Introduction To Documentary

Introduction
Documentary
Introduction
• Documentary- “creative treatment of
actuality” (John Grierson)
- Use your creativity to organize pieces of
recorded reality into a narrative
- (non-fiction) nature, science, travelogue,
educational, social, factually based
promotional films
Characteristics
1. A documentary must have engaging
characters, narrative tension, and
something to say about the human
condition.
- Every documentary has characters
striving to do, get or accomplish
something.
- How they do this and whether they
succeed provides dramatic tension.
Characteristics
2. A documentary delve into cause and effect.
- To help the audience perceive what
underlies human organizations and agenda.
- “ the function of art is to give us some
perception of an order in life, by imposing
an order to it”
- Stories help to warn us of danger, teach
about treacheries of human nature,urge us
to live by our ideals ....
Characteristics
3. A documentary is interested in
the values and choices people
make, and the consequences that
flow from them
- Concerns go beyond the factual
into moral and ethical spheres.
Characteristics
4.The best documentaries are
models of disciplined passion; they
show us new worlds, or familiar
worlds in unfamiliar ways, and
raise our level of awareness.
5. A documentary implies social
criticism.
Intensions
• Documentary films investigate, analyze,
warn, indict, explore, announce, report,
explain, advocate, celebrate,
experiment, propagandize, satirize,
shock, protest, conclude,
revolutionize....
• Documentary lives in a real world, does
active work, and means to act on its
audience.
Ingredients
1. Actuality
- Exploring actual people and authentic
situations.
- “Dialogical” ( multiple and critical view)
*shows reality as contradictory;
explores conflicting perceptions and
feelings
*presents a complex, implicitly critical
view
Ingredients
2.Unfolding Evidence
- Use of camcorders to capture events
as they unfold before our eyes.
- Modern documentaries avoid telling
us what to feel or thick; it exposes us
to contradictory, provocative evidence
that moves us to inner debate and
realization
- Right versus right ; right versus right
Ingredients
3.Taking Many Forms
- Story form is the way in which it
presents its events and characters.
- Observational; catalyze change;
interrogate its subject; narrate
using words, images, music;
literary, theatrical, music...
Ingredients
4.Hope
- All successful documentary stories
leave us with hope and some
optimism.
- Unless central characters learn,
change, or develop in some way, a
story will seem pointless.
SUBJECTIVE/OBJECTIVE
Objective
- Can a camera record anything objective?
- How can you objectively decide when to turn the
camera on or off?
*Documentaries look objective because television
often speaks with authority and balances out
opposing points of view.
-Memorable documentaries do not only balance the
information, but try to value and interpret people
and events in a way that history would vindicate.
SUBJECTIVE/OBJECTIVE
Subjective
- Your work becomes worthy of trust if you can
show a factual grasp of your subject, evidence
that is persuasive, and self-evidently reliable.
- Since you must subjectively choose everything
you show, your documentary is never be
objective truth. Instead, it is a construct by
which you convey the spirit of the truth.
Director’s Journey
1. Investigates significant people, topics, or aspects in
life.
2. Records what is necessary ethical to record, essential
and meaningful
3. Lives to expose underlying truths and conflicts in life.
4. Has empathy for humankind and develops a humane
understanding of each new life.
5. Orchestrates footage to make a story that is
cinematically and dramatically satisfying.
6. Deeply engages an audience in mind and feelings.
• No film or no artwork of any kind- emerges except
by conscious, responsible choices and decisions.
• Each new film will require you to enter a new
world, decide what is significant in it, and crystalize
what matters on film.
1.Being critically aware of each unfolding aspect of
your film’s world and characters.
2. Retaining not only what you learned on your
learning journey but also how you learned it.
4. Using film freshly and inventively so your audience
gets an equal or better learning journey than your
own.
5. Expressing ideas about the meaning and nature of
actuality, not just showing it in a value-neutral way.
Types of Communicator
• The exposition and the discourse
depend on how you present
evidence to the audience and how
you acknowledge other points of
view.
1. Propagandist – wants to condition
the audience and produces only
the evidence to support a
predetermined conclusion.
Types of Communicator
2. Binary communicator- likes to give
equal coverage to both sides while
remaining neutral and shadowy as a
narrative voice.
3. Mature communicator – sees the
audience member as an equal, willing
to sift through contradictions and make
thoughtful judgements. Aims to share
something from life with all its
contradictions and human mystery.

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