DOCUMENTARY FILM

Documentary

• Expectations associated with documentary

• Purports to offer factual information

• Various filmic devices associated with documentary

• Often without script or staging

• Camera control

• Controls editing

• Does not control dialogue (usually)

• May or may not control lighting

• Some staging/scripting legitimate

• Staging does not immediately create fiction

• Presentation of factual trustworthiness

• Unreliable documentary still can be a documentary

• Politicized documentaries not necessarily fictional

• Documentary as persuasive

• Present “evidence”

Types of Documentary

• Compilation film—collects images from archival sources

• Interview/talking heads documentary—records testimony about people, places, events, or movements

• Direct-cinema—records ongoing event as it happens with little filmic interference

– Emerged in 1950s and 1960s with rise of portable film equipment

– Cinéma-vérité

• Nature documentary—study of nature and natural world

– Often quite scientific

• Portrait documentary—centers on biography of compelling person

• May mix genres—synthetic documentary

Documentary

• Assumption that fiction presents imaginary places and people

• Fictional films clearly work with factual people and events

– Can often comment on real world

– Can engage “real” world outside world of film

• Spectators’ assumptions about fictional film

• Fictional films can represent/recreate history

• Directors can blur distinction between documentary and fiction film

• Mockumentaries—fake documentaries

– Purport factuality

– Usually clearly fake

– Usually quite humorous

– Imitate conventions of documentary

Categorical Form

• Documentaries tend to follow narrative format

• Categorical form—presenting information via groupings created by individuals or society to organize knowledge

– Some based on scientific research

– Some based on social construction

– Most categories not strict but malleable

– Categories can be ideologically based

• Patterns of development usually quite simple

• Can become quite boring

• Filmmaker needs variation in progression to maintain interest

• Patterned use of film techniques

• May mix other kinds of form, including narrative

• May be ideological

• Simple form used to create complex films

• Filmmaker presents argument about subject

• Goal of persuading audience

– Encourage action on opinion

– Argument made explicit

• Open address of Audience

• Filmic subject not issue of scientific truth

– Various possible opinions

– Filmmaker attempts to present specific opinion as viable and correct

Rhetorical Form

• Filmmaker presents argument about subject

• Goal of persuading audience

– Encourage action on opinion

– Argument made explicit

• Open address of Audience

• Filmic subject not issue of scientific truth

– Various possible opinions

– Filmmaker attempts to present specific opinion as viable and correct

• Often involves appeal to emotions

• Argument/action presented as effectual on our everyday life

• Arguments rarely presented to us as “arguments”

• Arguments from reliable source

– Often reliable people—authority?

• Appeal to commonly held social beliefs

• Use of specific examples

• Use of enthymemes—familiar, easily accepted argumentative patterns

– Often conceal vital premises

• Appeal to viewer’s emotions

– May draw of various filmic conventions