When the Best Documentary Feature category at the 2019 Oscars is so chock full of worthy competitors that the heralded likes of Won’t You Be My Neighbor, Three Identical Strangers, Dark Money, and The Shirkers weren’t even nominated, you know documentaries have reached a golden age. Just look at the weekly releases on Netflix, HBO, CNN or Showtime, and you’ll realize that the popularity of this genre is becoming more and more immense, capturing audiences as well as ‘water cooler’ talk throughout the world. So, what’s driving this phenomenon? Is it just that we’re now a more ‘woke’ society, open to entertainments that challenge us more directly with politics and ideas? For sure, but one can also point to seven distinct characteristics that have helped give documentary features as much talk value these days as fictional films and television series.

1) Need

There are not only hundreds of television networks on the cable dial clamoring for content and viewership, but dozens of other online platforms as well. Almost every network today runs programming 24/7 with the peak hours from 7 AM to 10 PM filled by mostly original content. Granted, specific cable channels like MeTV thrive on reruns, and the History Channel certainly recycles old documentary shows from yesteryear, but there is a need for first-run programming like never before. Documentary filmmaking is a way of creating loads of content that’s relatively inexpensive to produce too. Thus, documentaries are no longer just the domain of the likes of PBS or National Geographic. Docs make for some of the toniest content you can find on Amazon Prime and all other sorts of pay platforms, not to mention cable news stations as well as the sports-themed ones. Material is needed, and real stories are always available to tell and can be incredibly timely.

2) Affordability

These days features done for the cineplex average in cost between $70-90 million. Television series, be it dramas like Westworld or comedies like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, cost millions to make too, with the average cost of an hour of scripted television coming in at anywhere between $1-7 million. Enter the documentary. Generally, they cost a fraction of what it takes to make a tentpole film or a TV series requiring 10-22 episodes. The higher-budgeted docs may cost $10,000 per minute of film put onscreen, but with most of them rarely exceeding two hours, that comes out to merely $1.2 million, and that’s the high end. Documentaries can make for entertaining and provocative films and television series, as well as produce an appealing financial picture as well. The value is in the content rather than the look.

The poster for RBG (Ruth Bader Ginsburg)

3) Profitability

The ROI (return on investment) of documentaries can be the envy of a lot of studios spending millions on movie budgets and their marketing campaigns. 2019 Oscar winner Free Solo ended up raking in $21 million worldwide. Won’t You Be My Neighbor? became the top-grossing biography doc of all time with a domestic take of over $22 million. RBG, the Oscar-nominated biography about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg from last year, also did exemplary business earning a respectable $13 million. Some surmise that these films resonated so strongly with audiences due to their complex, adult stories, the kind in short supply in mainstream Hollywood these days. No matter, a topical and timely doc can become a word-of-mouth hit, and help drive even more interest in additional docs.

4) Social Consciousness

With hundreds of platforms up and down the internet, anyone wanting to trumpet a cause can quite readily. It’s easier than ever to press one’s political agenda or illuminate a social concern what with 500 cable channels, oodles of outlets online, and even do-it-yourself subscription channels on blogs and sites such as YouTube. With our burgeoning information age, few issues are remaining in the dark. The raising of social consciousness has been a godsend for filmmakers wanting to fight the good fight. Not only is the audience there for more documentary-style pieces, but frankly, they’re clamoring for them. Knock Down the House, the Netflix doc charting the rise of progressive female politicians like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez helped cement her standing as a folk hero and top politico for our modern age. She’s having her moment, and that documentary is right there with her helping lure thousands of followers for her and the streaming service online.

Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez in Knock Down the House

5) Lowered Expectation for Production Values
Anyone with a cellphone can virtually call themselves a filmmaker these days, and audiences have become less finicky about homemade production values. Sure, they want CGI to look incredibly realistic when Thor is battling Thanos, but for lesser projects, there is a wide gamut of acceptability. Just look at ‘found footage’ horror films, the permeation of silly animal videos, or the influencer content vis à vis Kendall Jenner on Instagram – audiences judge things in their context and lower the bar accordingly. A less is more ‘look’ actually becomes an asset in most documentaries too, especially since production values have always taken a back seat in the genre.6)

Filmmakers such as Errol Morris or Ava DuVernay may apply state-of-the-art cinematography to their docs, but it’s not essential for a film to communicate its POV. Thus, a whole lot of people now making daily docs up and down Facebook or Twitter, documenting their own lives, their critique of an event (Hello, Mojo.com), or even creating news out of whatever they’ve filmed. It’s all a form of documentary filmmaking, and such films touch us dozens of times throughout the day. Who needs Hollywood when someone’s Final Cut Pro program on their computer will do just fine, particularly in putting together an inexpensive but potent doc?

6) Reality Television

The term “reality television” covers all kinds of content and has become the most default form of entertainment in the past 20 years. Game shows like Survivor or Project Runway are a form of reality television as they chronicle the challenges contestants face as if they were in a doc.  All those Housewives filling up show after show in Bravo’s programming are a form of documentary too. Landmark shows that started most of these trends, like The Real World on MTV back in the ’90s, or Behind the Music, on VH-1 that same decade, were mainly just documentaries in different clothing. Because of them, for well over three decades now, audiences have gotten used to the tropes of documentary-style filmmaking, and such conditioning creates more of an appetite for the genre on the big and small screen.

The poster for O.J.: Made in America

7) O.J.

We’ve all heard the old saying, “Truth is stranger than fiction,” right? Well, when O.J. Simpson stood trial for murder back in the ’90s, the live documenting of the legal proceedings preempted daytime dramas and eclipsed much of scripted television at night. Suddenly, the actual world seemed more fantastical than any fake universe on TV. O.J. led to more reality television, documentary-style programming, and a shift in the consumer mindset to now gravitate towards more non-fiction. Just look at where we are today what with a political reality in D.C. that no screenwriter could’ve ever imagined.

Ironically, one of the best documentaries of the last 20 years focused on O.J. as its subject. O.J.: Made in America was made by ESPN and released on both the big screen and small screen to wide acclaim and success. It won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 2017 and a couple of Primetime Emmy Awards too. Documentaries are creating universal appeal and turning over their old school reputation of being niche entertainment more and more.

Indeed, for first-time filmmakers, documentaries might be the best way into the business, as well as a way to do some good in the world. Studio mogul Samuel Goldwyn once famously quipped, “Pictures are entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union.” Those may have been the watchwords 50 years ago, but not so much today. Documentaries are a genre that is delivering a lot of messages, chief among them – “If you build it, they will come.”