What is a Documentary?

Documentaries

Firstly, what is a documentary? It is a film or TV program that focuses on real life (non-fiction) and includes footage of events as they happened. A documentary style movie about 911 & the war in Iraq might feature actors for re-enactment scenes, real or fictional, in the war scenes recreating certain battles or events. In comparison to this, a documentary film about 911 & the war in Iraq might predominantly feature news reel footage of real fighting, with commentary from experts and veterans who were in the war, ‘Fahrenheit 911’ used this approach, personally I feel this is the best way to do so, because it gets a better reaction from the audience.

It is this attention on documenting on reality, drama or a fictional that typically separates these movies from summer blockbusters and other popular films.

Secondly, the history of documentaries is vast; the first films ever made were documentaries, they were single-shot moments captured on film, for example; a train entering a station, a boat docking, or factory workers leaving work. These short films were called "actuality" films; the term "documentary" was not used until 1926.

The first feature length documentary ever made was ‘Nanook of The North’ by Robert Flaherty; it is a silent documentary where Flaherty captured the struggles of the Inuk Nanook and his family in the Canadian Arctic. Robert Flaherty has been criticized for staging several sequences in the documentary and thereby distorting the reality of his subjects' lives, this means it didn’t comply with Cinéma vérité which means ‘Truthful cinema’. Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking, using naturalistic techniques combined with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects.

Robert Drew’s chronicle of the 1960 Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary campaign of John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey is widely considered to be the founding film of American cinema verité. It was the first documentary in which the synchronized sound camera moved freely with characters through a breaking story. "At that time I was proposing that we make a new kind of history of the Presidency," recalls Drew, "that we would see and feel all the things that bore on the presidency at a given time -- the expressions on faces, the mood of the country, the tensions in the room, so that future presidents could look back at this and see and learn." Paragraph from: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/reellife/verite.htm

As I’ve previously mentioned documentaries are about real life, and one of my most favourite  documentaries is called ‘Dark Days’ it shows the gritty, ‘hard up’ side of life, it follows the lives of the New York homeless. It was made by Marc Singer and he was daring enough to document on homeless ‘community’ which live underground in the subway tunnels, I particularly enjoy this documentary because he portrayed homeless people in a way, that makes them seem like any other family and they are humanised instead of put down. There isn’t a narrator in this, the audio comes from the films footage.

In a complete contrast to ‘Dark Days’, I’ve also previously watched a documentary on Paul Smith a English fashion designer, this shows Paul Smith talking about his life from when he started out to present day, he is in front of the camera for most of it telling the audience about his creative and playful world. There is a big difference between this documentary and ‘Dark Days’, but also there are similarities, the main and only similarity really is that they are to inform, nevertheless they have completely different themes; Dark Days is gritty and emotional, Paul smiths is informative, factual and upbeat. I should also add that another similar implement is that they are both shot in a very artistic style, Dark Days is black and white and every object seems to reflect rays of light, which gives a satisfying look to the documentary, and also Paul Smiths is very artistic as well, it is shot in colour and there is frequent use of manual focus to draw attention to certain objects or people.

Another example to show what a Documentary is would be a good in-depth production, which is what a documentary is about its going on a journey to discover unknown things about a specific subject or topic. The 'Classic albums' series of documentaries are great at getting an in-depth understanding on how a specific artist has created there 'classic album', with a documentary about the world famous album of Pink Floyd's, 'Dark Side of The Moon'. Within this documentary it shows a very intimate understanding of how this album was composed, this is done through the documentary makers getting a first person perspective on it talking to the band members, having them explain the process. This is what a documentary is all about its getting deep into a story or subject, getting lots of perspectives on it, usually provoking the audience into making a decision on whether they agree with the documenters portrayal. However in these 'Classic Album', documentary's it already distinguishes that the album is important, just by the praise of the subject in the documentary's title, 'Classic Albums', so this style of documentary is mostly aimed at music fans, as they can learn more and get closer to this specific artist.