Wyn Baptiste is a former BBC senior editor and an award winning documentary director and producer who has worked on projects such as My Grenfell Year, Pole to Pole, Protest and Progress and Notting Hill Carnival: Who Started It?, covering topics such as the Grenfell Tower disaster, HIV in Nigeria and environmentalism, amongst many others.

Documentary filmmaking stands as one of our most powerful tools for social change and human understanding. Particularly when addressing serious subject matter, there is a delicate balance between honest portrayal and ethical consideration. Filmmakers bear a heavy responsibility when handling sensitive material and their choices can either honour or exploit vulnerable communities and ultimately shape public discourse around important issues.

“It’s such a privilege to be able to go into the lives of these people who’ve been through so much and capture their personal stories. It gives this amazing, unique insight into the world.”

“One thing for me was to always remain teachable at every stage. So when I started in documentaries I took my journalistic skills with me to share stories, but I was also open to learning to employ them in a different way.”

Some documentaries, however, are more light-hearted in tone. Different documentary genres take contrasting routes during production but often utilise similar core principals.

Baptiste says: “So we made a feature length documentary about protest movements around the globe. We looked at big issues around environmentalism, police brutality, racism, civil rights and inequality and we shot in three different continents and various different countries. It was all very heavy subject matter.

“We also made a documentary for Channel 4 about Christmas and that was about the country’s relationship with Christmas. It was about family and it was about business. It was about some themes that are fairly universal and yes, it was light, but we had to think just as carefully about the content.

“We think, what is the arc of the story? Who are our main characters? How are we going to tell it? What are you going to see? How, logistically, are we going to arrange filming it? In both you have to create a sense of urgency and jeopardy.

“With the protest documentary it was a feature about some really big global themes about humanity. So I would say there is a deeper level of research and thought about how and what we say and what we try to document. But whether it’s serious or more light-hearted, there’s a mission in documentary. There has to be a central question that you’re trying to answer.”

Documentary filmmaking has a notoriously unpredictable nature. Wyn says, “There’s definitely a joy and an excitement in the unscripted nature of it and it can bring pressure and stress. I think it’s best to be flexible enough to allow the story to dictate itself.

“You set yourself a framework, but you never know exactly who’s going to say what or what you’re going to see or what you’re going to capture. So you’ve got this framework in practical terms which needs to be achievable, and then once you get to the edit, how are we going to put all this sound and pictures in some intelligible form so it makes sense and there’s a compelling thing to watch?

“In my experience, often films will end up being entirely different to how you envisioned it right at the beginning, and that’s kind of one of the joys of documentaries.”

This nature then inevitably creeps its way into the final edit of any documentary.

Wyn says, “Ultimately, the show is made in the edit.

“For the protest film, we shot a whole sequence in Italy. It was really well thought out and there was some really powerful material in there, but in the end, none of it got in the final film. It just didn’t fit in the story that we wanted to tell in the end. And none of us predicted that. Despite it being really, really good stuff, it presented a dog leg in the storytelling and that was a big decision to say it wasn’t going in.

“It’s a really fulfilling part of the process, I think, but it also requires a certain discipline and ruthlessness. There’s been many times where I’ve looked at an editor and said: “We can’t let that go can we?” But actually the right decision is to let something go, even if it’s been in the cut for ages.

“You look at eachother and go “I don’t miss it!” It’s all about serving the overall story.”

The TV industry is constantly evolving, shaped by shifts in technology and how audiences consume content.

Wyn says, “The industry has changed massively over the years. Technology has been the big thing.”

“When I started, everybody watched the same thing that was on at nine o’clock on BBC One the night before and they talked about it. Nowadays people can watch whatever they like, whenever they want.

“In terms of getting your foot in the door, I think, with the technological changes, having the skills to manage material, to shoot and to edit, is becoming increasingly important. There will always be specialisms and real specialist craft in the industry but being confident in using technology has democratised the industry a bit. I would say certainly some sort of formal training is still incredibly useful, but qualifications aren’t necessarily the big tick that they used to be.”

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