DOES DOCUMENTARY = REAL OR TRUTH? The photograph – once we are sure that it is a
photograph – cannot lie. But it can be falsely labeled…If we accept that documentary is best defined as a way of perceiving images, we cannot evade the implication that it is blind to the falsity of labels. Documentary will be consequent upon what it appears to show, rather than upon what it necessarily shows; and the relationship between the two is a matter for the filmmakers’ ethics, inaccessible to the viewer. Yet the assumptions which the viewer makes about this relationship, on the basis of signals intended or unintended, will inform his perception of the film. To make a documentary is therefore to persuade the viewer that what appears to be IS.
SUMMARY?
EVERY text has a bias!
What is bias, again?
Let’s look at HOW those biases are created…..
Absolute “truth”One-sided One-sided
FIRST FILMS…WERE DOCUMENTARIES
Horse Running
Frank Ott’s Sneeze
Women Leaving the Factory
Captured life…
CINEMA VERITE
Meaning of verite? Think of Greek and Latin roots.
Documentary’s driving ambition is to find a way of reproducing reality without bias or manipulation.
But…such a pursuit towards actuality is futile (useless).
Why?
1) EXPOSITORY MODE Filmmaker EXPLAINS a topic to the audience.
Nuclear Power History Background Interviews
DIRECT ADDRESS
On-screen narrator Off-screen narrator
Voice of God Text track as narrator
Guide through the topic for the audience
INDIRECT ADDRESS
No direct address to audience
Visual – people talking about nuclear power Visual – cutaways to pictures of Three Mile
Island or some other nuclear accident site.
Expected to follow along!
2) OBSERVATIONAL MODE Audience feels as if they “are there” “Fly on the wall”
Filmmaker tries to disappear Minimum of editing
Little B-roll usage (cutaways to other stuff) Little non-diegetic (soundtrack) sound
3) INTERACTIVE MODE Filmmaker is heard (and seen) on screen Subject of the film act differently because
they KNOW a film is being made of them!
The film maker!!
REALITY TV = INTERACTIVE
Fear Factor The Bachelor The Apprentice
Other examples Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? Fahrenheit 9/11
4) REFLEXIVE MODE Film that is aware of itself AS a film.
Documentaries that raise questions, problems, and dilemmas about the very act of creating a documentary!
Show the difficulties of making an unbiased documentary.
Most obscure.