Modern cinema loves vagueness and ambiguity, but they should always have a purpose. If a script is vague, confusing and ambiguous for no reason, it’s simply bad.

My favorite quote about this is from C.S. Lewis: “Take great pains to be clear. Remember that though you start by knowing what you mean, the reader doesn’t, and a single ill-chosen word may lead him to a total misunderstanding. In a story, it is terribly easy just to forget that you have not told the reader something that he needs to know; the whole picture is so clear in your own mind that you forget that it isn’t the same in his.”

This is particularly important in documentary filmmaking, which has the unenviable task of trying to be art, entertainment and journalism — all at the same time.