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Short documentary videos have become the replacement for Aunt Hilda's two-hour vacation slide show: Interesting for the first 30 seconds, but then nothing but pain. This is because these videos are often created for the people being filmed, not the viewing audience.

A typical example is a 12-minute summary from a mission trip that includes an audio track of indigenous peoples singing, with long quotes about how important this trip was with all sorts of images that give small glimpses into what the team actually did. This video may serve the participants in the trip, but please don't subject me to it—it's lazy communication and could be so much more.

This article is part of our downloadable training packet, Telling True Stories.

This article will help walk you through the processes of pre-production, production, and post as you make a short documentary that will engage your audience and serve your church.

In most church settings, conflict is a negative word. We think of people arguing or churches splitting. But in film and video, it's what keeps a viewer's interest and it need not be defined so parochially. By giving some careful thought in pre-production to the topic of conflict, you can communicate much more about your chosen topic.

Let's use the mission trip example again. Filmable conflict can be found in the internal tension people feel as they leave their own culture and enter another one. Conflict can be found in the assumptions that team members had about the trip. Conflict can be found in the team's reaction to an unimaginable situation. Conflict can be found in the story of a young girl your team meets who was forced into bonded labor. Conflict is all around us and it is what keeps our interest as we watch any piece of visual communication.

When I begin a new project, I outline what I think are the potential conflicts that I want to communicate. At times this is very easy to translate to screen. One project involved documenting the reaction Americans had while visiting Kenyans who lived in a slum. This was fairly easy. I interviewed the Americans about what assumptions they had, I followed them as they traveled through the slum, and then I interviewed them afterward to get their responses. To make it complete, I should have also interviewed the Kenyans who hosted the Americans, but time did not allow for that.

Other conflicts are not as easy to capture. Take the assignment of traveling to Bangalore, India, to create a short piece on globalization. Globalization is a word that elicits all sorts of conflict in people, but how do you capture that without just having people say, "I like globalization" or "I hate globalization?" I decided to try to embody the conflict in the stories of two women, both of whom lived just outside Bangalore in a rural community. One talked about how globalization has helped increase property values. Another women took us around her farm and explained how the growth of the city meant less water for her farm and while she might be able to sell her land, that money would only go so far. I had my conflict.

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