Tag: documentary

The Art of Documentary

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This week’s Film & TV reading stems from Megan Cunningham’s Art of Documentary.

Looking into the filmic concept of Cinema Verite, which stems off from the French “Cahiers du Cinema”, it is amusing to read MV5BMTU5NTQ5Nzc5NV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNTc3NzEyMQ@@._V1_SY317_CR7,0,214,317_AL_cinematographer Haskell Wexler speak about initiating the drama by creating a trigger. Despite the term ‘fly on the wall’, the filmmakers must provide stimulus for the social actors to interact with in order to create tension. In the case of the film Salesman, by calling the wife of one of the Bible salesman and telling her about his supposed wild activities in the city of Las Vegas. Despite its lack of truth, tension is born within the scene and there is conflict to be resolved. Wexler also claims that “there is no reality”…that whatever the image is, as long as it is presented in its media, is no longer reality.

On the other hand, Cinematographer Kirsten Johnston shares a three-step formula in creating a successful documentary film; beginning with the presentation of visually appealing imagery for the audience. Regardless of the content the film is based upon, the audience watches the film and is more appealed to engage with the content by the aesthetics of its shots. Secondly, Johnston devotes an artistic sensibility to an innate passion of the material. She submerges herself within the story and creates characters within stories that are isolated from real life issues. Lastly, her collaborative style helps her to understand the direction of her director, that is, “her humility, focus, generosity and careful consideration of the subject.”

“I like to connect how I’m shooting to what I’m shooting…”

Directing the Documentary

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film making

Rabiger’s book, Directing the Documentary, provides insight into Bill Nichols’ theorem on the documentary form. It is amusing to see that thefirst two sub-genres listed are those that could be classified as polar opposites; Poetic documentary and its abstractness versus the Expository documentary with the overbearing Voice of God narration. In comparing my proposed concept on the Western Suburbs to the list provided (with samples of each in memory from my True Lies Documentary course), it would be interesting for me to portray the idea in a poetic aspect with elements of the Observational sub-genre. I remember having shown a short documentary (title unknown) in one of our screenings about the construction of a major freeway in America that required the demolishment of local buildings, conveyed in a definite abstract technique; illustrating freeways as a spider web slowly encroaching suburbia. 

Secondly, Rabinger provides a step by step process to pre-production research for successful documentary

filmmaking. It is as follows:

1) Beginning with a working hypothesis

2) Familiarisation with people, situation/s and other important details

3) Taking advantage of resources; i.e. Internet, publications and other filmic content

4) Communicating and building trust with ‘experts’

and Lastly, 5) Reality Checks: Is the concept possible/accessible?

Back to school

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This week’s (and year’s) first Integrated Media readings look into the concept of I-Docs or Interactive Documentaries. The authors list four different modes of existing I-Docs, each one affording the user a different construction of reality.

These are: Conversational, between the user and creator,  Hypertext, which leads the user to different pages with a single click, Participative, or “collab-docs” that stage a conversation between the producer and the user community, and Experiential content depending on the location of the participant, allowing them to interact with physical space.

If one is to return to Bill Nichol’s three part definition of documentary as “involving a community of practitioners within a particular institutional context, familiar modes of documentary representation and a set of assumptions and expectations of audiences”, it is to be concluded that the technology of the 21st century allow “digital documentaries” to garner direct (if not even democratic) participation from then passive audiences. However, this must not be confused as a mere “digital revolution”, rather as a remediation (Bolter and Grusin) of old and new media.

As of current, it is also mentioned that there are two broad dynamics at play. Firstly, the integration and transformation of digital technology in documentary as a cultural form precedes. There is also a convergence of documentary’s discourse and aesthetics into participatory contexts such as online cultures. However, the overall concept in I-Docs are transformed (for the better) in its distribution, accessibility for users, and proliferation of user-generated content.