Documentaries come in different forms. Not one type of team or format gives you any guide to success. From the demands that the production companies want, or the types of people you’ll come across, there isn’t a streamlined pathway to the top that most are looking for.

With the expert help of BAFTA winning documentary director Ben Crichton, who has had a remarkable career, starting out as a runner at 26 and then working for the BBC for an extensive time, progressing as a documentary director until he went freelance and decided to work for various different production companies, including the National Geographic and Channel 5, alongside independent media companies like Black Dog Television. We’re looking at the different aspects in making a successful documentary, especially on Blitz, a BAFTA winning documentary focusing on the bombs and its impact on people and society over the years.

Working on Blitz

“It was a specialist factual documentary in terms of covering historic content, although it was hybrid as well because we had unscripted moments where it just followed our characters. It wasn’t presenter-led, and it was my first job outside of the BBC. However, a lot of the people I was working with on the production had also come from the BBC as well, so it felt like a soft transfer to independent.

I was hired for one of the episodes, and worked with an assistant producer, a series researcher that worked across the whole series, and then an executive producer who worked with the production company. The executive producer was a lot more involved than most usually are – she wanted to know how I was approaching things and what my plans were.

The overall brief of the series was looking at what a single bomb could do to a community. So while the first episode did London, the other episodes had a focus on Bristol, Hull, Hyde Bank and even Scotland. It was looking at places people don’t usually associate with the Blitz. As a team, we were looking for what our story was going to, and what bomb you were going to concentrate on. There was some preliminary research around that, but we looked into who could still be alive to talk about it, so we could figure out what they’d be like as characters and ensure there is sufficient complexity and richness to the story to fill an hour’s worth of time.

The assistant producer and I would do a lot of the research together, with some help from the researcher. So through phone calls, and speaking to various people, you can narrow down who the story might be based on. You meet the people who you’re going to talk to for the episode and get a better sense of how they might be on screen, the stories they might be able to tell and how they serve us, and once we identified that it was a case of scripting.

How it comes together

“It was a wish script – so you’re more or less imagining what the episode would look like, on that document you’d put details like who you’re going to work with, or where a voiceover will go and perhaps a draft of what you’ll say in that voiceover as well.

You basically wanted it in a state where if you were to give it to a series producer they’d be able to understand what you were going with.

Even if some of it was a bit hypothetical, it was still based on the conversations you would’ve had with the contributors, and not just plucking it completely from thin air.

On the filming days, we went to Clydebank in Scotland, it was the assistant producer and myself, alongside the director of photography, a cameraman, and a local runner that had come to help out from Glasgow Film School. We hired out a vehicle to take us around. There was also the call sheet, which would include how we scheduled each day of filming, which worked around the logistics for our team but also worked around the convenience and availability of the people we were filming as well. Even with the days planned, it was always challenging time keeping, things took longer than they were supposed to, whether it’s traffic, whether it’s the lights, or something not working for the camera, whether it’s the contributor being late, or they need to go through the process in a slower way than you anticipated, so you have to be prepared in that sense.

Also there are critical workflow processes where we’re responsible for the rushes and the backup of the rushes, so whatever the camera operator or director of photography had shot in the day would be backed up on drives. They’re mirrored, copied and ran through ShotPut Pro before the files were sent back.”

Adapting to changing times

“When switching from the BBC to freelance, you have a different mindset with your employer. With independent companies that have just started up, you’re aware that each project you work on is make or break for these people, whereas with BBC Studios, there’s still a sense of public service, and more non-commercial aspects. They’re less nimble, there’s a lot more paperwork. In the last couple of years, the landscape for documentaries at these companies has transformed – the type of work that I’d consider my bread and butter isn’t really being made in volume as much as it was before, due to the financial pressures affecting all UK traditional liner broadcasters, the stuff that they are commissioning is a bit different to the type of work I’d be working on.

Streamers have only filled that hole in to an extent, but again, their work tends to be slightly different too. You have to recognise development opportunities and look where the new revenue streams are coming in – if it’s YouTube or doing branded content. These places now want their own video content producer – somebody to maximise their products, and use their expert voices, unlike before where companies would have to wait for people interested in making the documentary and for them to come up to them. It’s a lot more internal in how companies want you to make a documentary about them, rather than vice versa.”

Collaborating with others

“Communication is the biggest thing. Whilst this project as a director or producer might be your baby, and you want to put above and beyond all the effort you want to put in it, you have to remember that there will be people working with you that are just treating this as their job. While they’re going to be enthusiastic and professional, you don’t want to take the p*** out of them.

If the people you’re working with feel like they’re being overworked, they’re going to be p***** off that they’re overworked and tired and that leads to them not producing their best quality work for you.

A lot of the time you are going to look stressed, most of the time I am overwhelmingly stressed, but it’s trying not to show that to everyone you work with.

My directing style has a balance. Some directors can be dogmatic about their projects and how they want it, which can be at the expense of other people’s point of view. Of course there’s a really valid argument to be had that some of the best directors work like that, but that’s not me, I’m much more of an inclusive director. While as a director, it can never end up being “film for the committee” because everything will fall apart, I recognise that everyone’s got really interesting ideas that could benefit the overall documentary. I want people to go away with a positive attitude when they’ve finished working with me. I feel like that’s when you do your best work.”

Final Thoughts

“There’s two elements of trust. The first, is trusting yourself. Trusting your instincts, because there’ll be so many times where you’ll have to make a decision, and it’s a non scientific decision. The second element of trust is building up the trust of your contributors, or your interviewee. While you may befriend them, that’s not your job. Your job is to tell their story, and there’s usually a difference between that.”


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