Documentary Film

SPELLBOUND

What is a Documentary?

Films that tell stories about real events and real people using, for the most part, actual images and objects.

What is a Documentary?

They record what is currently happening in the world or explore what has taken place.

They introduce viewers to ideas, people, and experiences that otherwise might not have encountered or challenge them to question what they already know.

What is a Documentary?

Like fiction films, documentaries can be funny, moving, disturbing, thought-provoking, or entertaining.

1st Documentaries

1895 – French Inventor Louis Lumiere developed a lightweight, hand-cranked camera that allowed him to tape daily occurences.

Ex: Feeding the Baby, Leaving the Factory, and Arrival of a Train at the Station.

These filmings are known as “actualities.”Lumiere’s early works lead to modern cinema.

1st Documentaries

Actualities were extremely popular, new, and thrilling to audiences in the 1890’s.

Watching Arrival of a Train at the Station made spectators scream and dodge as the film train moved from long shot to close-up, looking as if it would burst through the screen.

Early Documentaries

Documentary began with Nanook of The North, made by Robert Flaherty in 1922.Word ‘documentary’ was invented by John Grierson to describe this film. Nanook was the first feature length factual film and the first to use what Grierson described as ‘the creative interpretation of reality’. This meant that Flaherty had staged most of the scenes for the camera in order to make the film more dramatic and exciting for the audience.

Grierson as documentary maker

Grierson went on to head the GPO film unit in England in the 1930s He became a major exponent of poetic-realist approach to documentary. Nightmail (1936) began as an informational film about the mail train from London to Edinburgh. But the filming and editing emphasised the poetic elements of film form: movement, rhythm, light and sound

Grierson as documentary maker

Critics of Grierson accused him of neglecting the social and political issues in his films in favour of a modernist approach that celebrated machinery more than human beings.

Direct Cinema

Backlash to poetic documentary led to the next major development of documentaries in the 1950s and 1960s. Direct Cinema, a movement that began in the United States, aimed to present social and political issues in a direct, unmediated way giving the impression that events are recorded exactly as they happened without the involvement of the film-maker.

Direct Cinema

The development of smaller lighter film cameras using smaller film stock (16mm as opposed to 35mm film which is used in feature films and in documentaries up to that time) pioneered by news camera men allowed the camera to be held on the shoulder (hand-held) and to film in a more spontaneous manner. Key names in this movement are D.A. Pennebaker, The Mayles Brothers and Fred Wiseman.

Cinema VeriteAt the same time as Direct Cinema was being developed in America, a similar movement was happening in France called Cinema Verite (‘cinema truth’). Cinema Verite is a minimalist style of film making that conveys the sense that the viewer is given a direct view of what was actually happening in front of the camera without the artifice usually incorporated in the film-making process. Cinema Verite also favours hand-held camera, natural lighting, location filming, and direct sound.

Distinguishing a Documentary’s Approach

Objective Documentaries- Known as “Direct Cinema”- Attempt to record events objectively w/o manipulation or direction.- The camera records life as it unfolds in real time.

- Questions are not posed on screen, usually there is no narration, and often subjects do not know of the filmmaker’s presence

Distinguishing a Documentary’s Approach

Subjective Documentaries- Also known as opinionated documentaries- A distinct point of view is presented by the filmmaker.- Often the filmmaker narrates and participates either as a voice behind the camera or appearing as a character in front of the camera.

Distinguishing a Documentary’s Approach

Some documentaries use a combination of both objective and subjective approaches.

Structure of a Documentary

A documentary can be arranged chronologically OR it can move back and forth in time, if doing so is the best way to make a point or illustrate a theme.

REAL vs. STAGED

Though documentaries are intended to be “real,” filmmakers have been known to fake scenes when real footage was not compelling or did not exist.

Ex: Documentary – Nanook of the North – was the first full length documentary about a group of Inuts living on the coast of the Hudson Bay near the Arctic Circle.

Much of the documentary was restaged traditional activities of the Inut people, like whale hunting.

Documentary Categories

PoliticalDramatize issues and their implications

for society; contribute to political debate

Political documentaries walk a fine line between advocacy and propaganda

Ex: Fahrenheit 9/11; The Collector of Bedford Street

Documentary Categories

Historical Explore a past event or period of time or

the life of someone who lived in the past Archival photos, letters, and face-to-face

interviews with historians and scholars are some of the sources historical documentarians draw on.

Ex: 4 Little Girls

Documentary Category

Situational/Cultural/Natural World Help audience understand the world they

live in. Ex: Discovery Channel, Travel Channel,

Spellbound

What categories do the documentaries you’ve seen fit?

Making a Documentary

Documentaries employ many of the same devices as fiction films to hold attention.– Story– Point of view– Structure– Cinematography– Editing– Music

Making a Documentary

All documentaries require a strong story and must have structure.– Beginning– Middle– End– Compelling characters– Emotional impact– Not always a happy ending

Making a Documentary

Narration – off-camera commentary- is used to voice letters and other written material

To join together visual images and interviewsTo provide transitions between scenes or to set

the stage for a sceneTo indicate re-enactmentsNarration is generally written after the film is

completed to ensure the words and pictures work together.