In documentary films the person, place and events shown to audience are real. They exist or have existed. For example, in Forbidden Lies, Broinowski, the director insisted to go to find the hospital where Norma’s friend, Dalia, (As Norma claimed) who is killed by her family in an honor killing in Jordan. All documentaries do is to present factual information about the world. There are lots of ways of presenting in documentary, for instance, filmmakers can just simply record events that actually occur during the process, events that spontaneously occur, using visual aids like charts, maps, etc. For instance, in Forbidden Lies, when Norma sits on a chair, reading her book, based on a ‘real story’, Broinowski records the entire process-the process of filming Norma. Audience can see the filming sets, cameras, tracking dollies and hear Broinowski saying ‘action!’ Sometimes animation and comic can be used as well. Comic is used to show what happened in the court 11 years ago in The Thin Blue Line. What’s more, stage. Stage here is an important and common way of representation in documentary. Same location, the person doing the same thing, all the director will do is to ask the person wait for few seconds then he/she can frame it up. This does not mean there is something different here, the only difference is when the person does the thing regularly there is not a camera placed there and happens to shoot the entire process. However there is another kind of form of staging that involving actors. For example, in The True Blue Line directed by Errol Morris played back perfectly the murder scene in 1976 Dallas, Taxes. This documentary includes plenty strong evidences and logical conjectures like ‘mixes interviews and archival material with episodes performed by actors’. ‘The jittery reenactments of television true-crime shows are shot with smooth camera work, dramatic lighting, and vibrant color. The result is a film that not only seeks to identify the real killer but also raises questions about how fact and fiction may intermingle’ (Bordwell & Thompson 2013, p.353). From the examples above, it is proved that staging events will not make a film fictional or fake, it is just the fictional way to show the truth to audience, in fact staging sometimes intensify the documentary value of the film, and enhances the film’s reliability in some degree.

Documentary can be expressed in many different ways, there can be some fictional elements, there is no fixed rules of that is how a documentary is made. There are some conventions, but this does not conflict with the finding new ways and more progressive, dauntless way of finding the truth. Truth is there, it doesn’t come to people actively and it doesn’t say anything about itself. It all depends on what people discover, how people think about it and do people believe in it. Documentary is all about the truth, however sometimes the way of presenting the truth is hard to find. The truth is always hidden, so the way of presenting the truth has to be smart enough, at the same time objective enough because the truth never changes and it never is guaranteed by anything.

Reference: Bordwell, D & Thompson, K 2013, Film Art: An Introduction, 10th edn, University of Wisconsin-Madison, pp. 350-353 & pp.433-438.