Creating High-Quality Documentary Content for OTT Platforms

Quality documentaries could be the cornerstone of your over-the-top streaming strategy. Viewers can't get enough of this fascinating genre. According to the Hollywood Reporter, U.S. demand for streaming documentaries increased by 186% between January 2019 and July 2022. Impress your audience with these six strategies to create compelling real-life OTT content.

6 Best Practices for High-Quality Documentary OTT Content

1. Appeal to Viewers' Emotions

The best documentaries create an emotional connection with viewers. Consider subject matter that uplifts your audience and inspires them to act. Get to know your users well to target topics that optimize interest and engagement. This personal touch helps ensure you create content that aligns with audience values.

2. Create Anticipation

Hook your audience by posing an interesting question early in the documentary. Build anticipation and tension throughout the production before you eventually provide satisfactory answers. This approach can keep viewers on your platform as well as encourage repeat visits, especially when you release multiple episodes of your documentary.

3. Conduct Comprehensive Research

Don't be satisfied with a surface exploration of your target topic. Instead, do a deep dive to reveal information your audience doesn't already know. Depending on the subject of your documentary, you can rely on rich sources like archival footage, historical documents, expert testimony, and in-person interviews.

4. Simplify the Structure

Short documentaries should ideally have three acts, or sections of the story. The introduction poses the question your film will answer. The middle, which is the longest part of most documentaries, discusses the evidence surrounding your question and presents the necessary background information. Finally, the conclusion answers your question and wraps up the topic with a call to action.

Having a clear narrative arch will keep your viewers engaged. Identify and highlight interesting story points in each section to keep the pace and prevent users from clicking away.

5. Land on the Right Length

In a study by Arts Management and Technology Lab found that 65% of documentary fans prefer to watch this type of content through a streaming VOD platform. More than 53% of participants said they prefer episode-length documentaries of 30 to 60 minutes. Features of at least 80 minutes came in first for 36% of viewers, while 9.6% prefer short-form documentaries of 20 minutes or less. Microdocumentaries of 5 minutes or less ranked last among respondents.

6. Embrace the Unexpected

With the documentary format, you're telling a story as it unfolds in real time. You'll need to be flexible if the production doesn't proceed as planned. Instead of pursuing perfection, aim for authenticity. Transparency about your documentary's subject matter will build trust with your viewers: an important component of brand loyalty.

Focus on filmmaking and let our professionals set up a streaming strategy that makes sense for your brand. In a Statista survey, nearly half of OTT viewers named documentary as their favorite genre, reflecting the growing demand for high-quality content in this area. Contact Lightcast today for the support you need to plan, produce, and distribute engaging documentary shorts.