News vs Documentary

 News VS Documentary

News

• Tell you brief explanation
• Give facts and figures
• Switch topics quickly
• Answer only main questions

Documentary

• Always about one topic/subject
• Go into depth with stories and reenactments
• Give facts and figures
• Give different sides to the topic in hand
• Answer lots of different questions not just the main ones
• It is an, ‘Investigation’

Documentaries and News reports are similar in factually presenting structured programs that inform their audience in a specific subject/topic. Nevertheless they are very different in the way they present and structure the program. News reports tend to present the information from the scene of the event, with reporters getting live coverage of the topic-in-hand. There are news reports of past events as well but they are not in-depth like documentaries. The 9/11 attacks were reported all over the world by channels like Fox News, CBS News and ABC News. The News reports all were mostly showing footage of what has actually happened so this would be the footage of the planes hitting the world trade centre. However in a documentary they would have more personal accounts of the attack, so this would be lots of interviews, and just people telling there story on the attacks. In Fahrenheit 9/11 there was a personal account of a woman whose son died at war for his country, this story went into a lot of detail as it supported Michael Moore’s (Director) representation of the topic.

Just to show how quick news programs go through different topics, I’ve got print screens of the start and end of a news story. They start covering the story at 8.00 and it finishes at 10.00, so they only cover the story for 2 minutes. A documentary would cover a topic for over 30 minuets usually up to 1 hour.

Just to show how quick news programs go through different topics, I’ve got print screens of the start and end of a news story. They start covering the story at 8.00 and it finishes at 10.00, so they only cover the story for 2 minutes. A documentary would cover a topic for over 30 minutes usually up to 1 hour.

 The big difference between a news report and a documentary really is, the time frame. I am saying this because a news report reports on current affairs, so they will report something that happened on the same day, but in contrast documentaries will document on a specific subject/topic, and the documentaries are released to audiences a long time after the subject/topic happened. E.G when 9/11 attacks happened that same day all the news channels where reporting it, but it took a long time until a documentary was made on it (Fahrenheit 9/11).

Another example of the difference between news reports and documentaries. The 'Classic albums' series with a resent documentary about the popular rapper Jay-Z with his first album, claiming it as a masterpiece and a 'classic album' in terms of hip hop music. The difference between this documentary an a news report about him is that the documentary is a lot more in-depth about his life and his music getting into the 'nitty-gritty' details, where there are many scenes showing Jay-Z himself in the record studio listening to his songs and explaining their meanings to the viewers. This is very different in a news report as it wouldn't get into these details they would just give factual information on his album and when it is possibly getting released with maybe one quick professional opinion on it.  

Also a completely different example would be of the documentary 'Dark Days', about the homeless in New York specifically in the tube tunnels. A news team would report on this matter in a very third person way only getting basic knowledge about them, 'from afar'. However in Dark Days this documentary's show the lives to these people in a first person perspective at times, which would not be done in a news report, also in the documentary because of this bonding between the documentary maker and the homeless it shows them in a positive to neutral light, keeping a good balance within the documentary. Although I feel in a news report the homeless would be portrayed in a negative fashion in the situation they are in within the documentary, this is a very important difference between the two.

Mr.M Film - Lost & Learning

Documentary Genre

Unit 27 LO2 – Documentary Genre – Help

Expository

Expository Documentaries, is a nonfiction film that emphasizes verbal commentary and argumentative logic. Expository documentaries use a voice of God narration, for example: As narrator, Queen Latifah is the voice of authority for Arctic Tale. Direct presentation of facts

Can include all kinds of evidence

An Inconvenient Truth is an example of an expository documentary because it relies on verbal commentary and argumentative logic to make a strong case for prevention of global warming.

Observational

Observational style documentaries have, No narration, minimal voiceover, sometimes not even interviews - just scene after scene of raw footage strung together in long takes, real time, synch-sound, in which the characters and their often-turbulent lives drive the film. You will almost never see or hear the filmmakers.

Armadillo is a purist observational masterpiece, the story of some young Danish soldiers and their platoon deployed on a tour of Afghanistan, no voiceover, no narration, not even any interviews.

Interactive

Interactive documentaries are often a personal project, a good example of this is ‘’Bear 71’ a documentary made by the executive producer of Bear 71. His name is Loc Dao, and he is the narrator throughout the documentary, this documentary is the 2012 interactive National Film Board of Canada web documentary. The Documentary is about a Grizzly bear in Banff National Park, who was collared at the age of three and was watched her whole life via trail cameras in the park.

Essayistic

An essayistic documentary is made very simply; it is simple because it is as easy as documenting on an essay. Uses ‘first person’ address, these documentaries include personal opinions and stories from a personal viewpoint. These documentaries sometimes can be objective towards a subject but does not try to be. A good example of this is, ‘The Forgotten Space’, it follows container cargo aboard ships, barges, trains and trucks, listening to workers, engineers, planners, politicians, and those marginalized by the global transport system. This Documentary uses descriptive documenting, interviews, archive stills and footage, clips from old movies. The result is an essayistic, visual documentary about one of the most important processes s that affects us today

Experimental

Experimental documentaries are usually made from a personal account; the filmmakers are experimenting with different forms of media to get a different ‘unique’ style of documentary for the audience. Also an experimental documentary is an artistic practice . Experimental documentaries have no limits at all they can be about anything, so there are a huge variety of experimental documentaries. One documentary ‘Mayhem’ by Abigail Child is about social order and how sexuality flows in an atmosphere of sexual tension, danger, violence, and glamour. Its is clearly a experimental documentary because of its vastly odd topic.

Performative

Performative documentaries are a mix of drama and documentary, they rely on recreations to assist the story behind the documentary.  A good example of this is, ‘Touching The Void’, the true story of two climbers and their perilous journey up the west face of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in 1985. All the footage is reenacted and there is a little bit of narration with the footage this also assists the storyline.

Robert Welland Interview with Perry

Questions for Interview - P.Dabbs

Questions for Interview with Perry Dabb’s

•Hi Perry, I know your interest is EXPO, please tell the viewers and me what EXPO is?

•What’s good about EXPO?

•What was it likes to meet Ben 10’s voice actor?

•I know you also have met Mike Tyson, was that at EXPO as well?

•You’re an avid film buff right? Well what’s your favorite film, and why?

•You’ve met Warwick Davis, did he inspire you think about him?

Interview Research

Interviews

This is a guide on how to set up your equipment, to make an effective, insightful and powerful interview.

Lighting

Firstly, we’ll start off with the lighting of the interview, lighting will dramatically affectthe look of the interview, and three-point lighting is the best way to light your interviewer & interviewee. This will give a much more professional and satisfying look to the interview, so it will be aesthetically pleasing to the audience.

Mise-en-scene

Mise-en-scene is very important; this is because it refers toeverything we see in front of the camera or within the frame. This includes people so the interviewee & maybe theinterviewer, costumes, props, sets or locations. So in aninterview you will want to have the interviewee on the camera,you will position them to the side of your frame, this is tocreate theillusion of space, sothen youcan have abackgroundpromotingand newalbum orfilm,nevertheless

Robert Welland

you could just have a scenic location.Framing & Compositionuses ‘The Rule of Thirds’this guideline proposes thatan image should beimagined as divided intonine equal parts by twoequally-spaced horizontallines and two equally-spaced vertical lines.Filming people, it iscommon to line the body upwith a vertical line, andhaving the person's eyes inline with a horizontal one. If filming a moving subject, the samepattern is often followed, with the majority of the extra roombeing in front of the person (the way they are moving). Thistechnique claims that aligning a subject with these pointscreates more tension, energy and interest in the compositionthan simply centering the subject would.Which ones would you use fordifferent set ups?If the interview is indoors, I will use full three-point lighting and

Robert Welland

I will follow the rule of thirds so that it creates the illusion of space, if the interview is for promotion purposes, then formise-en-scene I would have a poster to the right or left of theperson on camera, (the picture above, is a example).Interviews outdoors I would not use a lot of lighting, if not anythis is because the natural light would do a fine job of lightingthe face, but you might need a little fill light to take anyshadows away from the face. Because the interview isoutdoors let the audience see that, so use the rule of thirds buthas a nice scenic background.

Robert Welland