Definitions of Documentary:
'Creative treatment of actuality' - John Grierson
'The art of record' - John corner
'A factual film which is dramatic' - Pare Lorentz
'Claiming the real' - Brian Winston
A documentary aims to:
- Presents facts, reality and truth - to be a documentary a film/programme should
always strive to bring an audience these things.
- Answer a question
- Create a portrait
- Interrogate or reflect a subject.
- Campaign - Maybe to try and change something for the better.
- Change or give a different perspective on something - if people weren't constantly
challenging views of others things would never move on or evolve.
Documentaries are concerned with: Truth, Objectivity (factual) and the Real.
Despite the fact this is what they're concerned with we were asked to discuss as a group -
'A documentary maker is subjectively objective'
We agreed with this statement as a group because a documentary maker maybe aiming to show us facts and facts alone but no matter how hard they try they will always be doing it from a biased point of view from the moment they decide what they're going to film even.
Once filming begins other factors come into play as well like the director telling people what to film, what not to film and also what they miss and then you have what the camera man actually captures and is able to capture (you can never show everything - what happened before/after you started filming and what's happening outside the frame?)
Once the production is filmed it then goes to post where it is edited and therefore certain bits are left in and other bits are cut out so at this point the crew are having a lot of control over what is going to be shown.
Even with details such as colouring you could manipulate someone's opinion by using soft pale colours, or washed out grey tones - these are all giving out subconscious messages to the human brain, things we sometimes are not aware of but are built in and constantly having an effect on us. You also have the music and sound added over that which can also be used to effect the way people view something e.g. if the music is soft you might be trying to get the audience to like someone/thing or feel sorry for it, if it's quite dark and atmospheric they might be trying to manipulate the audience into thinking something is bad.
Despite this I still believe that this is truth in a way because it is the film makers truth and at the end of the day it is probably near impossible for them to ever produce something that is totally unbiased truth or fact because of the limitations of the whole process itself.
Also I think everything in the world is viewed differently dependant on who's viewing it and something seen as truth to one person might be seen as complete rubbish to someone else. With so many different cultures, religions and beliefs people are never going to see things the same and it is impossible to cater to everyone. I also believe there are always two sides to every story.
I also think, what is truth or what is fact and do they even exist because things are in a constant state of change so nothing ever remains the same so in a way nothing can ever be right. Even with things like Science that people believe is a fact can also change as new ideas and things are discovered e.g. the world being flat.
I don't believe this statement is a criticism of film makers because to achieve something that is not the least bit biased is just impossible. Truth is determined within the viewer.
A Brief History of Documentary
Documentaries have evolved a lot since 1985 when the Lumiere Brothers first filmed 'Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory'. The first documentaries (pre 1900) were called 'actuality' films (as the term 'documentary had not yet been coined) and these films literally just showed what something was actually like so there was no real editing or anything just the camera pointing at and filming a certain subject or activity. So all workers leaving a factory consisted off were single-shots of people leaving their work factory. Today many documentaries seem to be much more narrative based and critics might argue that people and filmmakers seem to be more concerned with creating a story, drama or entertainment rather than something that's true and objective, this is something that is widely debated though.
Lumiere Brothers (1985, Workers Leaving the
Lumiere Factory)
Dziga Vertov
'Our eyes see very little and very badly – so people dreamed up the microscope to let them see invisible phenomena; they invented the telescope…now they have perfected the cinecamera to penetrate more deeply into he visible world, to explore and record visual phenomena so that what is happening now, which will have to be taken account of in the future, is not forgotten.'
—Provisional Instructions to Kino-Eye Groups, Dziga Vertov, 1926
- In 1918 Vertov was hired by the Moscow Film Committee to be an assistant in their newsreel section.
- His job was to edit the documentary footage but soon after he was appointed editor of the first Soviet weekly newsreel called Kinonedelya.
- As a director his first film was 'The Anniversary of the Revolution' (1919) but the film he is most known for is 'Man with A Movie Camera' (1929)
- Vertov was also one of the pioneers of montage and was always '...playing with the possibilities of expressive film editing...' 'He started assembling clips of film without regard for formal continuty, time or even logic itself to achieve a 'poetic' effect which would grab the viewers.'
- In 1919 Vertov along with his wife and other film makers created a group called Kinoks ('kino-oki' which stood for cinema-eyes)
- They believed that future cinema should be about facts and they produced newsreels that recorded the real world. They also rejected 'staged' cinema as they wanted to show real people and real life's and events not stars, studios, props and plots/storylines.
- Camera is the kino-eye
- He directed 23 newsreels between 1922-1925 and these were called Kino-Pravda (Film-truth)
- His 'films represented an intricate blend of art and political and poetic rhetoric'
- He wanted to reflect his poetic vision Soviet reality in hs work
- "The film drama is the Opium of the people…down with Bourgeois fairy-tale scenarios…long live life as it is!" - VertovSource - Senes Of Cinema [Internet] - http://sensesofcinema.com/2003/great-directors/vertov/ - Accessed 11/2/2013
Kino-Pravda 1 (Vertov, 1922)
Film Director & Editor: Dziga Vertov
'At the end of the decade, this influential and creative avante-garde film from experimental cameraman/director Dziga Vertov employed some of the first uses of the split screen, montage editing, extreme close-ups, and rapidly-filmed scenes in its view of Moscow and other cities.
Every modern movie convention was demonstrated in this film, as it showed the roles of the cameraman and the editor in the creation of a film during one day.
It was an excellent example of a "city symphony" documentary. Regarded as "pure" visual cinema, its views of Moscow, Kiev, Odessa and of Soviet workers and machines contained radical editing techniques, special visual effects, wild juxtapositions of images, freeze frames and double exposures.'
Source -Filmsite [Internet] - http://www.filmsite.org/bestfilmediting3.html
- Accessed 10/2/2013
Man with a movie camera was a modern take on everyday life in cities from Moscow to Ukraine. t was made up of random shots taken from the cities and in it Vertov also experimented with a lot of new ways of film editing like montage, split screen and fast paced cuts. He was also innovative with his camera shots (close-ups) and angles as he liked to try out unconventional camera angles which was a way of trying to portray to the audience everyday things in a more interesting and unique way and as they'd never been seen before. This poetic portrait of Russia was also an early example of what we now know to be a reflexive mode of documentary because in many parts of the film you can see a camera or camera lens/shutter in the shot. This self-reflective way of making a film was so that the viewer could identify themselves with the process of film making and also show to the audience that this was a documentary and this is how it is filmed - the film maker is not trying to hide anything from them. Vertov was also a firm believer of the Direct cinema way of filming and simply just liked to observe and film things as they were, and he favoured using light handheld cameras so he could go as unnoticed as possible and travel about quicker and easier. He thought if you disturbed life or intervened then that would be falsifying it.
Thirty years after his time it became possible to apply Vertov’s injunctions without any loss between the idea—to film everything, record everything, to be in life without disturbing or falsifying it—and its realisation. (Vertov had been restricted to filming public manifestations, crowds, ceremonies, etc and was unable to seize everyday life because his equipment could not pass unnoticed).
—J-L Comolli in Cahiers du cinéma, nos 209, 211
Robert Flaherty - Nanook of The North
Nanook of The North (1922, Robert J. Flaherty) is said to be the first non-fiction feature length film (slightly before the term documentary was first coined in 1926) that was classed as a documentary in modern terms, after the 'actuality' films that came before this.
It is a silent film that tells the story of Inuit Nanook and his family as they struggle to survive in the harsh conditions of Hudson Bay. Despite this film was ground breaking it was criticised by something as not being a true 'documentary' because Flaherty lost a lot of his original footage in a fire and he went back to re-film what he'd lost getting Nanook to re-enact the parts. He was also accused of faking it because he got Nanook to do things for the sake of making him look more different and interesting to 'normal' people for example the way he hunted, for the film Flaherty asked them to use harpoons rather than rifles. The Inuit's had by now actually adopted many western ways of living but Flaherty encouraged them to live in the more traditional ways of the Inuit.
British Documentary Movemement
Some questions to ask yourself and think about before making a documentary:
- What makes you angry?
- What are you passionate about?
- What do you want to change?
- What do you really care about?
