Documentary
Guerilla crews, gorilla hours, and a plan about as straight as a banana. 🍌 Documentary is most of what I do and the work I like best. It is also the work that punishes you for being precious about it.
Say so early and say what it is. I would much rather be out on a job being useful than sitting at home waiting for a bigger one that may never call. Tell me the days, the format and what you have. If I can do it well at that number I will, and if I cannot I will say so without making it weird.
Drama gives you a second take. Documentary rarely does. The interview happens once, the boat leaves when it leaves, and the man telling you the thing you flew in for is going to say it while a generator runs twenty metres away. Nobody is turning that generator off.
So the job is not really about kit. It is about deciding fast: what to fix, what to work around, what to mention to the director now rather than in the edit, and what to let go because chasing it would cost you the moment. Twenty years mostly buys you better judgement about which is which.
Most documentary I do is small. Often it is me, a camera operator and a director, sometimes not even that. A boom operator makes the track better and I will always say so, but a lot of these days do not have one and are not going to, and the work still has to be good.
What that means in practice is radios on your contributors rigged so they forget they are wearing them, a boom in my own hands when the shot allows it, and enough discipline about levels and separation that the edit is not a rescue job. Clean tracks, labelled properly, sent the day we wrap.
It also means I do not need managing. I get myself to location, sort my own kit, and add nothing to the pile you are already carrying. On a three-person crew that is worth as much as anything in the bag.
Room tone and wild tracks. Every location, every time, even when the day has run long and everyone wants to go home. The edit will need them and there is no way to make them later. It costs twenty minutes and it is the difference between an edit that flows and one that fights.
Singapore, one to three hours from every major production centre in Southeast Asia, with full working rights in Australia and New Zealand. Recent documentary has taken the kit to Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and New Zealand.
Past work includes series for the BBC, Netflix and Animal Planet, and factual for CNA and Mediacorp here in Singapore. The full list is here if you want it.
Dates, location, format, and what you have to work with. No pitch required and no hard feelings either way. If I am not the right fit I will say so and point you at someone who is.