This week’s tutorial introduces the different ways to structure a documentary for our final project. According to Das (2019), documentaries have long been used as an instrument to inspire change in their audience, be it social change or inner change. Thus it inspires me on how to tell the story of my documentary, which is necessary to express an emotion deeply, make the audience reflect on the story and also give them inspiration. I would keep this in mind to make my documentary. Moreover, David’s article (2014) introduces an impression-oriented and experimental approaches (episodic structure) to structuring the micro-documentary and I am so impressed by the film example it gives in the article. In iSolation (2012), there’s no voiceover but only a few sentences in the beginning to introduce the film’s idea. In all kinds of shots, people can be seen playing with their mobile phones, listening to music or indulging in their mobile phones. All the shots reflect a series of phones and how people use phones isolated from others. I think it also reflects the relationship between people and phones. In Junkopia (1989) there’s only a few texts introducing the film in the beginning as well, and the film mainly records the floatable spare parts in no man’s landscape in Emeryville from different angles. These floatable spare parts reflect the characteristics of the environment, which is ‘no one’, and also reflecting on Emeryville in the past. To sum up these films are both only using a few texts to address the idea or conflict at the beginning and focusing on showing footage, and the shots (each might include different elements) all refer to the main concept, which are tied up together as a film. Thus I love the way of addressing the conflict (the inciting emotions) at the beginning by words, showing footages rather than telling to express the feelings, and chain up the different footages (but refer to the same unified theme) together as a film, I would like to apply these ideas to my film.
As I wanna make a series of chapters as a structure, so there might be no central character to drive the story or water could be seen as the character. The story begins with a question of what do we think about water, then the different chapters will answer this question in different angles and make the audience consider. For the first chapter it will use the footages to introduce how important and necessary water is to the earth. And the second chapter will then introduce the water pollution with the footage or image about the water pollution event (like Deepwater Horizon oil spill). Thus the two chapters all refer to the water in different ways, and the content comparison between them satirises people’s behaviour of harming water (although water treats us so well) and inspire reflection and change in the audience.
Reference list:
Das, Trisha How t Write a Documentary Script, 2007.
Tames, D., 2020. Four Approaches To Structuring Micro-Documentaries. [online] Kino-eye.com. Available at: <https://kino-eye.com/2014/11/17/structuring-micro-docs/> [Accessed 22 April 2020].
iSolation. 2012. [film]. Directed by Daniel Hume
Junkopia. 1981. [film]. Directed by Chris Marker