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Nothing but the truth Seasoned director Dan Reed contemplates the past, present and future of documentary filmmaking D an Reed has been making documentaries for ‘an awfully long time’, he says, having spent IMAGES Amos Pictures
Social media and smartphones have altered not only our relationship with being on-camera, but also our ability to discern fact from fiction. “Those kinds of observational films have become much harder to do, even though the equipment’s gotten smaller and our ability to move around has technically gotten easier,” Reed suggests. “Now, everything’s a documentary. People film themselves all the time.” Reed continues: “The value of documentary as long-form art, where you are telling a story over quite a long period of time on screen, in an era where TikTok is the norm, is more valuable than ever for making sense of the world.” Passion projects Reed’s old-school skill set, penchant for conflict-driven narratives and quest for objective truth led him to found Amos Pictures, a production company focused on high-end documentaries told in one or two parts. A BAFTA and Emmy award- winning studio, Amos has shed light on STORIES CAN reveal a lot about society ”
the last several decades building an impressive CV. His career began with the BBC, where he worked under Adam Curtis, “who for some people is a bit of a cult figure,” Reed explains. “This was back in the old-school days when we shot on film, everything was much more labour- intensive, budgets were less controlled and people had more time. The BBC was a place where talented amateurs could do extraordinary things.” After seven years, Reed went freelance, experiencing his first brushes with combat while filming the Kosovo war. “That taught me a lot,” he reflects. “There are so many stories which excite me and reveal a lot about the way human beings work and society functions. That’s why I am typically interested in these acts of terror or war crimes – hyper-violent incidents – which really test people’s limits. People behave in ways they’d never expect, and people reveal themselves in ways you’d never expect,” he describes. Having trained during an arguably lost era of documentary making, Reed carries an ‘accumulated body of knowledge’ and an ethos that clashes with much of today’s media. “There was a whole culture of fly-on-the-wall, observational documentaries in the days before reality television existed,” he recalls. “I remember being so confused by that title. Like, wait, this is called reality TV, except it’s the opposite. It’s manufactured.”
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