I’ve been writing about my next documentary film a lot lately. Business plans. Fundraising plans. Production plans. Budgets. Proposals. Timelines. You know, stuff that feels comfortable — but also challenging and exciting.

Capturing the documentary’s story on paper has been an delightfully challenging experience, though. How can you capture a documentary before it’s filmed? It’s real life. Things are changing all the time. Interviews aren’t scripted.

It seems like an impossible thing to write out a documentary before it’s filmed. But it’s not. It’s a lot like writing a hypothesis for a science project.

I know certain things to be true because of preliminary research and conversations. I’ve studied the subject matter enough to learn that I wanna learn more, and I think others will enjoy learning more, too. So I develop a hypothesis and set out to prove or disprove it.

The hypothesis becomes the story.

The story is incredibly important. For me, it’s the whole point of making the film. I believe that the story is valuable, universal  and important enough to tell. If I’m devoting this much time and effort on a project, the story better be worthwhile. (It certainly was on Abandoned Allies.) I want to tell great stories about interesting people in beautiful and interesting ways.

As a producer, I think about all the details of the filmmaking process. As a director, I think about the exact way in which I want the story told. As an editor, I know what I need on screen in order to tell the story beautifully and interestingly. (Side note: as an optimist, I look forward days when I can collaborate so I don’t have to think of all of those things all the time.)

In pre-production — when the story is still just a baby of an idea — it’s important to communicate the vision clearly. People joining project will have their own version of the story in mind. Those versions may all be drastically different, which can make the collaborative part of filmmaking a challenge. It’s better to have something in writing to help everyone find common ground in this collaborative art form — so that you can more efficiently move towards the same goal together.

That’s what I’ve been working on recently. I’ve spent a lot of time capturing the story on paper to make it more finite. Writing down the story is, essentially, my vision for the final version of the film: it’s tone, pacing, subject matter, color, imagery, and sound. I even gather pictures to convey how I want it to look on screen. This vision is based on preliminary research, many conversations, and a hypothesis about what I think we’ll prove to be true through our investigation.

Working on the story has been really fun. I’ve enjoyed the challenge because I’ve realized how much I learned while working on Abandoned Allies. I am already putting those lessons to good use on this new doc.

I can’t wait to make this film.