are organised by shoot date, location, and subject — I maintain a master log of everything that was shot — what exists, where it is stored, and the backup status of every drive.

• At least two offline copies on separate drives stored in separate locations
• Cloud backup for all interview bytes and critical footage
• Folders organised by shoot date, location, and subject
• Master log maintained throughout the project: what exists, where it lives, backup status

A word about hard drives specifically: drives carrying large volumes of data, being plugged in and out of different machines over months of a project, carry a genuine risk of corruption. My personal rule is to only use drives that come with a Data Rescue Warranty — meaning if the drive fails, the manufacturer will attempt data recovery under that warranty. I check for this warranty before I buy any drive or memory card for a professional project. It is not a luxury. It is basic insurance for your work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GW1MZxTWBrQ&t=301s

The Client Data Agreement — Have This Conversation Before the Project Starts

This is a conversation I did not have on one of my early projects, and it created a genuinely uncomfortable situation that I could have entirely avoided. Before any project begins, I now establish a clear, written agreement with the client about what happens to their data — the raw footage, the project files, the final deliverables.

The things that need to be explicitly agreed upon, in writing, before a single frame is shot:

• How will the final deliverables be transferred — hard drive, cloud link, or not at all?
• How long after delivery am I responsible for retaining their footage?
• When exactly does data responsibility formally transfer to the client?
• Is long-term storage a separate paid service, or is it assumed to be included in the project fee?

Most production houses retain project backups as standard practice. But that is different from promising a client indefinite storage of their raw footage. Long-term storage is a service with real costs — drives, electricity, maintenance, and the time to manage it. It should be priced and agreed upon separately, never assumed.

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Phase 4

The Shoot — Where Everything You Have Prepared Gets Tested

This is the phase most people romanticise. The camera, the crew, the locations, the action. And it is genuinely exciting — I still get a particular kind of energy on a shoot day that I do not get anywhere else. But it is also the phase where all your preparation either saves you or fails you, often within the first hour.

The Reality of Shooting at Different Scales

I want to be honest about something that a lot of filmmaking guides skip over: there is a massive difference between how a large-scale documentary production operates and how most of us actually work. A documentary about a city produced for a major streaming platform might have a crew of eight to ten people — a dedicated sound engineer, a gaffer managing the lighting, a steadicam operator, a drone pilot, a production coordinator, a director, and a DOP. Their budget might run into millions. They can afford to wait for the right light, rebuild a setup from scratch if something is not working, and have redundancies for every piece of equipment.

Most of us do not work like that. I have shot full documentary projects with myself, an intern cinematographer, and a photography assistant. The budget is a fraction of what those large productions work with. We cannot create elaborate sets. We cannot bring in specialised lighting rigs. What we can do — what we must do — is be so thoroughly prepared that we can solve any problem that comes up on set quickly and confidently. Preparation is the great equaliser.

What Real Shoot Coordination Looks Like — Two Examples

Let me tell you about two shoots from my recent work that illustrate what I mean when I talk about coordination and preparation.

The first was a documentary that required an interview with an IAS officer. In a normal commercial shoot, if something is not working — the frame is off, the sound is picking up noise from outside, the subject is uncomfortable with the camera angle — you stop, adjust, and try again. You have that latitude. With someone at that level, in that role, with that schedule, I had none of that latitude. I arrived at the location without knowing exactly what space would be available. I walked in, read the room in about ninety seconds, decided on a frame, set my light, positioned the microphone, did a quick sound check, and was ready before she walked in. There was no second take, no “could we just move the chair a little.” The interview happened once, and it had to be right. The reason it worked was not luck. It was that I had played that scenario out in my head so many times before I arrived that when reality diverged from the plan, I already knew what my next move was.

The second example is a current project involving schools and colleges — classroom activities, corridor moments, interviews with teachers and principals. I always try to request a better space when I can — somewhere with natural light, a little depth, a clean backdrop. And sometimes I get it. But often, the principal has seven minutes between meetings and the only space available is their small office with a single window, fluorescent overhead light, and a cluttered desk behind them. That is what you are working with. You do not get to say “this is not ideal, can we reschedule?” You make the best frame possible with what exists in front of you, because the alternative is no footage at all.

Being technically equipped does not just mean owning good gear. It means knowing your gear so well that in a challenging situation — difficult light, a cramped space, a subject who has three minutes and not four — you solve problems in seconds. That only comes from practice. Put your camera in your hands as often as possible, even when you are not on a paid job.

The Equipment Check — The Night Before, Not the Morning Of

I do my equipment check the night before every shoot, without exception. The morning of a shoot, you do not have time to discover that a battery did not charge overnight or that a lens has a scratch you did not notice. The night before, you have time to fix problems. The morning of, you do not.

• Camera body — sensor cleaned, settings reset to base profile, firmware current
• All lenses — front and rear elements cleaned, mounted and tested on the body
• Minimum three fully charged camera batteries for a six-hour shoot, plus a portable power bank for rotation charging on longer days
• Gimbal — fully charged, pre-calibrated and balanced for the primary lens you plan to use
• Microphones — lavalier, directional, or boom depending on the shoot environment; tested and clean
• Lights — LED panels, softbox, and portable fill lights; all tested, all spare bulbs packed
• ND filters, extension cables, HDMI field monitor
• Memory cards — freshly formatted, labelled, counted, and ready
• Lens cleaning kit, gaffer tape, cable ties, and a small toolkit — these sound trivial until you need them

The Technical Knowledge You Cannot Do Without

There is a tendency among aspiring cinematographers to prioritise the creative eye over technical knowledge, as though the two are in competition. They are not. Your creative eye means nothing if you cannot execute technically. I have watched genuinely talented people freeze on set because they were not comfortable enough with their camera to operate it confidently under pressure. Here is what you need to have complete command over before you go anywhere near a professional shoot:

• Full manual exposure — aperture, ISO, shutter speed — without touching auto at any point
• White balance and colour temperature management across changing and mixed lighting conditions
• Manual focus pulling, particularly when your subject is moving or the camera is moving
• Gimbal setup — understanding how different lenses and camera weights affect balance and how to compensate
• Frame rate selection — 24fps for a cinematic feel, 60fps or above when you know you will slow footage down in post
• Understanding log picture profiles versus standard profiles, and what that means for your colour grade later
• Depth of field — using a wide aperture to isolate a subject, stopping down for wider group shots or landscapes

My Shooting Philosophy

I want to talk about something that does not get discussed enough in technical guides, which is the mindset you bring to a shoot. Finding the right frame is a skill that takes years to develop, and in the early days it feels almost impossible. You look through the viewfinder and everything looks either too ordinary or wrong. That feeling does not fully go away — it just becomes more productive over time. The discomfort starts to drive better decisions rather than paralysing you.

After years of shooting, I can now visualise a frame before I raise the camera. I know roughly which lens I want for which situation. I know how to use depth and negative space and the golden ratio not as rules I am consciously applying but as instincts I have developed. But all of that came from shooting as much as possible and then honestly reviewing my own work — not to feel good about it, but to understand specifically what was not working and why.

“Shoot as much relevant footage as you possibly can. More options in the edit room means more room to find the rhythm the film needs.”

Two principles I hold onto on every single shoot, regardless of the project or the pressure I am under:

• Always capture multiple framings of the same subject — a close-up, a medium shot, a wider environmental frame. The edit will thank you.
• Beautiful footage that does not serve the story is useless. Relevance comes first. Aesthetics serve the story, not the other way around.

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Phase 5

Post-Production — This Is Where the Documentary Is Actually Made

Here is the truth that surprises a lot of people: everything that has happened so far — the research, the screenplay, the shoot — accounts for less than half of the total work involved in making a documentary. Post-production is where the raw material you have collected gets shaped into something that actually works as a film. It is the longest phase, the most mentally demanding, and the one where the quality of every decision you made earlier either pays off or comes back to haunt you.

What You Are Actually Looking at When You Open the Edit

On a typical documentary project, by the time I sit down to begin the edit, I am looking at somewhere between two hundred fifty and four hundred individual clips. There will be eight to twelve interview bytes, often in multiple takes. There is a music brief to work from. There may be a voice-over script that still needs to be recorded. There is a full colour grade still ahead of me. And all of this exists as raw, unassembled material — a pile of pieces that need to be built into something coherent, emotional, and purposeful.

I will be honest with you: the moment I open an edit on a new documentary project is the moment I feel most overwhelmed. Not anxious exactly, but aware of the full weight of everything that needs to happen. That feeling is part of the process. I have come to understand it as a signal that the project matters, not a sign that something is wrong.

The Seven Layers of an Edit

I think about post-production as building in layers. You do not do everything at once. You work through the film systematically, adding and refining one layer at a time, until all of those layers are working together to create the final film.

1. Primary Assembly — Getting everything into a rough timeline in the order suggested by the screenplay. This is not the cut — it is the raw material laid out so you can see what you are working with.
2. Interview Refinement — Going through every take of every interview byte and selecting the best version. Then cutting those bytes down to only what actually matters — the clearest, most impactful moments.
3. B-Roll Placement — Pairing your visual footage with the interviews and narrative. This is where the film starts to breathe and feel like a real documentary rather than a series of talking heads.
4. Sound Mix — Balancing voice, music, and ambient sound across the entire timeline. Sound is fifty percent of the emotional experience of any film, and it deserves that level of attention.
5. Graphics and Text — Lower thirds, statistics, title cards, subtitles. The visual information layer that contextualises the story.
6. Colour Grade — Building the visual mood and consistency of the film. This is not just making footage look nice — it is making every shot feel like it belongs in the same story.
7. Final Review — Multiple passes through the completed cut, checking pacing, audio levels, continuity, and overall feel. Fresh eyes are essential here. I always leave a day between the last edit pass and the final review.

Channelising — The Mental Skill That Makes Editing Possible

The single most important mental skill in post-production is what I call channelising — the ability to look at a large volume of material with multiple possible interpretations and make a committed creative decision, even when you are not certain it is the only right one.

Here is the problem that every editor faces: there is almost never a single obviously correct answer. Two interview bytes might both work as the opening of the film. Three different sequences of B-roll might all support the same interview moment in different but equally valid ways. If you wait for certainty before making a decision, you will never finish the edit.

The way I think about it is this: two plus two equals four. But so does three plus one. And so does two times two. All three paths lead to the same destination. Channelizing means choosing one path — not because the other two are wrong, but because the film needs forward momentum. You commit to a direction, you follow it, and you stay open to revising if the footage tells you something different further down the road.

I change the structure of my edits multiple times on every project. That is not a sign of indecision — it is a sign that I am genuinely listening to what the footage wants to be. The best edits I have made came after I abandoned the first structure I thought was right and found the one the film was actually asking for.

How Long It Actually Takes and Why?

When I say a documentary takes me two weeks to edit, I do not mean two weeks of nine-to-five working hours at a desk. I mean two weeks of constant mental engagement with the material — at the desk, away from the desk, during a commute, lying awake at half past midnight thinking about whether a sequence is working. The edit lives in your head for as long as the project is open, and that is not something you can turn off.

I will look at the same cut fifteen times across several days. I will change the structure, feel good about it, come back with fresh eyes the next morning, and change it again. Colour grading gets done, then I step away and come back to it the following day with a different perspective. That cycle — working, stepping back, returning fresh — is not inefficiency. It is how I arrive at a version of the film I can genuinely stand behind.

One specific thing I want to flag: the selection of B-roll is not a mechanical decision. It is not about finding any piece of footage that fills the visual gap while an interview plays. The wrong B-roll — even if it is technically beautiful footage — can break the emotional flow of a sequence entirely. The right B-roll sustains the rhythm, deepens the meaning of what is being said, and keeps the viewer connected to the story. I make those decisions slowly and deliberately, and I change them often before I am satisfied.

Everything I have shared here is drawn from real projects, real clients, and real pressure. It is not a formula and it is not a guarantee. Filmmaking does not work like that. There will be projects where everything goes according to plan and the result is still somehow flat. And there will be projects where almost nothing goes to plan and the result is the best work you have ever done.

What I have learned — and what I try to carry into every single project regardless of size, budget, or subject — is that the quality of intention you bring to the work matters more than any individual technical decision. I treat every project as though it is the most important thing I am currently working on, because when I am working on it, it is. I leave no stone unturned. I am not always right. I do not always produce the work I hoped I would. But my values and my genuine effort are present in everything I put out — and over time, that consistency is what builds a body of work worth being proud of.

Writing, creating, directing — this is not a destination you arrive at. It is a process you commit to. I am still learning, still improving, still finding frames I have never found before. That is not a weakness. That is the point.

Watch My Video on How to Make a Documentary? https://youtu.be/61UTek5nflk?si=hQ8t18KtnumtLFb8

“The canvas you see was never painted in a day.