Art of documentaries

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Bill Nichols
Bill Nichols tried to set out types of documentaries in reality - Issues and concepts of documentary ('Introduction to Documentaries)

Documentary modes:

  1. Expository: VO narrator, nature documentaries, we never see the narrator, godly figure take everything they say as fact 
  2. Observational: fly-on-the-wall documentaries, documentary where you have no talking head shots, let action unfold 
  3. Interactive: guy who did it is featured in it, transparency in selection process, clear construction/mediation, if you have a message, story to tell 
  4. Reflexive: meta-fictional, story about the story, documentary about making a documentary 
In Nichols 1994 edition of his book he also added:

  1. Performative: documentarist as star, documentarist becomes the star (Bruzzi feels that performative makes the selection process all the more obvious)
Stella Bruzzi

Other Research 

Ethical issues with documentaries: 
  • might not want to give personal details 
  • Might not know that you're being filmed 
  • Tactics might not always be the best 
Problems with documentaries: 
  • technology makes things easier 
  • shaping the meaning: interviews, recording events, sound materials, documents, evidence, archive footage, use of experts
  • even the question of what to film is quite problematic
Gibney:
 Argues that there's a new kind of documentary hybrid: Prankster cinema

Mathew Gibney 
e.g. Michael Moore, Jackass, The yes man, Candid camera/Game for laugh, Sacha Baron Cohen 

Other types of documentaries: 
  1. Docudrama: show or film that follows some of conventions of documentary but the subject or theme makes it impossible to get footage. Dramatises certain situations. Some scenes are re-enacted by actors, fuses the idea that it is real with some fiction 
  2. Mockumentary: clearly scripted but following conventions of documentary (Modern Family, Office). Mocks documentary conventions, breaking forth wall, shaky hand movements
  3. Docufiction: mocks documentary convections, he is not acting it out (its realistic), not filmed in one but its meant to be a documentary about 1 day, a lot fuses imagination with reality (e.g. 20,000 days on Earth)

Comments

  1. HCURSTON20 April 2016 at 15:12

    Great research here - it is an ever evolving genre with many updates and hybrids, but one thing will always come to the fore and that is the truth - whose truth and how it is represented being very important.

    ReplyDelete

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