Podcast · Film & TV

Documentary First: Conversations on Documentary Filmmaking

by Documentary First · English · Film & TV

Conversations with the people behind documentaries and how the work changed them, from Ken Burns and PBS American Masters creator Susan Lacy to first-time directors finishing their first film. Documentary First is a weekly podcast for anyone who loves a true story, and for the filmmakers who tell th

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 25 min
Latest: 8 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

8 Oct 2026 · 49 min

Archival Footage: Why Use Home Movies?

What can a few seconds of a stranger's home movie do for your documentary? Archival footage does not have to come from the National Archives or a big footage house. Home movies, the 8mm and Super 8 reels families shot from the 1930s through the 1980s, show ordinary life the way it actually looked: the clothes, the cars, the Christmases. For a documentary filmmaker, home movie footage carries a texture and an emotion that narration cannot supply, and it does it in a few seconds. In Episode 287, Christian sits down with Phil Maher, founder of Stockfilm , a home movie archive with over 200,000…

Play episodeWhatsApp Download

Earlier episodes 29 most recent

S6 · E286 · 10 Sep 2026 · 54 min
How Do You Get a Documentary Made? Ask the Woman Who Co-Runs RKO
Do you have a documentary, or do you have a Wikipedia entry? Somebody decides whether your documentary gets made. Sophia Dilley is one of those people. She runs Concord Originals, the division behind Stax: Soulsville U.S.A. on HBO, and she is Co-President of RKO, which Concord bought in June 2025 along with more than 5,000 titles including King Kong, Citizen Kane and It's a Wonderful Life. In this episode she gives away the three questions she asks before her team commits to anything. In Episode 286, Christian sits down with Sophia Dilley, Executive Vice President of Concord Originals and…
S6 · E285 · 21 Aug 2026 · 41 min
Beyond Banners: How to Make a Documentary With No Film School
Who finishes your film if you can't? Andre N. Jackson had never made a film. He had twenty years in technology and security, an idea that arrived while he was sitting in a barber's chair, and no way into the industry. He finished the film anyway, and he came on the show with three lessons for other filmmakers. Two more came out while we were talking. In Episode 285, Christian sits down with first-time filmmaker Andre N. Jackson to talk about " Beyond Banners ," his film about the basketball program at Gwynn Park High School in Prince George's County, Maryland. Over a twenty-year run the team…
13 Aug 2026 · 14 min
Why Can't Your Documentary Find an Audience? l Deep Dive on Ep. 284
When did your audience stop being people and become a number? Most independent films and podcasts do not fail because the work is bad. They fail because no one ever felt like they belonged to them. This Deep Dive is about how to build an audience for your documentary before it is ever released, and the one ingredient that decides whether people stay with what you make. In this Deep Dive on Documentary First Episode 284 with Dutch filmmaker Jonathan de Jong, host Christian Taylor takes the idea at the heart of his film “Human Forever,” the most-watched human interest documentary in Dutch…
S6 · E284 · 6 Aug 2026 · 52 min
Ep. 284 I How to Fund a Documentary Without the Industry
How do you fund a documentary when the whole industry says no? How do you fund a documentary without film funds, grants, or a commissioning broadcaster, and still reach a huge audience? Dutch filmmaker Jonathan de Jong did exactly that with Human Forever , the most-watched human interest documentary in Dutch cinema history. The government pulled his funding two and a half years into production, and he still finished the film, built a movement, and put it in cinemas around the world. In Episode 284 of Documentary First, Christian Taylor sits down with Jonathan de Jong, director of Human…
30 Jul 2026 · 14 min
Who Believed in You First?
Who believed in you before you could believe in yourself? In this Deep Dive, documentary filmmaker Christian Taylor makes a quiet case that we rarely overcome self-doubt on our own. Almost no one finishes anything hard alone. Someone has to see it in you first. This is a reflection on the power of belief, on the kind of encouragement that shows up right when you are ready to quit, and on how a few honest words can help a person keep going and change the whole outcome of a life. This Deep Dive grows out of Documentary First Episode 283 with Joe Amodei, the veteran film distributor who, after…
S6 · E283 · 23 Jul 2026 · 54 min
Ep. 283 I 7 Filmmaking Tips From the Distributor Who Directed "Cold War in Philly"
What does it really take to make a documentary that finds an audience and earns its money back? “You have to have the passion for the story and the passion to do the work, because it will not be easy.” — Joe Amodei If you want to make a documentary, the hardest questions are not the ones about cameras. They are about access, money, and whether anyone will ever watch it. In Documentary First Episode 283, a distributor who has spent more than forty-five years releasing films, and has now directed his first one, gives 7 filmmaking tips that cut straight to those questions, from getting access…
S6 · E282 · 16 Jul 2026 · 12 min
Ep. 282 I Finding the Heartbeat of Your Story | A Lesson From Normandy
How do you make people care about your documentary? Facts alone rarely make an audience care. The emotional core of a documentary lives somewhere else. In this episode of Documentary First, filmmaker Christian Taylor tells the story of how she found the heartbeat her film about the Battle of Carentan was missing. It was not in the archives. It was in the memories of a man who was six years old when the war came for his town. For months, Christian’s film Heroes of Carentan felt stuck in what one WWII veteran called the “data of history,” the maps, the dates, and the military maneuvers.…
S6 · E281 · 2 Jul 2026 · 11 min
Ep. 281 I 13 Letters That Saved a Dying WWII Documentary - on Heroes of Carentan Pt 1
Can thirteen letters from an 88-year-old stranger bring a dead film back to life? For two years, Heroes of Carentan , Christian Taylor's documentary about the 101st Airborne Division and the June 1944 liberation of Carentan , sat on a shelf, half made. In this episode she tells the honest story of why a WWII documentary stalls, what it costs to keep going, and the thirteen letters from an 88-year-old man in France that finally gave the film its heartbeat back. In Episode 281 of Documentary First, Christian Taylor takes listeners inside her upcoming film for the first time. Part 1 is how…
S6 · 25 Jun 2026 · 8 min
The Disappointment You Didn't Choose I Deep Dive on Ep. 280
What if the disappointment you didn't choose was the only door to the life you were meant to live? Three generations of one family chased professional baseball, and all three lost it to a career-ending injury. Each one found his calling in the aftermath. That pattern runs through Voices: The Danny Gans Story, filmmaker Andrew Gans's documentary about his father, the Las Vegas entertainer known as the Man of Many Voices. In this Deep Dive, Christian Taylor sits with what Andrew's film, and her own family's story, reveal about disappointment, the courage to tell the truth, and the doors we…
E280 · 18 Jun 2026 · 56 min
Danny Gans: The Man of Many Voices Who Lost His Own
How do you tell the truth about your own father when the whole world knew him as the Man of Many Voices? Danny Gans could become almost anyone on stage. He was the first headliner in Las Vegas to sell a $100 ticket, and for years his shows sold out night after night. Offstage, he was living with chronic pain he kept close to his chest. When his son, Andrew Davies Gans, set out to make a film about him, he planned an inspirational story about an athlete who reinvented himself. Then he started learning things about his father he had never known. In Episode 280, Christian Taylor sits down with…
S6 · 11 Jun 2026 · 8 min
When Is Silence Wisdom and When Is It Complicity? I Deep Dive on Ep. 279
When does refusing to repeat a lie become complicity in it? The hardest question in documentary filmmaking is not how to find the truth. It is how to handle a lie. When a false story is already loose in the world, you have two choices that look almost identical on the page: refuse to repeat it, or amplify it by debunking it. The discipline of knowing which is which can decide whether your film tells the truth or makes the lie stronger. In this Deep Dive on Documentary First Episode 279 with Brian Pocrass , host Christian Taylor digs into the question Brian asked on tape about how much oxygen…
S6 · E279 · 4 Jun 2026 · 52 min
Ep. 279 I She Was Here: Heather O'Rourke's Family Debunks the Poltergeist Curse
Was the Poltergeist curse real, or did the world get Heather O'Rourke's story wrong for 38 Years? On February 1, 1988, Heather O'Rourke died at twelve years old. For nearly four decades the world has filled that silence with rumors. She Was Here , the new documentary produced by Brian Pocrass and directed by Nick Bailey, is the first authorized account of what actually happened, told by Heather's mother Kathleen, her sister Tammy, and the people who knew and worked with her. In Episode 279, Christian sits down with producer Brian Pocrass to talk about how She Was Here came together, what it…
S6 · 28 May 2026 · 10 min
The Two Kinds of “Alone” Every Filmmaker Knows I Deep Dive on Ep. 278
What is the difference between solitude and loneliness, and why does every creative person need to understand it? There are two kinds of being alone in creative work, and they are not the same thing. One makes the work great. The other wears you down to nothing. The difference between solitude and loneliness is the difference between sustainable creative life and creative burnout, and most of us never learn to tell them apart. In this Deep Dive, host Christian Taylor takes a single line from her conversation with filmmaker Armin Korsos, that filmmaking can be a very lonely process, and…
S6 · E278 · 21 May 2026 · 55 min
Ep. 278 I Adapt or Die: A Working Filmmaker with AI in 2026
Adapt or die. What does that actually look like for a working filmmaker? Chicago documentary filmmaker Armin Korsos has a working filmmaker's answer to the question every documentarian is wrestling with right now. If you're not using AI, you will be losing work to people who do. In this conversation, Armin walks through how he turned 20 hours of pre-production paperwork into 30 minutes, how he uses AI image generation to send 40 pitches in the time it used to take to send 8, and why he believes the only currency that still matters in this industry is original ideas. In Episode 278, Christian…
S6 · 14 May 2026 · 9 min
Anthropic's $1.5B Mistake. Yours Could Cost More. I Deep Dive on Ep. 277
What does a $1.5 billion AI lawsuit have in common with your unwritten will? In September 2025, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle the largest copyright lawsuit in U.S. history. The reason was simple. They built first and cleared rights later. Documentary filmmakers have been making the same mistake for decades. And in this Deep Dive, host Christian Taylor argues that the lesson runs deeper than music licensing or AI training data. It is the same lesson Jesus taught in Luke 14, the same lesson surgeons learn from pre-op checklists, and the same lesson Christian is living through…
E277 · 7 May 2026 · 25 min
Why Does One Documentary Clip Cost $70,000?
What does the person who cleans up documentary licensing messes wish you had done before you shot a single frame? Teddy Cannon has spent 10 years in what he calls the link in the production line, standing between the filmmakers, the legal team and every vendor whose footage, photos or music ends up in a film. His job is to make sure every third-party asset in a documentary is cleared before it ever lands on the editor's palette. And more than half the time, he says, he is brought in to clean up a mess. In Episode 277, Christian Taylor sits down with Teddy, a veteran ARC Producer and the…
S6 · 30 Apr 2026 · 16 min
The First Generation to Live Shorter Lives Than Their Parents | Deep Dive on Ep. 276
What if the documentaries no streaming platform will buy are the ones that could save your kid's life? Today's children may be the first generation in American history to live shorter lives than their parents. That's the central argument of The 100-Year Effect, a documentary I watched at the Julian Dubuque International Film Festival the same weekend I watched two other films that turned out to be telling me the same urgent story. In this Deep Dive on Documentary First Episode 276 with Robin Canfield , host Christian Taylor unpacks what three independent documentaries ( The 100-Year Effect ,…
S6 · E276 · 23 Apr 2026 · 51 min
Ep. 276 I Robin Canfield on Teaching iPhone Documentary in 20 Countries
Why do documentary subjects freeze for a professional camera - but open up to an iPhone? Robin Canfield shares why he films with iPhones, how he teaches documentary in twenty countries, and the communication skill he says every documentary filmmaker overlooks. Robin joins us from Saigon, Vietnam, during a four-week documentary program with international students. He shares why he switched from Canon cameras to phones, how his crews rebuild story structure at 1 AM using sticky notes on a wall, what happened the day a government minder followed him into a Hoi An coffee shop, and why he thinks…
S6 · 16 Apr 2026 · 13 min
They Wanted My Voice to Train AI - What Thoreau Knew About Living Deliberately in a Revolution: Deep Dive on Ep. 275
Someone tried to harvest Christian's voice for AI training. The pitch was polished, the project sounded real. But when she responded with ten professional questions, the conversation ended. Permanently. In this Deep Dive on Episode 275, Christian connects that experience to her conversation with Erik and Christopher Ewers , the brothers behind the PBS documentary Henry David Thoreau . Chris Ewers argues that every technological revolution has felt like the end of the world — the Industrial Revolution, digital cameras, and now AI. Each time the tool became indispensable. Then Christian pulls…
S6 · E275 · 9 Apr 2026 · 40 min
Ep. 275 I Erik & Chris Ewers on PBS Funding, AI & Directing Goldblum, Clooney & Streep
Even with Ken Burns and Don Henley attached, funding a PBS documentary is brutal. So what hope do the rest of us have? Erik and Christopher Ewers get real about PBS funding, AI’s impact on filmmaking, and how they landed George Clooney , Jeff Goldblum , Ted Danson , Tate Donovan and Meryl Streep for their new PBS documentary Henry David Thoreau. In Part 2 of this conversation, the Ewers Brothers open up about the financial realities of documentary funding, even with Ken Burns and Don Henley attached, why Chris sees AI as the next revolution instead of the apocalypse, how broadcast is giving…
S6 · 2 Apr 2026 · 16 min
Erik & Chris Ewers: Quiet Desperation—Competence vs Self-Knowledge: Deep Dive on Episode 274
He edited nearly every Ken Burns film since The Civil War. He still didn't know who he was. Henry David Thoreau wrote that most people lead lives of “quiet desperation.” But what did he actually mean - and what does it look like inside a successful career? That’s the question Christian Taylor explores in this episode of Documentary First: The Deep Dive, after her conversation with Erik and Christopher Ewers—two brothers who just directed a three-part, three-hour PBS documentary on Thoreau. The film is narrated by George Clooney, with Jeff Goldblum voicing Thoreau, Ted Danson as Emerson, and…
S6 · E274 · 26 Mar 2026 · 52 min
Ep. 274 I I Didn't Know Myself - Erik & Chris Ewers on Ken Burns, PBS & Thoreau
He's edited nearly every Ken Burns film ever made. But he couldn't edit himself. What does it take to build a filmmaking career inside Ken Burns's world — and what happens when the hardest part isn't the craft, but learning who you are? Erik and Christopher Ewers are brothers who co-direct for PBS under the Ken Burns banner. Erik has been Burns's senior editor for 33+ years. Chris is a DP who's shot for Apple, Coca-Cola, and Tiffany & Co. Their latest project: Henry David Thoreau, a three-part PBS documentary series executive produced by Ken Burns and Don Henley, narrated by George Clooney,…
S6 · 19 Mar 2026 · 15 min
What Francesca Bridgerton and a D-Day Veteran Both Discovered About Grief I Deep Dive on Ep. 273
In Bridgerton Season 4, Francesca Bridgerton stands in the middle of her husband’s funeral and says something no one expects: “I want to feel joy.” Eighty years earlier and four thousand miles away, a D-Day veteran stood on Utah Beach watching children play in the water where his friends had died—and said something just as unexpected: “That’s why we came.” In this episode of Documentary First: The Deep Dive, Christian Taylor connects these two moments to a discovery C.S. Lewis made in his grief journal A Grief Observed—and asks what it all means for the stories we tell as filmmakers. The…
S6 · E273 · 12 Mar 2026 · 59 min
Ep. 273 | D-Day Leadership Academy: Jake Schroeder on WWII Veterans, Normandy & Redefining Success
He sang the national anthem for the Colorado Avalanche a thousand times, coached 4,000 inner-city kids, lost it all, and rebuilt on the beaches of Normandy — where a WWII veteran watched children playing on Utah Beach and said through tears: "That's why we came." Jake Schroeder—former frontman of OP Gone Bad, national anthem singer for the Colorado Avalanche, and executive director of the Denver Police Activities League—now runs the D-Day Leadership Academy, bringing inner-city youth to Normandy, France to learn leadership through the stories of World War II. After concussions, insurance…
S6 · 5 Mar 2026 · 17 min
What If You're Not Actually Failing? Deep Dive on Ep. 272 with Director Quinnolyn Benson-Yates
What if failure isn’t the enemy—but the training ground? That’s the question Christian Taylor explores in this episode of Documentary First: The Deep Dive, sparked by her conversation with filmmaker Quinnolyn Benson-Yates about the documentary Epic Bill. Bill Bradley lost his video rental empire to Netflix, went bankrupt, went through a divorce—and then rebuilt himself through extreme endurance athletics. His mantra? “Courage is a muscle.” And “Show up and suffer.” In this deeply personal episode, Christian connects Bill’s story to her own struggles as a filmmaker, podcast host, and business…
S6 · E272 · 25 Feb 2026 · 1 hr 9 min
Episode 272 | Quinnolyn Benson-Yates on Epic Bill: Failure, Reinvention & the Filmmaker’s Endurance
Award-winning filmmaker Quinnolyn Benson-Yates made her first feature documentary before film school—and its seven-year journey from short film concept to PBS distribution holds lessons every indie filmmaker needs to hear. Epic Bill follows an endurance athlete who lost everything when his video rental empire collapsed (thanks, Netflix). Bill’s mantra—“show up and suffer”—became Quinn’s filmmaking philosophy as she navigated polar vortexes, battery failures in -50° weather, and the brutal realities of distribution. In this episode, she shares how she cut a 93-minute film down to 56 minutes…
S6 · 19 Feb 2026 · 17 min
Finding The Good Guys | Deep Dive on Ep.271 With Joe Amodei
How do you know if you’ve found a Joe Amodei—or a predatory film distributor? That’s the question Christian Taylor explores in this episode of Documentary First: The Deep Dive, after her conversation with Joe Amodei—filmmaker, 40-year industry veteran, and owner of Virgil Films Entertainment (Supersize Me, Restrepo, Forks Over Knives). What struck her wasn’t just what Joe said about Cat Fest 2026—it was the warmth and trust in their conversation. In her experience, that kind of rapport between filmmaker and distributor is genuinely rare. So she did some digging. What she found was both…
S6 · E271 · 13 Feb 2026 · 1 hr 6 min
Episode 271 | Joe Amodei on Documentary Distribution: Budgets, Genres & Building Your Audience
Virgil Films founder Joe Amodei shares the hard truth: $250K is your budget ceiling, traditional marketing no longer is effective, and you must build your own audience. Joe has distributed films from the VHS era through streaming. In this episode, he breaks down which documentary genres actually sell (true crime, health/wellness, and ones that make us feel good—not adventure docs anymore), why 90% of his acquisitions come through referrals, and what separates films that make money from films that don’t. Plus: the 2025 Oscar nominations and Joe’s surprise announcement! DocuView Déjà Vu: Train…
S6 · 5 Feb 2026 · 16 min
Why Viewers Forget 90% of Your Film | Deep Dive on Ep. 270 with Charles Oliver
“People are going to watch your movie for such an infinitesimally small percentage of their life. What they’re going to do is remember it.” That insight from Emmy-winning editor Charles Olivier—who’s cut The Jinx , The Redeem Team , and George Clooney’s Surviving Ohio State —stopped Christian Taylor cold. It cuts right to the heart of documentary filmmaking: your audience will forget most of your film. The question is whether you’ve given them something worth remembering. In this episode of Documentary First: The Deep Dive, Christian explores the neuroscience behind “sticky” storytelling—why…

About Documentary First: Conversations on Documentary Filmmaking

Documentary First: Conversations on Documentary Filmmaking is a English film & tv podcast from Documentary First. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Documentary First
Language: English
Category: Film & TV
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 25 min
Latest episode: 8 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1455445556

RSS feed Apple Podcasts

More English film & tv

Take it with you

The Melo app keeps playing with the screen off, works in the car and on your watch, wakes you to your station, and browses the whole catalogue offline. Free, no ads, no account.