Students who create a documentary on a topic will be challenged to understand their topic from multiple perspectives, and they will have to represent those realities accurately through video. In an excellent documentary, students show the viewers different perspectives through carefully chosen video clips and have the viewers arrive at their own conclusions

A movie starts off in preproduction, where the idea for a movie is conceived and planned out. In this part of the production, it could be as simple as jotting down the shots you want to have, or it could be as complicated as writing an entire script and drawing storyboards for every shot. For the most part, the more time spent in preproduction, the better the movie will be. Professionals spend 80 percent of their time in preproduction. If you are making a movie with a purpose, knowing what you want before you pick up a camera will save you a great deal of time later. If you are unsure of what the final outcome is going to be, you will end up shooting a lot more footage than you need and spending lots of extra time editing it.