C AT F I S H   I S A 2 0 1 0 A M E R I C A N   D O C U M E N TA RY   F I L M D I R E C T E D B Y H E N R Y J O O S T A N D A R I E L

S C H U L M A N, I N V O LV I N G A Y O U N G M A N, N E V, B E I N G F I L M E D B Y H I S B R O T H E R A N D F R I E N D, C O -

D I R E C T O R S A R I E L A N D H E N RY, A S H E B U I L D S A R O M A N T I C R E L AT I O N S H I P W I T H A Y O U N G W O M A N

O N T H E S O C I A L N E T W O R K I N G W E B S I T E FA C E B O O K . ( O N L I N E D E F I N I T I O N ) .

Catfish Documentary!

Themes.

Lies, Travel, Love, Romance, Truth and Deception.

This is a closed documentary as the audience knows everything at the end of the documentary and does not need to research or question what happened next as the creators cleared everything up by the end of the documentary.

Theories.

Binary Oppositions:Good V bad,Lies V truth,Honesty V deception.Propps.Todorov’s Equilibrium.

Camerawork.

The documentary uses Zooms in and out to show the audience what they are actually trying to display and they use images and pans of text messages/ Facebook posts to show what is actually happening and to allow the audience to see that it is the truth.

Mise-en-scene.

The documentary uses the real people and real situations to keep it as a documentary and to allow the audience to see that everything that has happened is real, they also use the exact locations and timings as this is when the situation actually happened and it has been used to make the audience see what is really going on.

Sound.

The documentary uses both diagetic and non diagetic. They use the diagetic sound to tell the audience the story and to make them see what is happening and to make the story as real as possible by actually talking to the audience.

They use non diagetic sounds to create the mood by using certain soundtracks. They also used facebook message alerts to display that it is actually happening when they are recording and that none of the story is fake.

Editing.

The main editing technique is cuts to make it seem as real as possible without transitions. They have done this to make the documentary flow easily without having fades and swipes making it seem less real.

Archive Materials.

The documentary uses images of Facebook pages, messages and paintings to set the scene and allow the audience to see what level the ‘catfish’ has gone to to make their lie believable.

Graphics.

At the end of the documentary images and text were used to close the story and allow the audience to understand some of the things they have been asking themselves throughout the documentary.