Introduction to Documentary.

What is a documentary?

• Focuses in and questions actual people and events.
• Often in social text, placing the audience in a position to form an opinion about who or what we are seeing.
• Purport to present factual information about the world.
• We understand what we are seeing is a documentray as it is often flagged up as such using on-screen labels e.g. a persons name and job title.
• Audience believe that the people and events actually exist and that the information being conveyed is correct.

Documentary makers use a number of devices when presenting information. For example:

• Record events as they actually occur.
• Information may be presented using visual aids, such as charts and maps;
• Some events may be staged for the camera e.g. Historical documentaries.

A documentary crew usually consists of only one camera operator and a sound person, so they can remain mobile while filming.

Documentary techniques

• Compilation film - where the film is made up of an assembly of archive images such as newsreel and footage;
• interview or 'talking heads' - where testimonies are recorded about people, events or social movements;
• Direct cinema - where an event is recorded 'as it happened' with minimal interference from the film-maker.

Narrative form

• They tell us a story.
• They need good characters, tension and point of view.
• Can be planned or improvised.
• Use a voice over; use interviews or 'observe'
  
• Found footage or music.
• Increasingly modern documentaries are less scripted
  
• Observational , resulting in the audience being placed in the position of a voyeur e.g. fly on the wall - Big Brother.
• Also use parallelism, asking the audience to draw parallels between characters, setting and situations.

Narration

• Will feature a narrator.
• Enables the audience to recieve plot information.
• Most common is the non-character narrator (Voice of god) remain anonymous.
• Use an 'authoritative voice' with whom we are already familiar with.
• Listening to a voice we recognise has the effect of making the audience trust the information being imparted.
• Voice-overs tend to be male.
• Documentaries aimed at a younger audience, have stared to introduce the female voice-over.

Lighting

• Lighting in a documentary usually originates naturally from the environment being filmed.
• Feature film-makers may use additional light to manipulate the image that the audience is present.

Camera work

• The most commonly used camera is the hand-held camera - removing the need for a tripod or dolly.
• Shaky shots make the film appear more 'authentic' and 'real'.
• Hand-held camera shot creates a subjective point of view.

Editing
Is a vital component of any film but documentary films rely upon it. There are several types of edit available:

• Fade-out - When an image gradually darkens into blackness;
• Fade-in - The opposite of the above and so the image lightens from blackness;
• Dissolve - When the end of the shot is briefly superimposed with the beginning of the next;
• Wipe - When a shot is replaced by another using a line which moves across the screen.
• Interpreting an event in an understandable form.
• During the editing process the material is selected, ordered and placed into sequential form, in other words 'mediated' (between what viewers see and what is true).
• Even during filming many choices are made which are all clues to the intentions of the film-makers.

Sound

• Diegetic sound
• Non-diegetic
• Documentaries rely heavily on non-diegetic sound to prompt the audience to respond in a certain way.

Documentaries are a necessary social vehicle for informing public opionand with the growth of video, more and more people have access to the means of production and therefore to expressing their opinion. The documentary genre allows for the expression of a point of view as well as the illustartion of the 'truth' in a way which is flexible yet understood by audiences who have become accustomed to the conventions of the genre.