When it came to it, my goal was to make the drama look as good as the films I was watching. I wanted it to look 'Hollywood'. I got out the tracks and dollies, took my time, and tried to bring it up to the level that I thought was quality. We were even shooting on film — Super 16 (yes, in broadcast TV — guess the date).

But here's the thing.

Nothing I came up with was original. It was slick, and it impressed my execs. It stood out from other drama docs in some ways. But I knew that, if I carried on that path, nothing I made would ever be original. All it could ever become was 'just like' a movie in the most superficial sense.

A bad copy.

I really felt it, and it got to me.

I saw it around me, everywhere. In all honesty other directors, as well as myself, were making docu-dramas to advertise themselves as drama directors. And to do that we had to - in most cases - make things that looked like other things.

I remember when Zack Snyder put out his historical action movie 300 about the Spartans. A few months later, the techniques he developed, the grading, the style, had all been copied in historical drama-docs everywhere. There were articles in Broadcast Magazine about getting that 300 look. A behind the scenes piece on how crowd replication and CGI was bringing 'Hollywood level' productions to drama docs and low budget films.

And that was the selling point...

...that they looked like something else.

They weren't original.

After Spielberg, Soderbergh

After my 'trying to be Stephen Spielberg' phase, I moved into my 'trying to be Steven Soderbergh' phase.

I found Soderbergh inspiring because he would take minimalistic tools and make the best film he could — not limited by the tools, but embracing their unique qualities. And then being himself.

In Bubble, Soderbergh shot on a Beta camera. In The Limey he rarely lit a room and went with extreme colour balances that were inevitable when he was shooting in a room with fluorescent ceiling lights, mixed with daylight coming through the windows (thanks to the DVD commentary track for that).

He used a single camera. He embraced what the location gave him rather than over-designing things. The framing of reality said a huge amount.

Then I thought about my documentaries and drama docs. I didn't have a huge number of lights. I was shooting on Digi Beta. My format was, technically, better than Soderbergh's. So what was making my films less extraordinary than his?

It might be obvious. It was my talent.

It was literally that I didn't know how to tell a story like that.

And that's a scary thought.

Rather than thinking, I could make a film like a Hollywood blockbuster if I just had the right tools, I realised that I couldn't make a film like Steven Soderbergh with exactly the same tools.

What he had, and I didn't, was talent. Or — to put it in a way that didn't make me want to give up entirely — what he had was craft. And experience. And taste.

Taking responsibility

That was the moment everything changed. Not because I suddenly got better, but because I stopped locating the problem outside myself.

The tools weren't the limitation. I was the limitation. And once you accept that, something shifts.

You stop browsing camera reviews and start thinking about story.

You stop chasing the look of another film and start asking what your film is for.

You stop blaming the budget and start working on the only thing that was ever actually going to make a difference — your own craft.

It's not a comfortable move. It's much easier to believe that if you just had the kit, or the budget, or the timeline, you'd be making the work you know you're capable of. The trouble is, that belief protects you from ever having to find out whether it's true.

The directors I watched copying 300 weren't doing it because they were lazy. They were doing it because copying a look is a way of being safe. It locates the standard somewhere outside you. You can succeed or fail against an external reference, but you never have to ask the harder question — what would I make if I weren't trying to look like anything else?

That question is terrifying, because the honest answer, at first, is usually: I don't know.

But once you've taken responsibility for that, once you've accepted that the gap between your work and the work you admire is a gap in you, not in your gear, you can finally start to close it.

What happens next

So I took responsibility for that particular problem. I stopped trying to ape big films, and worked out how to make my films. To have something to say, and then say it with the tools I had in a way that no one else could ever match.

And here's what I found. Once you've made that move, a chain opens up that wasn't available before.

Your most important first decision comes from knowing why you want to tell that story. Knowing why informs how you deliver that meaning — what the opening must do, how the climax must work. Knowing how to deliver meaning leads you to the narrative building blocks.

The narrative building blocks lead to an inevitability about how you structure your story. And how you structure your story informs how you create the most engaging version of it — which leads you, in the end, back to the directorial choices that connect most deeply with why you wanted to tell the story in the first place.

It's not that the process doesn't involve instinct and intuition and taste. But there is a reason behind your choices. You aren't deliberately copying another style because it's popular or cool. You are choosing the one that works with your meaning.

The reason I know that this process works is because of how it feels when you do it.

You feel as though the story is coming from you. The more you focus on the right story, the less pressure you feel to copy — because it just feels wrong. It's not that you are choosing to be original. It's that originality inevitably emerges, because you are being true to yourself.

But none of it is available to you until you've made the first move. Until you've stopped blaming the tools and accepted that the work you want to make is on the other side of work you have to do on yourself.

In DocFix we go through this process with you, in a simple and direct way. It's pretty much that step-by-step process I described above — with all the techniques you need, my mentorship to help answer those hard questions, and a community to share the progress.

The end result is a documentary narrative that touches people, and feels original. And that's because it comes from you.

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If you haven't signed up to the list, go to apply.thedocfix.com. You'll get a case study on how I use the techniques I talk about, and regular emails with tips and tricks from me.