Each year around 1800 documentary filmmakers make the pilgrimage to Sheffield to pitch, connect, watch films and explore new forms of storytelling. We avoided kaftans and bare feet and took the train - through Yorkshire’s gorgeous rolling pastures - right into a huge patch of grey cloud.

As the rain set in it became clear that this was the weather to be spent inside a cinema watching docos – and that maybe this is why Sheffield would be the perfect host for a film festival at this time of year.

Arriving on the eve of the festival I had hoped to do a quick recce of ‘Sheffield in one day’, in the spirit of Palin. But as the rain got thicker my only real option was to stay in my hotel room and get cosy with the Festival Guide and suck up a good dose of UK TV.

Which brings me to Robert Thirkell’s ‘Hundred Rules of Television’ – an insert in the Guide.

Rule 4 – Follow the crazy idea, if your gut tells you to strongly enough. (I can identify with this.)

Rule 33 – Assemble the right team to do it. (Makes sense.)

Rule 58 – Make contributors look bad to look good. (Hmmm.)

Rule 83 – Try to tell it in a couple of sentences and get the attention of everyone in the pub. (I do always play my best pool after a couple of drinks. I wonder if there is a pool table in the delegate centre?)

And so it goes on. The thing is I’m all for rules, guidelines and breaking them. But when it comes to documentary I don’t think there really are any hard and fast rules. There are so many ways to go about it and that is what excites me about Doc/Fest this year. Kevin Macdonald is going to be showing a work progress of his crowd-sourced film ‘Life in a Day’. While IndiGoGo, Kickstarter and Buzzbank are creating ‘crowd-funding’ platforms for audiences to fund the films that broadcasters don’t have the money for. Lucy Cooke’s cross platform project The Amphibian Avenger was saved by a sloth. And who would have known that Kim Longinotto (winner of this years Sheffield Inspiration Award) had to re-shoot her observational masterpiece ‘Sisters in Law’ after the whole film was flashed in an airport X-Ray machine?

When it comes to documentary filmmaking – truth and storytelling can take on many forms and can be achieved in so many different ways. I did walk past one of the key Doc/Fest buildings. The staff were busily preparing inside for what I think is going to be an epic festival. And according to the door’s signage ‘The Truth’ is inside this building. I guess we will find out soon enough.