IV. Their stories are so clear and focused they can be summarized in a single sentence.
V. Documentaries are just as subjective as fictional films. There is no such thing as an "objective" representation of reality. Films always have a point of view.
VI. A great film has a subtext beyond the text that communicates a greater truth about the human condition. The subtext is never stated but is implicitly understood by the audience from watching the film.
VII. Successful films come from filmmakers uniquely qualified to tell a particular story. The film reveals as much about the storyteller as it does about the subject.
VIII. Documentary filmmaking is essentially a collaborative endeavour. It is the combination of talents and insight that different craftspeople bring to a project that give it power.
IX. A good documentary is made three separate times – in your head, on the page, on the screen.
X. Documentary filmmaking is a craft, best learned from experienced professionals in a practical, working environment.
The conventions listed above place a lot of emphasis on storytelling and realism. Clearly the main point of creating a documentary is to tell a story that will be of interest to people. This story must be real – this is where the border between fiction and reality becomes blurred. A major film producer in Hollywood may have a story to tell, and it may well be based on true events, but they are often dramatised for the big screen in order to make it more appealing to the public. Indeed, on the same website and talking about the definition of Documentary as mentioned above, it states:
“Using this definition, "Titanic" is a documentary”
In modern documentary film – making, many of the conventions listed above are still evident, however producers are constantly trying to push the boundaries of what could be defined as a documentary.
For example, the BBC have recently been showing a series of programmes called ‘If’. Each episode attempts to explain, using scientists, doctors, and experts in general, what would happen to the world if a certain catastrophic incident occurred. For example, ‘If the lights went out’ examined what would happen if something caused electricity to run out for a long period of time, an event which the experts said would cause paranoia, mass hysteria, panic, and in some instanced Death.
The series followed many of the outlined conventions for documentary film. Indeed, they had a story to tell, and one that would certainly entertain because of the dramatic scenes it carried. It not only acted as an educational programme, but a warning to the public. The series used traditional interviewing techniques as well as conventional camerawork during these interviews. The film makers used a clear narrative, with a simple underlying message – if we don’t change our ways and be careful, this is what will happen. And by using people that will be respected because of their regard in society, people will believe it.
As well as the traditional documentary aspects of the series, ‘If’ used actors and special effects to produce dramatic scenes showing what may happen in each circumstance. This is something that is not generally associated with documentary film, but extremely important in this series, giving viewers not only a theoretical view of what could happen, but a visual one too.
Maybe this is the way forward in documentary film. We often see reconstructions of events on programmes such as crimewatch, and when Hollywood film companies produce big budget blockbusters about actual events such as war, you could actually draw similarities with this because all they are doing is recreating an event that has already happened.
In general, the vast majority of documentaries still follow the same guidelines. The introduction of cable television saw an influx of channels dedicated to documentary film. Channels such as The History Channel, Discovery, and Animal Planet solely show documentaries, and viewers or potential viewers will want to watch these channels because of this fact. Therefore the producers will carry on producing documentaries using the same methods, or risk losing viewers.
Another factor that has changed documentary film is that it is slowly forcing itself onto the big screen. The most obvious one here would be Michael Moore’s 2002 documentary “Bowling for Columbine” which asks the question ‘Is America a nation of Gun nuts?’, looking at the nation’s ignorance towards gun crime. This was a film independently produced and made using certain guerrilla – style filming techniques, aiming to educate and inform the people of America about a serious problem that they have. It became a hit a the cinema and won an academy award for best documentary. Moore has just produced a new documentary film about the terrorist attacks on 9/11 which is going to be distributed by a major Hollywood studio and placed in cinemas nationwide.
Another example of documentaries making it onto the big screen is 2003’s ‘Live Forever’, which was produced by Columbia films and talked about the rise and fall of ‘Brit Pop’ culture in the UK throughout the 1990’s. It featured interviews with bands such as Oasis, Blur and Massive attack. Again, this was a simple documentary, made up completely of interviews and music clips. Because of the popularity of the subject matter it made it to the cinema and received rave reviews and plenty of viewers.
Documentaries are not traditionally made for cinema, the content of them and the way that they are filmed are not particularly made for the big screen, for example a close up of an interviewee on the big screen may not be very attractive to prospective audience members, but somehow these films are becoming more popular and are moving onto the platform that is normally reserved for Hollywood blockbusters.
In a way documentaries are changing in style and content, but I believe that the traditional documentary will remain as long as there are channels dedicated to them. However, I do feel that we are seeing a genre shift into low culture in certain cases. This is not the case when considering the documentary channels on SKY or Cable, but on TV channels such as Channel 5, Channel 4, and SKY 1. For example, Sky One have a series entitled “Spend it Like…..”, and each episode charts the spending habits of a particular celebrity/s, such as the Beckhams.
The distinctive elements of documentaries such as realism and the way they are put together in general will always form the major part of documentary film but the style that they are filmed in, the technology available and the possibility of a movement onto the big screen is certainly changing the genre.
