Documentary-style video

This sits next to the video essay and differs in how it gets made. An essay is an argument delivered over illustrative footage, while a documentary-style piece goes out and gets material, whether that means interviews, location filming, archive or records nobody has pulled together before. Running times commonly land between 20 and 90 minutes and production can take months, which is why channels doing it publish rarely and lean on a back catalogue that keeps earning. The trap is the look without the work. Grading, a score and drone shots over a script written from a search page fool nobody for long.