From HBO’s “Neighbors” to Netflix’s “The Crash” and “Sean Combs: The Reckoning,” filmmakers are leaning hard into subject-shot footage in a camera-aware world—only to find that “self” doesn’t automatically mean “pure.”
A phone camera can feel like the most honest witness in the room—until it’s used in court, edited into a four-hour series, or reframed against interviews meant to explain everything.
For Dylan Redford and Harrison Fishman’s HBO series “Neighbors,” the starting point wasn’t a crew chasing verité access. The show was “borne of viral neighbor dispute videos captured and posted by the subjects themselves. ” and the creators built their Emmy-credible approach—an Outstanding Unstructured Reality Program Emmy contender—around how close that footage already gets you to the moment.
Redford told IndieWire that verité isn’t “dead per se. ” but the idea of a “pure subject. ” “heedless of how they are perceived on film. ” might be impossible “given the world that we live in now and the awareness of the camera.” He pointed to a reality where “everyone’s documenting themselves and each other. ” and said the series tries to meet subjects where they already are.
“In some ways. we’re trying desperately to get close to where they already are with a lot of their own material because they’re just alone in their personal space speaking to the camera. ” Redford said. “We can’t really ever totally compete with that level of intimacy that a subject has with their phone and their camera. And so the best thing we can do is just utilize that and have it be a part of the language of the show.”.
That “language” is utility—utility for showing how modern surveillance works. and utility for making the footage feel stitched into everyday life. Fishman said their show is eager to use “footage from GoPros. 360 cameras. even Ring security systems.” He described wanting to “lean into how contemporary and how American our show is. ” adding. “And so any chance that we can — almost to a gratuitous level — just show truthfully how people are surveilling people. and how people are showing themselves. we’re really excited about that.”.
Redford framed it as more collaborative than classic verité because subjects are no longer naive to the craft. “Part of trying to make the show feel really relevant is also not fighting against that idea that our subjects are aware of the camera and have their own lens that they’re using. ” he said. “It then almost becomes more of a collaboration because they just know what we’re doing. They’re not naive to what it means to craft a story and talk to the camera. And so it’s a more collaborative approach than a more classic verité thing used to be in the past. because I just don’t think you can access that kind of total purity as much anymore.”.
He also connected the stakes of that strategy to the viewer’s access after the episode airs. The participants’ footage “deeply embeds our show into the sort of real fabric of these people’s lives. ” Fishman added. and it “further emphasizes that this show’s real and you can go online and you can find their profiles and you can watch all the same videos that we used in the show or watch more that we didn’t.”.
Even with different tones—“Neighbors” leans so far into the comedically absurd that the inciting infraction can slip from focus—the filmmakers keep returning to the same uncomfortable truth: camera awareness doesn’t just change how footage is captured. It changes what the footage means.
That pressure shows up in a sharper. more dangerous way in Netflix’s “The Crash. ” an Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special Emmy hopeful that also relies on footage shot by its own subject. Directed by Gareth Johnson and produced by Angharad Scott. the film examines the case of Ohio teenager Mackenzie Shirilla. who is currently in prison for murder. The story is based in part on surveillance footage of Shirilla crashing her car. killing passengers Dominic Russo. her boyfriend. and Davion Flanagan. his friend.
Scott said Shirilla “didn’t have approval over what was put in the documentary,” but she “obviously, she did provide material to us to help tell her side of the story.” Scott emphasized that as a filmmaker, it matters that people contribute “so that we can make these stories in this way.”
Johnson explained one practical reason subject footage matters: it curbs the need for dramatic reenactments. a waning true-crime trope already used in retellings of the Shirilla case. Still, he stressed that the filmmakers had to handle it carefully. “However, “you do have to be careful. We were always very careful about how we used it,” Johnson said. “and you could use it in a very blunt way where you just illustrated ideas or things like that. or certainly it’s very easy to paint a negative picture of anybody potentially with all the footage that they have in their phone.”.
Their goal was to avoid that shortcut. Johnson said. “We tried to not do that and to try to show a real person and a real life. ” while acknowledging the complication: Shirilla’s relationship to the record was not passive. “But at the same time. there’s complexities to that because she was also very engaged in trying to present a version of herself to the world.”.
The film demonstrates that contradiction through one of Shirilla’s own TikToks. One of her TikToks. soundtracked by “Bubblegum Bitch” by Marina and the Diamonds—which had become a viral sound on the platform—was used in court as an example of her having no remorse for her actions. and therefore deserving of a harsher sentence.
Johnson said that moment feeds an age-old debate about authenticity—“the degree to which what someone posts on their social media account is an authentic representation of themselves.” But he also underscored the filmmaking takeaway: “from a filmmaking standpoint. it also shows how just because a subject shot the footage on their own does not automatically mean it will present them in the most flattering light.”.
That same lesson lands with a different kind of force in “Sean Combs: The Reckoning. ” a frontrunner for an Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series Emmy nomination. Director Alex Stapleton interspersed self-commissioned footage throughout the Netflix project. saying the footage “was one of those weird things that happens in documentary filmmaking where you get these crazy things that land in your lap.” She described already being deep in the edit of her series about the private exploits of the music mogul better known as Diddy when she received hours of footage of him in his last week of freedom.
Stapleton said switching the project to incorporate it would have been a huge pivot—one that “commanded an entire night of combing through all the footage.” But she kept coming back to what the material revealed: “was proving a lot about his personality and more of the nuance of who Sean is. ” she said. “People can talk about him being this way and being that way. but until you see what he’s saying when he gets in the car in Harlem. when thinks he’s going to be able just to [make sure] no one’s ever going to see that part of him. that was a very valuable thing as a documentary filmmaker. to be able to put that forward.”.
The work wasn’t just technical. It was structural. Stapleton said they had to figure out “how the heck do we integrate this in a four-hour episodic structure where we can weave it in and braid it into the historical timeline that we were working on. and then the timeline of all the other things that we’re developing with victims coming forward from different eras of Sean’s career in his life?”.
Filmmakers across these projects described a shared challenge: taking footage a subject shot and then providing the right context for it. Stapleton said her intention behind using footage Combs hired people to take of himself was to “really focus on Sean’s relationship with the media. and Sean in front of cameras. and also a personality that. when he has the means. is always filming himself.”.
She added that the cameras worked for him, creating a false sense of control. “Being that the cameras worked for him at that point. There’s a certain level of safety of. ‘Well. I know that they’re not going to use this part of the conversation. ’ and I think him as a producer and a star and someone who’s in front of the camera. you could see the dials. ” Stapleton said. “You’re being let in on him and his process of manufacturing reality,” she added.
Stapleton said the footage is powerful partly because of the gaps—what’s not said. “There’s things that go down in it that are crazy. but a lot of the power of it is in the in between. in what’s not said or what things that you just wouldn’t get if you didn’t understand who this man was and that time period specifically where his priorities laid.”.
One place the difference between subject footage and traditional interviews becomes clear is in “The Crash.” Johnson said audiences can be drawn to Shirilla’s directness: “People will find it really fascinating to study her. her eyes directly. she talks directly into the camera in her interview. and to try to read her. I still do every time I watch it.”.
But the director contrasted that “lifeline” quality with the clips that had already spread before Shirilla understood her life would become documentary material. Johnson said with social media footage. “she used it before Shirilla had any concept of her life being fodder for a documentary. ” while the interview is framed as her chance to appeal her conviction. “You’ve got the immediacy of the social media, the videos, and the reflectiveness of the interviews,” Johnson said. “It’s a powerful combination.”.
Scott agreed. calling it where the real magic happens: “That’s where the real magic I think happens. because you can have that deeper analysis. you can have that deeper discussion. but you still see the truth of this person coming through in their social media.” Redford echoed the same principle while defending “Neighbors” against the idea that phone confessions are automatically more authentic than documentary interviews. “It would be a mistake to consider someone’s confessional that they film on their phone for their TikTok is any more real or authentic than a ‘documentary’ interview that we do with them in the car. They do different things.”.
A standout moment near the end of “The Crash” makes the filmmaking question impossible to ignore. Shirilla asks her lawyer for feedback after answering one of the director’s final questions. Johnson said it was important for the audience to understand the circumstances: the interview is happening while Shirilla is “still in the process of appealing. still fighting the conviction. ” and the lawyer “genuinely was there and it’s a truthful bit of documentary making.”.
Johnson added, “That moment I think reveals really what her thinking is, and you can interpret that as you will. Do you find that strange or suspicious, duplicitous? I wouldn’t tell anyone what to read into that at all.”
Stapleton returned to the same underlying belief, but with an edge shaped by all the footage these stories depend on. “Context is a really big part of the documentary process. And I think it’s always a tragedy when you don’t build that out,” she said. “You should never underestimate your audience, and you should never think that an audience won’t be able to comprehend.”.
Neighbors HBO Dylan Redford Harrison Fishman The Crash Netflix Mackenzie Shirilla Gareth Johnson Angharad Scott Sean Combs The Reckoning Alex Stapleton Diddy verité TikTok Ring security footage true crime documentaries