A creative activity, such as filmmaking, must be healthy and compatible with life both inside and outside of the workplace, just like any other professional performance. However, this subject necessitates in-depth reflection. Physical and mental health in the workplace, teamwork, and personal life balance are all important considerations. The precarious nature of documentary film production can sometimes conflict with vital economic stability, forcing many professionals to seek alternative sources of income. All of these factors, among others, can result in the abandonment of film projects as well as frustration. This chapter delves into the essential well-being of filmmakers.
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Health, Care, and Work-Life Balance
- How do you strike a balance between an unstable organisational activity like filmmaking and other aspects of your personal life?
- Which aspects of documentary filmmaking are most likely to negatively impact your physical and mental health?
- How do you avoid burnout from filmmaking: instability, long hours, or teamwork?
- Could you share some strategies?
- Do you help to create spaces for mutual care in your filmmaking work?
- How?
- When did you discover this need?
- Have you ever had to abandon or give up filmmaking for work-life balance reasons?
- Can filmmaking and work occasionally be a refuge from an overly saturated or even critical personal situation?
Economies: Making a Living from Documentary Filmmaking
- A simple question: what do you make a living from?
- Have you been able to build a life/earn a living from your documentary filmmaking work?
- If you make a living from filmmaking, do you make a living from producing, directing, teaching, programming, or all of these activities?
- Do you think there's little talk about money or how those of us who make documentaries make a living?
- If you're a producer or have your own production company, how do you organise the different productions to make the structure viable?We'd appreciate you sharing examples, past or present.
- If you're a director, do you balance this with other professional activities in this or another sector?
- Do you work as a director on other productions or commissions for documentaries or other film or audiovisual genres?
- How do you incorporate or evaluate this situation?
- If you're a screenwriter, director of photography, editor, sound engineer, composer, etc.: Do you turn down many offers, or do you take on most of the shoots or projects proposed to you?
- Do you have a preference for practising your discipline in documentary filmmaking?
- Does it influence the work you accept?
- How does joining and leaving different films influence your creative practice?
Attempts, abandonments, and learning experiences
- How many of the film projects you've started have been shelved?
- For what reasons: not knowing how to approach them, not getting funding, or not finding the right crew or production company?
- What have you learnt from these abandonments—about filmmaking, about your own abilities, about the industry?
- Have you ever revived a project you'd abandoned?
- Describe this specific example. How did you revive that film, and what had changed?
