Med105 documenting facts, truth narrative form
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Transcript of Med105 documenting facts, truth narrative form
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Documenting Facts?Documentary: ‘truth’ and narrative forms
#med105
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Overview
Documentary History Formats Critique
Multimedia developments
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Documentary
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‘Truth’?
The power of documentary to reveal a ‘truth’ grants it special status
To ‘document’ a subject implies keeping a factual record for future reference
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John Grierson (1930s-1940s)
Education+Propaganda=Social reform?
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Expositional documentary
See Bill Nichols (1991/2004)
Tended to depict institutions, communities and traditions
Public mode of address: Highly formal Serious Educational
Aimed at informing citizens in a mass democracy.
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Observational documentary
1950s onwards
cinema vérité (‘cinema truth’ or ‘direct cinema’)
observe and record the reality of everyday life as it happened without the usual organisational planning and structured direction
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Fred Wiseman
High School (1968, USA)
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Planet Earth (BBC, 2006)
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Fakin
g it?
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real / reality / realism
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Genre hybrids – ‘fly on the wall’
Paul Watson’s The Family (1974/2008)
Roger Graef’s Police (1982) Filming events exactly as they happened Agreeing in advance the specific subjects
to be filmed Showing the edited version to the
participants, but only to ensure any factual errors may be corrected
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Critique
‘To be sure, some documentarists claim to be objective – a term that seems to renounce an interpretive role. The claim may be strategic, but it is surely meaningless.
The documentarists, like any communicator in any medium makes endless choices. He (sic) selects topics, people, vistas, angles, lens, juxtapositions, sounds, words.
Each selection is an expression of his point of view, whether he is aware of it or not, whether he acknowledges it or not.’ Erik Barnouw (1993: 287)
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Ideological construction
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BBC2 (2004), Adam Curtis
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Contemporary developments
Genre hybridity
Deregulation of broadcasting
Competition for attention
Driving School (BBC, 1997) 11 million viewers
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Participatory mode
Welcomes direct engagement between filmmaker and subject(s)
Filmmaker: becomes part of the events being
recorded is acknowledged (even celebrated) for
their impact on events Michael Moore Nick Broomfield
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Reflexive mode
Acknowledges the constructed nature of documentary
Artifice is exposed Not ‘truth’ but a reconstruction of ‘a’
truth, not ‘the’ truth
Frequently features the film-maker making the documentary
De-mystifying its processes
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Reflexive mode
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Performative mode
Emphasizes the subjective nature of the filmmaker
Polemical, evocative and aiming for affect Morgan Spurlock Louis Theroux Nick Broomfield Michael Moore
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Authored documentaries
Fronted by an investigative anchor who is frequently positioned at the centre of an unfolding narrative
A meta commentary (often via voice-over) on the nature of documentary making and representation as processes of construction
Deeply personal
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Louis and the Nazis (2003)
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Historical reconstructions?
Challenges posed by distance from the event: Funding Interviews with participants Access to archive footage Copyright clearance
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Ethics
Challenges posed by documenting criminal activity Access to participants Undercover surveillance Honeytraps Legality
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The Imposter (2012)
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Supersize Me (2004)
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Interactive documentary
Non-linear and interactive
Audience as active participant
Funding problems
Required skillset
Exhibition
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Summary
Long history of documentary production – origins in educating with the aims being to bring about social change.
Special power of documentary to report the ‘truth’ – to expose hidden agendas and ideological malfeasance.
However, this attempt to speak to the truth is also ideological – the film-maker selects what should be seen, structures it, etc.
Various genre transformations to draw attention to the constructed nature of the format
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Sources
Erik Barnouw (1993), Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, Oxford University Press
Stella Bruzzi (2000), New Documentary: a critical introduction, London: Routledge
Simon Cottle (2009) Global Crisis Reporting: Journalism in the Global Age
Bill Nichols (2004) Introduction to Documentary - 2nd Edition, Bloomington, Indiana University Press.
Amir Saeed (2007) 'Media, Racism and Islamophobia: The Representation of Islam and Muslims in the Media', Sociology Compass (1) (2007) (available at http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2007.00039.x)