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.
