The Process

I'm going to link to this post in the sidebar, as it will contain what I'll need to do in order to make a documentary, as well as give me references for later.

Purpose

Documentaries have different purposes. They can simply record events (like a birthday party or other home video). They can try to persuade someone by showing facts from one point of view (think Michael Moore). Other reasons could include informing an audience about an event, person, place, or thing. (http://www.mediaknowall.com/Documentary/definitions.html).

Another resource lists four purposes that may be more clear:

• to record, reveal, or preserve
• to persuade or promote
• to analyze or interrogate
• to express

(http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/Huffman/Frontier/define.html)

Structure

"One drawback in exploring the production of documentaries is that there has never been a set structure to the documentary" (New Frontiers - Interpret).

Even if there is no set structure, I'm sure there is a common process.