The past few years have featured such blockbusters as "Super-Size Me", "Fahrenheit 9/11", "Sicko", "March of the Penguins", and "An Inconvenient Truth". As news articles proclaim a new era in the history of documentary films, more and more new directors are making their first film a nonfiction one. But in addition to posing all of the usual challenges inherent to more standard filmmaking, documentaries also present unique problems that need to be understood from the outset. Where does the idea come from? How do you raise the money? How much money do you need? What visual style is best suited to the story? What are the legal issues involved? And how can a film reach that all-important milestone and find a willing distributor? Epstein and Friedman tackle all of these important questions with examples and anecdotes from their own careers. The result is a book that can guide even the most inexperienced filmmaker through the rigors of the process.