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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 them.Host Christian Taylor, director of the award-winning The Girl Who Wore Freedom (25+ international awards; distributed by Virgil Films, Swank, and Canal+), has talked with documentary directors, editors, producers, distributors, and composers across HBO, Netflix, PBS, and the independent documentary world for more than 290 episodes. Guests have included Emmy and Peabody Award-winning editor Charles Olivier (HBO’s The Jinx) and Emmy-nominated director Nick Bruckman (Netflix’s Minted). Listen Notes ranks the show in the top 5% of all podcasts worldwide.Two formats, one feed. The main show features long-form interviews about the stories behind the films: how they got made, what it took from
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Booking probability
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Guest openness
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Signup to Generate a PitchConversations 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 them.
Documentary First: Conversations on Documentary Filmmaking is hosted by Documentary First. The show has published 300 episodes to date.
Recent episodes include "Documentary First Podcast Trailer: The People Behind Documentaries" (31 October 2026, 2 minutes), "7 Ways to Find a Film Mentor With No Connections" (29 October 2026, 19 minutes), and "Charles Grodin Documentary: Comedy Star, Prison Crusader" (22 October 2026, 57 minutes).
Documentary First: Conversations on Documentary Filmmaking publishes roughly weekly, with episodes averaging 28 minutes across 300 episodes.
Booking probability for Documentary First: Conversations on Documentary Filmmaking is 36%, and the host is rated Selective on guests. Documentary First: Conversations on Documentary Filmmaking requires a Pod Score of 80 or higher. Documentary First: Conversations on Documentary Filmmaking's contact route on record: verified email.
The strongest fits for Documentary First: Conversations on Documentary Filmmaking are Film & Video. Documentary First: Conversations on Documentary Filmmaking has a tv audience and around 9,000 subscribers on YouTube.
Documentary First hosts Documentary First: Conversations on Documentary Filmmaking, a tv podcast with 300 episodes published.
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Documentary First: Conversations on Documentary Filmmaking
What happens to the people who make documentaries? In this trailer: Jonathan de Jong (Human Forever), Ken Burns, James L. Freedman (Charles Grodin: Rebel with a Cause), Susan Lacy (Billy Joel: And So It Goes) and Nick...
Documentary First: Conversations on Documentary Filmmaking
How do you find a film mentor when you don't know anyone in the business? Finding a film mentor with no connections can feel impossible, especially in documentary filmmaking. Documentary filmmaker James L. Freedman...
Who was Charles Grodin when the cameras weren't rolling? Most people know Charles Grodin from Midnight Run, The Heartbreak Kid or Beethoven. Far fewer know that he spent the last 20 years of his life working to get...
Documentary First: Conversations on Documentary Filmmaking
What does The Velveteen Rabbit, a 1922 children's book about a stuffed toy, have to do with old home movies and AI? In Margery Williams' classic story, an old toy called the Skin Horse tells a stuffed rabbit that being...
Do you have a documentary, or do you have a Wikipedia entry? Music rights for film are the reason a lot of documentaries never get finished. Sophia Dilley has cleared them at a scale most filmmakers will never face. Her...
Who finishes your film if you can't? This episode is about how to make a documentary with no film school. Andre N. Jackson had never made a film. He had twenty years in technology and security, an idea that arrived...
Documentary First: Conversations on Documentary Filmmaking
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...
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...
Documentary First: Conversations on Documentary Filmmaking
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...
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...
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...
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...
Documentary First: Conversations on Documentary Filmmaking
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...
He Could Become Anyone on Stage. What Was He Hiding Offstage? Danny Gans was the Man of Many Voices, the highest-paid headliner on the Las Vegas Strip, and the first performer to sell a $100 ticket on the Strip. He...
Documentary First: Conversations on Documentary Filmmaking
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...
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...
Documentary First: Conversations on Documentary Filmmaking
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...
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...
Documentary First: Conversations on Documentary Filmmaking
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...
How much does the average documentary filmmaker's biggest licensing mistake cost? A 30-second Jackson 5 clip can run a documentary $50,000 to $70,000 in licensing fees. Veteran ARC Producer Teddy Cannon has spent a...
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