Creating a Documentary About Corporations: A Filmmaker’s Perspective

Abstract

This chapter takes the form of a case study, demonstrating how the design of a 2020 documentary film about corporate purpose, Fishing with Dynamite, draws upon the humanities to tell an authentic and persuasive story about business. The author/filmmaker’s academic background and professional practice is in humanities-based filmmaking, but he had little knowledge about the subject – American business, corporations, and capitalism. Was it possible to use this lack of knowledge as an advantage in crafting a film intended for a general, non-business audience? The chapter examines the steps taken in subject matter research, story structuring, scripting, filming, interviewing, and editing of the documentary. At each phase, the focus was on crafting a message that was rooted conceptually in the humanities, that embraced the theme of a human-centered understanding of business, and that appealed to an audience, not because they were professionally engaged in business, but because they would be able to see and appreciate business as a fully human enterprise.