A documentary film is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education, or maintaining a historical record”- compare documentary theatre.

1. Documentary & Short Film Maker
A ​documentary ​film is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to
"document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction,
education, or maintaining a historical record”- compare
documentary theatre. Bill Nichols has ​characterised ​the
documentary in terms of "a ​filmmaking ​practice, a cinematic
tradition, and mode of audience reception [that remains] a practice
without clear boundaries".Documentary films, originally called
"actuality films", lasted one minute, or less. Over time,
documentaries have evolved to become longer in length, and to
include more categories; some examples being: edu​cational​,

2. observational, and docufiction. Documentaries are meant to be
informative works, and are often used within schools, as a resource
to teach various principles.
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Social-media ​platforms (such as YouTube) have provided an
avenue for the growth of the documentary-film genre. These
platforms have increased the distribution area and
ease-of-accessibility; thereby enhancing the ability to educate a
larger volume of viewers, and broadening the reach of persons who
receive that information.
Definition
Polish writer and ​filmmaker ​Bolesław Matuszewski was among
those who identified the mode of documentary film. He wrote two
of the earliest texts on cinema Une nouvelle source de l'histoire
(eng. A New Source of History) and La photographie animée (eng.
Animated photography). Both were published in 1898 in French and
among the early written works to consider the historical and
documentary value of the film. Matuszewski is also among the first
filmmakers to propose the creation of a Film Archive to collect and
keep safe visual materials.

3. In popular myth, the word "documentary" was coined by Scottish
documentary filmmaker John Grierson in his review of Robert
Flaherty's film Moana (1926), published in the New York Sun on 8
February 1926, written by "The Moviegoer" (a pen name for
Grierson).
Grierson's ​principles of ​documentary ​were that cinema's potential
for observing life could be exploited in a new art form; that the
"original" actor and "original" scene are better guides than their
fiction counterparts to interpreting the modern world; and that
materials ​"thus taken from the raw" can be more real than the

4. acted article​. In this regard, Grierson's definition of documentary
as "creative treatment of actuality” has gained some acceptance,
with this position at variance with Soviet film-maker Dziga
Vertov's provocation to present "life as it is" (that is, life filmed
surreptitiously) and "life caught unawares" (life provoked or
surprised by the camera).
The American film critic Pare Lorentz defines a documentary film
as "a factual film which is dramatic.” Others further state that a
documentary stands out from the other types of non-fiction films
for providing an opinion, and a specific message, along with the
facts it presents.
Documentary practice​ is the complex process of creating
documentary projects. It refers to what people do with media
devices, content, form, and production strategies in order to
address the creative, ethical, and conceptual problems and choices
that arise as they make documentaries.
Documentary filmmaking can be used as a form of journalism,
advocacy, or personal expression.

5. Short film
A short film is any motion picture not long enough in running time
to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture
that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits".
In the United States, short films were generally termed short
subjects from the 1920s into the 1970s when confined to two 35mm

6. reels or less, and featurettes for a film of three or four reels.
"Short" was an abbreviation for either term.
The ​increasingly ​rare industry term "short subject" carries more of
an assumption that the film is shown as part of a presentation
along with a feature film. Short films are often screened at local,
national, or international film festivals and made by independent
filmmakers with either a low budget or no budget at all. They are
usually funded by film grants, nonprofit organizations, sponsor, or
personal funds. Short films are generally used for industry
experience and as a platform to showcase talent to secure ​f​unding
for future projects from private investors, a production company,
or film studios.
History
All ​films ​in the beginning of ​cinema ​were very short​, sometimes
running only a minute or less. It was not until the 1910s when films
started to get longer than about ten minutes. The first set of films
were presented in 1894 and it was through Thomas Edison's device
called a kinetoscope. It was made for individual viewing only.
Comedy short films were produced in large numbers compared to
lengthy features such as D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation. By
the 1920s, a ticket purchased a varied program including a feature

7. and several supporting works from categories such as second
feature, short comedy, 5–10 minute cartoon, travelogue, and
newsreel.
Short comedies were especially popular, and typically came in a
serial or series (such as the Our Gang movies, or the many outings
of Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp character).
Animated cartoons came principally as short subjects. Virtually all
major film production companies had units assigned to develop and
produce shorts, and many companies, especially in the silent and
very early sound era, produced mostly or only short subjects

8. In the 1930s, the distribution system changed in many countries,
owing to the Great Depression. Instead of the cinema owner
assembling a program of their own choice, the studios sold a
package centered on a main and supporting feature, a cartoon and
little else. With the rise of the double feature, two-​reel​ shorts went
into decline as a commercial category. Hal Roach, for example,
moved Laurel and Hardy full-time into feature films after 1935, and
halved his popular Our Gang films to one reel. By the 1940s, he had
moved out of short films altogether (though
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer continued the Our Gang shorts until 1944).
Later shorts include George O'Hanlon's Joe McDoakes movies, and
the animated work of studios such as Walt Disney Productions,
Warner Bros. Cartoons. By the mid-1950s, with the rise of
television​, the commercial live-action short was virtually dead, The
Three Stooges being the last major series of 2-reelers, ending in
1959. Short films had become a medium for student, independent
and specialty work.
Cartoon shorts had a longer life, due in part to the implementation
of lower-cost limited animation techniques. Despite being popular,
they also declined in this period. Warner Bros., one of the most
prolific of the golden era, shut down its studio permanently in
1969. The Pink Panther was the last regular theatrical cartoon short
series, having begun in 1964 (and thus having spent its entire

9. existence in the limited animation era) and ended in 1980. By the
1960s, the market for animated shorts had largely shifted to
television, with existing theatrical shorts being syndicated to
television.
Production
Coppola was working on The Rain People as a small, intimate film
about real-life people, and Lucas decided to make a small, intimate
cinema-verite documentary about the making of Coppola's film.
Lucas pitched the idea of a documentary to Coppola, who gave

10. Lucas the go-ahead, with the film paid for from Rain People's still
photography budget.
The budget of the documentary was $12,000. Lucas filmed and
recorded sound for the documentary himself, using an otherwise
unutilised 16mm production camera and a Nagra tape recorder.
Mona Skager, an associate on Rain People, often saw Lucas on the
floor, shooting up through glass-topped tables. "It was basically
because the camera was too heavy", she recalled. Ron Colby,
producer on The Rain People, described Lucas's work habits:
"​George​ was around in a very quiet way. You'd look around and
suddenly there'd be George in a corner with his camera. He'd just
kind of drift around. But he shot the camera, did his own sound. He
was very much a one-man band". Lucas would spend nearly every
day shooting the ​documentary​, while working on the script for THX
1138 at night.
Coppola was tolerant of the documentary's production process,
although occasionally appeared unhappy when the camera invaded
his privacy. Lucas filmed some confrontations between Coppola and
actress Sh​irley Knight​, but ultimately rejected most of the footage.
"I decided to be discreet, I didn't want to destroy anyone's career",
Lucas said later.
Lucas and his then-girlfriend, Marcia Griffin, edited Filmmaker.
Lucas described the documentary as "more therapy than anything
else… I hadn't shot film for a long time".
The closing shot says the film was made at "Transamerica Sprocket
Works", a fictitious company name that Lucas liked the sound of.
The film was copyrighted by American Zoetrope/Lucasfilm
Ltd.—the first film credit for the unofficial, then-new names of
Coppola's and Lucas's respective companies.