Until recently, a campaign book, usually ghost-written, was enough of an introduction for a serious presidential candidate. Then along came documentary filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi and her unlikely hit, "Journeys with George" - and just like that, a gauzy documentary became part of a winning candidate's formula.

Pelosi, the daughter of California Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, was an NBC traveling reporter covering George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign. A year on the road with the candidate gave her more material than NBC needed or wanted, and in 2003 when Pelosi cut a movie from her footage she created such a sensation that HBO followed suit and made "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama," released in August of 2009.

And so it is that several 2012 GOP contenders have documentarians hot on their trail this year, including marginal frontrunner Mitt Romney, and his fellow Mormon, Utah governor-turned-ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman.

But movies are a much different medium than books, and this arrangement presents a new set of problems for both the candidates and their would-be documentarians. For starters, unless you are Sarah Palin and have your own reality show, the candidate must rely on an independent filmmaker whose agenda may or may not be in sync with the candidate's own. The main problem for the documentary maker is that no one wants to see a movie about a political also-ran.

There are other challenges, too, not the least of which is the impulse on the part of politicians and their handlers to try and control their own image.

As Pelosi put it in an e-mail exchange on Sunday, "I truly believe that you will never get an honest documentary from a presidential candidate."

On the other hand, Ronald Reagan, who knew a thing or two about the movie business, liked to say that the camera doesn't lie. Perhaps this debate will be settled by the 2012 campaign.

The documentarian directing a movie about Romney is Greg Whiteley. Like Romney, he attended Brigham Young University and is a Mormon -- or as its adherents prefer to be called, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Whiteley won numerous awards for a 2005 film called "New York Doll" that detailed the career and life of Arthur "Killer" Kane, the former bass guitarist for the punk band New York Dolls, and Kane's conversion to the LDS Church. It is a movie Mitt Romney went to see twice.

Already listed in post-production on the Internet Movie Database, or IMDb, is "Mitt Movie," and the plot is described like this: "A filmmaker is granted unprecedented access to a political candidate and his family as he runs for president."

Alexandra Pelosi is skeptical: "If Romney is giving him permission to film, how could it be interesting? Hasn't reality television destroyed the whole concept of ‘reality'? Now that everybody knows that everything they do is being filmed, they are all acting."

"Think about how much money a presidential candidate spends on their campaign -- how many press people do they have?" she added. "How many strategists do they have telling them how to package themselves? Do you really think they are going to show you anything that they didn't want you to see?"

And then she declared, "The golden years of presidential documentary film making are over! The candidates are always ‘on' all the time, and thanks to the Internet, they don't need the media anymore."

Perhaps this will prove to be the case. But Whiteley has been on Mitt Romney's trail long before some network suit dreamed up "Sarah Palin's Alaska" -- or even before John McCain dreamed up Sarah Palin. Whiteley said in an interview with RealClearPolitics that he already has edited a rough cut of his film from footage he gathered when traveling with Romney in 2007 and 2008 during the former Massachusetts governor's first bid for the White House.

"We just determined that because he's appearing like he's running again, we ought to see what we have and go from there," Whitely said, adding that he decided to hold onto all of the footage from the first run so it can be included in the final version.

Whiteley said he has been in contact with Romney's political team in Boston and has spoken to Romney about the second run.

"We're going to try and talk him into letting us follow him again," he said, adding that Romney has told him only this: "I'm doing everything I can to be in a strong position to run again."

Whiteley freely concedes that if Romney becomes the next president -- or even the Republican nominee -- his film will be more valuable to him and more relevant to movie-goers, but he says that the way he is approaching the subject matter would make it interesting regardless of who wins. "It's less political and more of a portrait of a family going through this meat grinder of a campaign." And, he said, "I don't think Mitt has to become the nominee for the film to have interest or relevance ... My feeling is that it's a human drama."

And so, Richard Ben Cramer's book "What it Takes" meets Robert Redford's "The Candidate" -- or so Whiteley hopes.

Romney is not the only Mormon likely presidential candidate who has fielded calls from an interested documentary crew: Stateside political observers went wild when they found out that a documentarian has been following Huntsman around Beijing, even though it turns out that the film will focus on diplomatic relations between the United States and China, and Huntsman is merely a character.

Although that documentary is not really about U.S. domestic politics, it can hardly claim to be apolitical, and it may help to educate its audiences on what kind of a diplomat Huntsman is and what he's learned during his 18-month stay overseas. And that may be a helpful piece of information for Republican presidential primary voters -- that is, if it's even released before the Iowa caucuses next year.

The news of Huntsman's likely campaign forced Impact Partners to hire an editor and determine what to do with the footage they've collected, how to shape the feature film and whether to speed up production or try and follow the incoming ambassador, Gary Locke. If it is released early, however, it could provide a window into one of the most valuable lines on Huntsman's resume.

Academy Award-winning Producer Geralyn White Dreyfous of Impact Partners shared with RealClearPolitics the three-page overview of her upcoming film, but she explained that its direction is in flux because of Huntsman's political plans.

The overview begins with an explanation of China's rapid rise as a superpower; the country's influences on trade, the global economy and security; and its ever-evolving relationship and competition with the United States.

The documentary is to be "much more about China," Dreyfous said in an interview Friday, adding of Huntsman, "He was our vessel in. His family was our vehicle to tell the story."

According to the document:

President Obama's surprise pick of potential Presidential contender and dynamic Republican Utah Governor, Jon Huntsman, Jr. as his Ambassador to China, was perceived as a clever "team of rivals" maneuver. Upon closer scrutiny, Obama's decision may be a strategic "man for the times" masterstroke. ... Huntsman's Mandarin eloquence and easy colloquial style has already turned him into something of a rock star in compelling human counterpoints to the long list of high stakes policy and political issues that are daily fare in the life of an ambassador.

It also notes that Impact Partners began shooting the movie before Huntsman's confirmation hearings, and Dreyfous said a crew has taken nine trips to gather material, including a trip with Huntsman to Tibet and another to Shanghai. And for those interested in the ever-intriguing Huntsman-Obama relationship, the crew was present for Obama's state visit to China in late 2009.

The film's director, Vanessa Hope, taught graduate courses at a university in China, speaks Mandarin and has worked for the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, so a campaign film is not in the works.

"I'm not interested in shooting a campaign film," Dreyfous said. "If someone else wants to do that -- great. He's a great, charismatic person to be filmed ... He hasn't even told me that he's running for president, and he's not stupid enough to make an announcement before he leaves," said Dreyfous.

Actually, ever since Reuters first reported that Huntsman has a crew trailing him, it's caused more than one headache. Impact Partners has to get State Department approval for every shoot they do, and she said that the Chinese government has allowed more access than the State Department has in most cases.

Dreyfous said since that report 13 days ago, "everyone has grown more conservative and skittish," and she's worried about the crew's future access in China.

"We wanted to see if the Chinese throw him a party when he leaves, and what he says to the staff, but everyone is being so conservative," she said. "For us it's just a huge bummer."