Leslie Cockburn Quotes

I'm a documentary filmmaker, I know what it means to craft a story, especially when you've shot a lot of material.

So I do tend to do documentaries where I can move in and out of them.

You should bear in mind that almost all my documentaries are feature films in disguise.

The thing about documentary is that you don't really choose your subjects: they come and grab you out of your bed.

Feature filmmaking is a different kind of complication as documentary comes in the editing room.

As far as the balance between being a journalist, being an artist, being a storyteller - documentary filmmakers are all three of those things. The balance between them is affected by the film itself, the topic of the film.

I love the idea of documentaries. I love seeing documentaries, and I love making them. Documentaries are incredibly easy to shoot. The ease with which you can hear something's going on, somebody's going to be somewhere: That sounds so interesting. Pick up your camera and go.

The making of the documentary is an involving and collaborative process where you go deeper unlike in movies where you just borrow someone else's script.

To me, form is not something that you can plan beforehand, especially for a documentary. You can't write it or sketch it. It requires a confrontation with reality, with history, with ethics and morals. After identifying good content, you have to find the right form to express that content.

In documentary films, you're a storyteller using found objects. You still have to have a story arc and all the elements that make a good story. It really helped me mature as a storyteller.

I'm a documentary filmmaker by training. You got to start with the real people and the real place.

I did documentary film for a long time, and I spent a lot of time behind the camera, fervently wishing that the reality I was filming would conform to my narrative propriety. But you can't control it.

I don't think the subject of a documentary film should be producers on it.

When I sign on for a project, I'm there to give the director all the material he or she might need to tell their story, and that's the number one priority.

But one of the amazing things about documentary is that you can remake it every time you make one. There is no rule about how a documentary film has to be made.

I don't normally make documentaries. I'm a drama director. I've made a few short docs, but I don't like talking heads or 'voice of God' narrators.

I didn't realize that, in doing a documentary, there is this process of discovery. It's not like a film or a play with a set script. It sort of reveals itself.

We ended up with 19 hours of footage and had to narrow it down to an hour and a half. Our instructions were to film everything that came up, including the more mundane moments.

My background is sociology. Combined with my graphic approach, if I could do some film projects, I think I'd be very good at making documentaries eventually, but people don't think of me for that, of course. But dialogue is something I know I can be good at.

In documentary films, the most difficult thing to achieve is to make something complex appear simple.

It's hard not to want to become Ken Burns at times. I'm interested in being a Ken Burns who reaches that 17-year-old who goes to the multiplex just to see a good story well-told. And if there's history in it, all the better.

I always thought of documentaries as films through which you find your voice as a narrator.

I started in documentaries, and that was a great help to me with improvisation, because with documentaries, you're handed a big lump of footage, and you have to shape it and make it into a story - which I love doing.

I think that documentaries are bound by journalistic ethics, and I think they have the pressure of trying to entertain someone for 90 minutes. It's hard, but it's the same question no matter what you're doing. Every film I've done, I've approached it the same way with the same level of respect.

I don't think there's so much difference between making documentaries and feature films. I think it's even harder to make documentaries.