Welcome to the Insiders’ Guide companion website.
On this site newcomers to the craft documentary or current affairs filmmaking will find resources that complement the text of this practical manual. These include 24 specially shot film clips illustrating key rules of filmic grammar and the use of the camera discussed in chapter 3. Also on this site are interactive versions of production forms needed by any factual film: a cutting order, call sheet, contributor agreement, location agreement and a risk assessment. These are discussed in chapters 6, 8 and 9 of the book – but here, easy-to-understand explanations of the contents of each section of these forms pop-up with a mouse click. Clean versions of each of these forms - plus an archive/stills cue sheet and a music cue sheet - can also be downloaded from this site for use on your own projects.
For more experienced filmmakers who wish to win commissions from broadcasters or online platforms, and run their own film productions, there is also an interactive version of a factual film budget with pop-up boxes containing the detailed line-by-line explanations offered in chapter 11. This contains helpful descriptions of the more complicated lines in a budget – including a breakdown of the post-production process, royalty and royalty free archive, and the various production insurances. A clean version of this budget can be downloaded for use on your own projects.
Finally on this site you’ll find an overview of the contents of the Insiders’ Guide; short biographies of the 19 top professionals from the world of broadcast and online factual film-making in America and Britain interviewed specially for this book; and a resume of the author.
Tony Stark
Tony Stark is a documentary film-maker, executive producer and commissioner with a 30-year career making high profile factual films for broadcast television. His films have been shown on the BBC, Channel Four, ITV, Al Jazeera, American PBS channels and many European TV channels. He has specialized in investigative film-making. His programmes have been nominated for several industry awards: a BAFTA, the Foreign Press Association Media Awards, the Association for International Broadcasting and the San Francisco International Film Festival.
Tony has worked for the BBC as a network TV producer/director, as head of a television investigative documentary series and as an advisor to the flagship BBC Panorama strand, helping keep their contentious undercover projects out of the law courts. He also has a track record in the independent world both as a freelance producer/director and as an executive producer running his own independent production company.
MacMillan published his “Knife to the Heart”, a companion book to a four part historical TV series on Transplant Surgery that he made for the BBC. For more information go to moonstonefilms.co.uk
