• Hiran Daniel on the benefits and challenges of being a documentary filmmaker and content creator

Hiran Daniel, who also goes by Hidden Dutchman, is a content creator and documentary filmmaker. One of his latest projects is ‘We Will Not Give Up’, a cinematic documentary on ghost fishing nets that Daniel directed for The Pearl Protectors. While the documentary is available on The Pearl Protectors’ YouTube channel, the Hidden Dutchman YouTube features cinematic short films that capture the beauty of various locations in Sri Lanka, such as Gala Uda Hena, Knuckles Mountain Range, Imaduwa, and Yahangala.

In conversation with The Daily Morning, Daniel revealed that he will be, this year, focusing on a documentary about a Sri Lankan drone photographer, who he described as having a brilliant eye for drone photography – a project he commenced work on last year only to halt it due to the photographer’s studies and Daniel’s work. However, he hopes to restart the project this year and said it will be an interesting documentary for which he has captured something different.

“Down the road, I want to do something major with a good, alarming subject. That’s something I want to do as a documentary. I like travel. I will always stick to travel, but that one good, impactful documentary is something I want to focus on,” he shared.

Going into more detail about his work, Daniel spoke about what goes into creating a documentary, the challenges in content creation, and the investment one needs to make in equipment.

Following are excerpts from the interview:

What drew you to content creation?

When I started working, I was in Saudi Arabia for six years, so I missed travelling in Sri Lanka during this time. After I completed my work in Saudi Arabia, I came back to Sri Lanka and started getting to know people who travel around Sri Lanka in groups. That was something new to me and I wanted to give it a try. On my first hike, I rented a GoPro camera and wanted to make some vlog-style videos.

From that day onwards, I’ve been really hooked on to it and have wanted to learn more about the techniques, editing, colour grading, and so on.

From 2018 onwards, I’ve been doing content creation, maintaining a YouTube channel and making travel videos and vlogs, cinematic videos, and so on. As I got the hang of editing, colour grading, and content creation, I thought of doing something new because everybody is doing content creation and it’s the same kind of thing but in their own different way – which even I was doing. And so, I wanted to do something a bit more creative and extra, and got into making documentaries.

I’m a big documentary fan. I watched a lot of documentaries during the pandemic, mainly crime documentaries. It was very interesting to learn how they pace episodes, the amount of information they gather to present a nice story, and how they keep the audience engaged along the entire journey.

I got to learn more about documentaries and followed a lot of people who work on them on YouTube and learned many things.

I’m not a big documentary filmmaker yet, but I’m trying to be someone in that field because it’s something Sri Lanka lacks. Of course, there are many documentary filmmakers in Sri Lanka, but they get very little notice, because content creation of a smaller scale is now more popular among the audience.

What goes into creating a documentary, especially in terms of time and research?

Unlike small-scale content creation, where you tell your entire idea within a few minutes, when making documentaries, you need a good story and a good start. You have to give the audience satisfaction at the end. Otherwise, it’s not a good story. It’s a boring documentary to watch.

You have to be very careful when selecting the story and giving that satisfying ending. Say you are making a documentary about a tournament, the ending has to show the team winning the tournament. Something satisfying has to have happened at the end, and you have to backtrack from there and have all the information, an interesting character or two that you can keep the focus on and have the story go along with them, and have some ups and downs. There is a lot of pre-planning to do when it comes to documentaries. It’s all about preplanning, knowing what to do, and what time to shoot. This is the biggest part of a documentary: pre-planning.

You have to be very organised and determined to know what to do, where to do it, and what kind of people you have to associate with and get those things done. That’s the biggest difference between content creation and documentary making. Small-scale content creation, like Instagram reels, can be done within a day, but documentaries take long to make.

What kind of an investment is required when making documentaries?

If you have the budget, you have to invest in lighting and good audio. A big part of documentaries are the interview shots, which need to grab attention in the video. For this, audio and lighting are the most important things, and you’ll need a good lighting source, like a light or two, and a good mic.

The camera is also important, but you can get around with today’s smartphones. I did a lot of my work through my phone; I just got a good lens for my old camera. You can go all out and buy the various equipment out there, but if you know what to get and how to use them, you can get around with what you have when it comes to the camera.

What I did notice was that you have to invest in good lighting and audio when it comes to making documentaries, because that is a big part of the experience, especially when it comes to editing and giving that feel of a documentary.

What are some of the biggest challenges you have faced, whether when creating content or making documentaries?

The biggest challenge is to not be disappointed once the video is out there, as you can put so much into the creation of content but after you post it on social media, you may not get the views that you expected. This will be very disappointing and make you demotivated and reluctant to do more work.

That happens to me because I’m not a big Instagram influencer. Whatever I post may not get much in terms of reach, especially on YouTube. But what I learned from all the people I follow on YouTube, especially foreign filmmakers, is that if you have done a good job and have a few people who have always followed you along who say it is good, that means it is indeed a good thing. You can’t focus on going viral. One day, it will happen and then, automatically all other videos will get out there as well.

But the challenging part is getting over the dissatisfaction of thinking you aren’t a good filmmaker or content creator just because your video isn’t viewed. You should not focus on that. Put your ideas out there and get better – then people will notice you. I think this is the biggest challenge for me.

Do you think that focusing on the content as opposed to reach helps you focus on the quality of your work?

What I learnt from big-time filmmakers and influencers is quality over quantity. If you want to be with the trend and algorithm, yes, quantity makes sense, but there is another way around it: quality over quantity.

I focus more on quality than quantity. I have somehow managed to not get into what’s trending. I have learnt how to find new ideas, creative angles, and concepts to better my quality, so I’m not worried about the demanding algorithm. I just want to put out quality content. I know it’s not the best out there, but the more I put into my work, the better I will get, and someday it’ll go viral.

Are there any misconceptions about content creation that you would like to dispel?

It’s up to the person who is creating content, but at the moment, it’s all about going viral, especially on TikTok. If a viral music track is used, then anything with that track has a possibility of going viral. It’s okay to use such platforms. They are there for us to put out our talent and go viral, but you should use it in a way that matches your niche. Whether it’s trending music or any other trend, you have to use it in a way that matches you.

You shouldn’t use that track for the singular purpose of reaching people and then go back to what you were doing. That is the mindset that we have to understand: don’t just think about what other people are doing so that you too, will go viral. You have to be consistent in what you do. Find that one thing you are good at and stick to it.

Use the help of Instagram Reels and TikTok to do something meaningful and then you can get rewards down the road.

Are there challenges to reaching a global audience when based in Sri Lanka?

It’s a bit hard to go global from Sri Lanka, because whatever we do, whatever said and done, when we post our content on Instagram or TikTok, the first 100 people they push our content to are locals. Those 100 people are very valuable, they have to like, comment on, or share your content. Going beyond that is purely based on those first 100 people, who are usually based in Sri Lanka.

At the moment, I don’t think it’s very easy to go global unless it’s a project backed by an influencer from another country or they see the video and share it. In such instances, we are able to go global. Otherwise, you need a big follower base in Sri Lanka who have foreign followers.

There are now a few platforms and organisations that are helping creators to connect with a larger audience, connecting content creators and helping them to push their content a bit away from Sri Lanka and towards an international audience, which is a good thing. Hopefully, the mindset of the Sri Lankan audience will change and when that happens, more content will go to the international audience.

You directed a documentary for The Pearl Protectors. What are the benefits of collaborating with an organisation like The Pearl Protectors?

The benefit for me was the knowledge that I gained about what they do. I never knew what they were doing and that there was such an organisation doing such things in Sri Lanka. I went into the project as a nobody, knowing nothing. I thought about how if I didn’t know about their work, there would be others out there who didn’t either, so I wanted to make something through which more people could get to know about the organisation.

The biggest advantage of doing this documentary was the research we did. The Pearl Protectors is one organisation, but there are many other organisations with good causes in Sri Lanka. They carry out many initiatives but are not yet noticed. The more people get involved and work on such projects, the more they gain knowledge about such organisations and can also get that information to the public. That’s very important and for me, that was the main advantage of working with The Pearl Protectors.

Do you have any other thoughts about content creation that you’d like to share?

We have to learn more. The more we learn, the more we progress in whatever field we are in. None of us will be experts on what we do. We will always be learning and we should expand our knowledge so that we can always add something new to our next project, instead of doing the same thing over and over again.