Transcript Research and Writing (Chaps. 1

Documentary Film
SPELLBOUND
What is a Documentary?
 Films that
tell stories about real
events and real people using, for
the most part, actual images and
objects.
What is a Documentary?
They record what is currently
happening in the world or explore what
has taken place.
 They introduce viewers to ideas,
people, and experiences that otherwise
might not have encountered or
challenge them to question what they
already know.

What is a Documentary?

Like fiction films, documentaries can be
funny, moving, disturbing, thoughtprovoking, or entertaining.
1st Documentaries
1895 – French Inventor Louis Lumiere
developed a lightweight, hand-cranked
camera that allowed him to tape daily
occurrences.
 Lumiere brothers
 Ex: Feeding the Baby, Leaving the Factory,
and Arrival of a Train at the Station.
 These filmings are known as “actualities.”
 Lumiere’s early works lad to modern cinema.

1st Documentaries
 Actualities
were extremely popular,
new, and thrilling to audiences in the
1890’s.
 Watching Arrival of a Train at the
Station made spectators scream and
dodge as the film train moved from long
shot to close-up, looking as if it would
burst through the screen.
Distinguishing a
Documentary’s Approach
Objective Documentaries
- Known as “Direct Cinema”
- Attempt to record events objectively w/o
manipulation or direction.
- Camera records life as it unfolds in real time.
- Questions are not posed on screen, usually there
is no narration, and often subjects do not know of
the filmmaker’s presence
Distinguishing a
Documentary’s Approach
Subjective Documentaries
- Also known as opinionated documentaries
- A distinct point of view is presented by the
filmmaker.
- Often the filmmaker narrates and
participates either as a voice behind the
camera or appearing as a character in front
of the camera.
Distinguishing a
Documentary’s Approach
Some documentaries use a combination of both
objective and subjective approaches.
Propaganda
Why and how do people communicate?
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Inform
Persuade
Entertain
Deceive
Manipulate
And…?
Culture
Man-made patterns of thinking, feeling and
behaving
American cultural values
• Conservative / moderate / liberal / progressive
• Self-responsibility, hard work / work ethic,
family values, society preservation, religion
• And…?
No ‘absence of ideology’
Fiction and non-fiction
Every act of communication has cultural
elements embedded
Creator / presenter may or may not realize
his / her biases
Creator / presenter may or may not be
trying to reinforce a particular ‘moral of the
story’
No ‘absence of ideology’
Structure of a Documentary
A documentary can be arranged
chronologically OR it can move back and
forth in time, if doing so is the best way to
make a point or illustrate a theme.
Sometimes there are A/B stories, also called
parallel structure
REAL vs. STAGED
 Though documentaries are intended to be
“real,” filmmakers have been known to
fake (stage) scenes when real footage was
not compelling or did not exist.
 Ex: Documentary – Nanook of the North –
was the first full length documentary about
a group of Inuits living on the coast of the
Hudson Bay near the Arctic Circle.
 Much of the documentary was restaged
traditional activities of the Inuit people, like
whale hunting.
Documentary Categories
Political
 Dramatize issues and their implications
for society; contribute to political debate
 Political documentaries walk a fine line
between advocacy and propaganda
 Ex:
Fahrenheit 9/11;
Critics Consensus: Extremely one-sided in its
indictment of the Bush administration, but
worth watching for the humor and the debates
it will stir.
Documentary Categories
Historical
 Explore a past event or period of time or
the life of someone who lived in the past
 Archival photos, letters, and face-to-face
interviews with historians and scholars
are some of the sources historical
documentarians draw on.
 Ex: 4 Little Girls (integration battles)
 Again, note point of view (ideology)
Documentary Category
Situational/Cultural/Natural World
 Help audience understand the world they
live in.
 Our approach this semester
 Ex: Discovery Channel, Travel Channel,
Spellbound
What categories do the documentaries
you’ve seen fit?
Making a Documentary
 Documentaries employ many of the same
devices as fiction films to hold attention.
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Story
Point of view
Structure
Cinematography
Editing
Music
Making a Documentary
 All documentaries require a strong story
and must have structure.
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Beginning
Middle
End
Compelling characters
Emotional impact
Not always a happy ending
Chapter One says
 Like Hollywood fiction, these films may
emphasize
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Character
Conflict
Rising stakes
A dramatic arc
Resolution
Making a Documentary
 Narration – off-camera commentary- is used
to voice written material
 To join together visual images and
interviews
 To provide transitions between scenes or to
set the stage for a scene
 To indicate re-enactments
 Narration is often completed after the film
is in final stage to ensure the words and
pictures work together.
credit
Some of previous information from YMI – Young Minds
Inspired – in cooperation with the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences.
Documentary
Storytelling – our text
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Chapters 1 and 2: Research & Writing Overview
Perception…
A surprisingly large number of people,
including documentary filmmakers, will
strive to differentiate the nonfiction films
they enjoy (and make) from something
they've stereotyped as “documentaries.”
 Documentaries, from the reputation they
seem to hold, are the films some of us had
to watch during fifth grade history or eighth
grade science. Sometimes derided as “chalk
and talk,” they tended to be dry, heavily
narrated, filled with facts, and painful to sit
through.

Perception…
So ingrained is this model, it seems, that
inexperienced filmmakers still imitate it,
creating films that are little more than
illustrated research papers created to
“show” or “prove” something through a
steady recitation of data.
 So, nonfiction films that work—that grab
and hold audiences through creative,
innovative methods— are set apart by their
makers and audiences as being somehow
more than documentaries: they're movies.

Starting Point…
We are doing some topics that are
relatively easy to gather material
about – as an introductory class, we’re
not trying to create a masterpiece
 BUT, our text will guide us toward
learning good, effective storytelling,
that uses techniques of narrative
filmmaking to tell compelling
nonfiction stories

Like Hollywood…
Like Hollywood fiction , these films may
emphasize character, conflict, rising
stakes, a dramatic arc, resolution.
 They bring viewers on a journey,
immerse them in new worlds, explore
universal themes.
 They compel viewers to consider and
even care about topics and subjects they
might previously have overlooked.

Unlike Hollywood…
They are based on a single and powerful
premise: These stories, and the elements
with which they are told, are true.
 In other words, they're documentaries.

‘Pseudo-documentaries’
Michael Moore has an agenda.
CNN may have a bias.
The History Channel may be
interested in ratings and profits.

Five characteristics that make
nonfiction writing creative
An Apparent Subject and a Deeper Subject
 Released from the Journalistic Requirement
of Timeliness
 Tells a Good Story
 Contains a Sense of Reflection on the Part of
the Author
 Shows Serious Attention to the Craft of Film
Storytelling

Subjectivity
Like any form of communication, whether spoken,
written, painted, or photographed, documentary
filmmaking involves the communicator in making
choices.
 It's therefore unavoidably subjective , no matter how
balanced or neutral the presentation seeks to be.
 Which stories are being told, why, and by whom ?
 What information or material is included or
excluded?
 What choices are made concerning style , tone, point
of view, and format?

Chapter Two
Story Basics
At its most basic, a story has a beginning,
middle, and end.
 It has compelling characters (or questions),
rising tension, and conflict that reaches some
sort of resolution.
 It engages the audience on an emotional and
intellectual level, motivating viewers to want
to know what happens next.
 Not necessarily distinguished from the
commonly used term narrative to describe
only works of dramatic fiction.
 Most documentaries are also narrative, which
simply means that they tell stories.
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Storytelling
Exposition -- the information that
grounds you in a story: who, what,
where, when, and why. It gives
audience members the tools they
need to follow the story that's
unfolding and, more importantly, it
allows them inside the story.

Storytelling
Theme -- In literary terms, the general
underlying subject of a specific story, a
recurring idea that often illuminates an
aspect of the human condition
 News ‘story focus’

Storytelling
Arc -- refers to the way or ways in
which the events of the story
transform your characters--in
documentary films, they can be
hard to find

Storytelling
Plot and Character – A character-driven film
is one in which the action of the film emerges
from the wants and needs of the characters,
while in a plot-driven film, the characters are
secondary to the events that make up the
plot.
 Good stories have good character
development.
 Plot refers to ‘the things that happen in the
story.’

Storytelling
Point of View -- the perspective, or
position, from which a story is told, but
can also be used to describe the
perspective of the camera, including
who's operating it and from what
vantage point.
 Objective, Presentational, Subjective /
POV shot

A Good Story Well Told
This story is about somebody with whom we
have some empathy.
 This somebody wants something very badly.
 This something is difficult, but possible, to
do, get, or achieve.
 The story is told for maximum emotional
impact and audience participation in the
proceedings.
 The story must come to a satisfactory ending
(which does not necessarily mean a happy
ending).

Who (or What) the Story Is About
 The somebody is your protagonist, your
hero, the entity whose story is being told.
 Your hero can, in fact, be very “unheroic,”
and the audience might struggle to
empathize with him or her.
 But the character and/ or character's mission
should be compelling enough that the
audience cares about the outcome.
 The central character doesn't necessarily
need to be a person.
