I'm Aaron Lieber, a brand documentary director based in San Clemente, California. I directed Marmon × The Wasp for Marmon Holdings, a Berkshire Hathaway company, and the feature documentary Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable, which premiered at Tribeca in 2018. I make true stories that a brand has earned the right to tell, from two minutes to feature length.
Marmon Holdings, a Berkshire Hathaway company, handpicked seven engineers from its 30,000 employees and gave them one job: rebuild the 1911 Marmon Wasp, the car that won the first Indianapolis 500, by hand. They did it over one year at Honest Charley Speed Shop in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I directed the film, with Dan Mayfield on B camera.
It works as a documentary because the story would be worth watching if no brand were attached. Seven people, a hundred-year-old race car, a year of work. The brand benefits because the story is theirs to tell: the engineers are Marmon's own people, and the car carries the Marmon name.
That is the test I apply to every brand documentary brief. If the subject is real and the brand's connection to it is honest, the film earns the watch. Watch Marmon × The Wasp.
It started as a six-week short for a brand. It became a six-year feature. I started out thinking it was a comeback film. By month twelve it was a film about motherhood, and by month twenty it was about consequence. The discipline was holding all three open until the footage told me which one was true.
Reef's documentary series profiling the people who shape the brand: photographer Brent Bielmann and surfer Malu. The brand, told through the people behind it.
How the WSL reaches the world, and the network that carries it. A behind-the-scenes brand film built around a real operation instead of a product spec sheet.
How volunteers test the water that protects California beaches. A cause film, plus a first-person POV cut, built on the people doing the work.
A commercial is short-form, spot-driven, and made for paid placement. A brand documentary runs longer, follows a subject instead of a product, and earns its audience through a true story. I direct both, and the choice usually comes down to two questions: what the work needs to do twelve months from now, and whose voice carries it. If a real subject's voice carries it and it still needs to build trust a year out, it is a documentary.
The format also scales. Reef × Made & Molded is a two-part series. Marmon × The Wasp is a single film. Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable is 97 minutes. The full field guide covers when each one wins.
Budgets vary by scope. As a benchmark from my own work: brand documentaries and short-form films like Marmon × The Wasp or Sony G Master typically run $75K-$250K. Feature documentary engagements with multi-year access, like Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable, run $250K and up. For comparison, 30-second branded spots typically run $25K-$75K.
As an owner-operator, I don't carry rental dependency on the camera package, which keeps mid-budget documentaries efficient. The bid is sized to your scope, direct-to-client or alongside your agency.
The first weeks go to the subject, the access, and the parts of the story that aren't in the brief yet. That phase is not a delay. It is the job.
Subjects open up to one person with a camera in a way they don't with a large crew. I size the crew to the access, not the other way around.
Owner-operated cinema package, interviews lit and recorded to hold up on big screens, and the patience to wait for the moment that matters.
Hero film first, then cutdowns for paid, social, recruiting, and events, from the same footage. One creative carries it from pre-production through delivery.
Send the subject, the reason your brand should tell it, the budget, and the timeline. I'll come back with a treatment and a plan built around the access you have.
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