What is a documentary?

What is a documentary?

Documentaries can be seen as many different things such as factual packed programs that go into great detail to tell a story. For example many World War documentaries just let viewers know what different events occurred within the war. Documentaries can also be used to inform people of different sides of an argument where facts will be shown but also opinions from different people. One such documentary I have recently watched that is set out in this manor is called Fahrenheit 911. This was about the events of 911 and the war in Iraq. It presents many different facts but also contains a large amount of interviews with people who are affected or involved. It also contained huge amounts of real life footage from the events to stress an idea. However this documentary seems to have a large asset of bias within it, this can be seen in other documentaries too. The reason for this can be the director’s hatred of something within the subject so he/she may just focus on that within the film in order to just stress their opinions.    

Documentaries don’t always have the official footage of an event as there may have been no footage filmed at the time. So documentaries can often have lots of recreational footage to show the audience what the subject or event may have looked like, these kinds of films are called ‘Performative documentaries’ A good example of a perfomative documentary drama I have recently watched would be Touching the Void, this relied heavily on recreational footage as the people who were involved with climbing up the mountain did not take any cameras with them. However the documentary did have many interviews with the mountaineers to give the audience an understanding of how they felt.

Documentaries can be ranged from extremely random subjects to something we all think about every day. Most of the documentaries which seem to have rather random subjects are called ‘Experimental documentaries’ these range from all sorts of subjects but one in particular I have seen is ‘Once upon a Tram Ride’ which tells a story on the life of a protestor in The Hague. As I have said before, documentaries often go into great detail in order to tell a story or show different aspects of a story and they are extremely important to watch if you are interested in understanding a subject to its fullest potential, where balanced documentaries come into play.    

Over the last 10 years documentaries have most definitely become much more popular with audiences all over the world. This is because of the large change in the subject that is being presented. Usually documentaries would have been based around the idea of politics or over talked about subjects and an example of could possibly be World War documentaries.  Whereas now documentaries are reported on much more popular subjects such as move stars, music artists and many other things. The subjects have now grown at a much wider variety to choose from. A good example of a more recent type of documentary genre would be musical based. The Bob Marley documentary steps into the life of Bob Markey and what he had achieved in his musical career. Another assumption that can be made about documentaries could be that directors are often trying to make audience’s world wide much more politically aware of what is going on around the world. A good example of this could also be Fahrenheit 911.

Another good example of these types of politically aware documentaries would be The Kennedy Assassination which follows up from transcripts about what happened to the president in the last 24 hours of his life and what strange occurrences happened with conspiracy theory ideas and thoughts involved within it. In my opinion I feel that documentaries have changed in such a dramatic way over the last 10 years possibly because viewers were getting tired of watching documentaries based on the same subjects. That is possibly why directors decided to branch out to documentaries based on musical artists and other subjects. I have also grown to enjoy documentaries at least in the last 3 years due to this subject change, especially this example below (Marley)  

Codes and Conventions of Documentary 

Voiceovers

A voiceover within a documentary will often be authoritative in order to encourage the audience to suggest to themselves that the documentary they are watching contains much use of specialist knowledge or language within it. A good example of an authoritative voiceover within a documentary would be BBC's Frozen Planet. David Attenborough seems to show a large amount of authority whilst he speaks in the voiceovers as it seems to show he has specialist knowledge of the language of the subject which is the Antarctic animals. In my own opinion I feel that voiceovers help make a certain subject the viewer may not understand fully much more clearer to understand (which Frozen Planet do) 

Real Footage of Events 

Usually Documentaries are essentially seen as non-fiction projects. However there have been many sorts of debates about this matter. Documentaries often have a large amount of thought placed into them in terms of convincing the audience that the subject is truthful and the evidence or whatever the viewer is seeing hasn't  been altered in any way to prove a point otherwise it isn't truthful. The only way directors and editors can alter what is being shown is through the actual editing of the 'real footage' clips splicing them together in certain ways etc. In my own opinion I think that real footage is much more important in terms of convincing the audience what happened at an event because it shows what it was really like. A god example whereby a documentary uses real footage from an event is Fahrenheit 911, it mainly uses news channel footage and camera filmed footage from the public to show the chaos at 911, but it helps stress the point of how chaotic and scary it was rather than a re-enactment showing the viewers what happened.

   

Technicality of realism 

Technicality of realism also has to have much thought placed into it. This includes the usage of natural sound and the lighting. This is deliberately used in order to give the footage a real look to it. So an example of this could be a clip of and interview where there is lots of background noise from other reporters from the news channels or lots of background movement from other people, technicality of realism means that everything resembling that is kept within the sequence of shots from the real footage of the event. Nick Broomfields documentary 'Biggie and Tupac' emulates this style of archive footage, whereby nothing has been changed it is all official real footage of some of the events that happened between the to Hip-Hop artists Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur.  

Archive Footage/Stills 

In order to aid an authentic story to be told, archive footage/stills are mostly used. This is because re-enactments don't tend to give out a legitimate feel to them. A good example of this would be if someone would like to do a documentary on te London 2012 olympics, the filmaker obviously cannot go back in time to film the event, so they will ask the channels that aired the olympics such as the BBC and ask for some of the footage they would like to show from the archives.













Interviews with experts 

Documentaries are informative pieces of film, and one of the best ways to inform the audience of a subject is to have an interview with an expert. These can help show different views of a subject disagreeing or agreeing with the directors path of how he or she sees it. They can often help explain something that requires specialist knowledge to understand to the audience. A good example of this being shown within a documentary is within Supersize Me, there are many different scenes whereby the director is interviewing doctors about the Mcdonalds food and whether or not it should be eaten at all, and the damage that it can do to a person.













Use of text and titles

Documentaries often use lots of text and titles in order to label certain things in order to help the audience know what they are looking at, for example a piece of footage that is being shown to the audience could be dated back at a certain time, it may possibly have a date as when it was filmed or what the subject is. This is  cheap and easy way for editors to place this text and titles as they can simply write whatever they need to convey to the audience through text. This example below is again from Supersize me but it does in fact present the meaning of this well.

Sound 

Sound within a documentary is a largely used factor within documentaries as it can set certain moods for different scenes, it is always important to take time choosing a soundtrack (regarding music) because you do not want to have a controversial song at possibly a saddening part of a documentary as this could have the capabilities to potentially upset the audience in certain ways. Sound can also be used to start bridges between scenes that interconnect, possibly a group of serious scenes need to be linked together, maybe a type of tense sound or musical element can be put in place to bridge the scenes together. A good example of sound being used in an effective way is within the documentary Supersize Me, childish music is put in certain scenes to undermine the fast food company Mcdonalds, the main point this documentary is trying to stress is that  too much Mcdonalds food is bad for a human body. Mcdonalds actually target many of their meals towards young children, and the suggestion this childish music gives in the documentary is that this compnay try to lure children in to consume their food.

Visual Coding

Visual Coding is the regarding of props or mise en scene. This is what is actually on the set of the scene, for example a policeman being interviewed would traditionally be wearing his uniform to make it look official as if it looked improper the viewers would possibly not be as convinced if he was just wearing his casual clothes sitting in a room being interviewed. Sometimes directors can often make certain people included within their documentary rather unofficial or silly. Occasionally they could decide to catch somebody off guard in order to make them look out of place or silly. However image of a person isn't always everything a good example of this is within the Bob Marley documentary film, there are many interview scenes with a man who is a manger for a record label who looks rather too aged to be one and rather unofficial within his interviews, but it does not make the information he gives any less than it is.

Robs interview by Oz

Documentary Story ideas

How is disney an influence?

How Disney can be seen as an influence

In the following essay I will explain how Disney has had a huge influential impact on animation and how they have also given a large influence on other animation companies such as Pixar and Warner Brosthers.

Walt and Roy Disney created Disney on October 16th 1923. Disney are considered the pioneers of cartoon animation. As you can imagine, back in the 1920s there wasn’t a large variety of technology around to create these cartoons. All they had was a pencil and a sheet of paper to created these characters. Disney were also the first animators to make a full length animation movie called Snow White and the seven dwarves back in 1937. Still to this day it is watched by many people and is known all around the world. By making this movie Snow White it had a massive effect on the way people looked on animation and influenced other companies like Pixar to start making animation movies as successful as Snow White. Disney has opened eyes to children all around the world to step into a “Magical World”

  

Snow White and the seven dwarves was the first full-length movie that contained speech through sound that was placed into the production without having to use speech bubbles in the picture. Seeing as there was a lack of technology to do this sort of movie back in the 1930s it amazed people who viewed it as they had never seen anything like this done before. Before Snow White, Disney had made the first animated short to synchronize sound along with the action in the short. “Steamboat Willie” amazed audiences all over the world. This didn’t have any synchronized speech within it but it did have animated sounds an example of one of these was when the character Mickey Mouse when having a tug of war with a goat, you can hear the sound of something stretching. Snow white was created by using a series of ‘cells’ these were simply drawn images on large amounts of paper. To create

motion the animators would draw an image of someone moving over each time on each sheet of paper. To save making huge amounts of backgrounds for each scene. They would only make the cells move to create the idea of motion throughout each scene as if it were changing. This is an earlier traditional way of animation, whereas in the current day, most animation is done using computers to generate characters, scenes etc. Snow white was also the very first full-length animation to have Technicolor throughout it. Back in the 1930s this would have been a huge breakthrough in animation technology and the viewers would have seen Disney as ‘magical’  

After Snow White, many others seemed influenced to make animated films seeing as how successful Disney was with Snow White and other shorts like Steamboat Willie. Warner Brothers must have found influence from the Disney company, they started to make cartoon shorts in the 1930s known as Looney tunes and Merrie Melodies. Warner Bros first Looney tunes cartoon was shown in 1930 (not shortly after Steamboat Willie in 1928) This cartoon called Congo Jazz seemed heavily influenced by the Steamboat Willie cartoon. Both were created using drawn animation. It also contained the same sorts of animated sounds for example when one character starts to play an instrument, a little tune starts to play, with musical notes coming out of the instrument. Something else we see from this cartoon that seems influenced from Disney’s shorts is that they also have the typical style of story where two main characters chasing each other around with extra background character’s within the story.

As you can see from the points I have explained above, Warner Bros definitely found inspiration from the cartoon shorts of Disney’s Mickey Mouse. Big companies still to this day find inspiration from these animated Disney shorts. A good example of this is from Pixar’s Toy Story (released by Disney) Disney approached Pixar to make a full length computer animated film, seeing as how successful their earlier short Tin Toy (1988) was seeing as it won the first Oscar to an animated short. You can also see from this Tin Toy production winning an Oscar, Pixar were the first company to win an Oscar for an animated short. So quite possibly, influence from Disney being the first to make a full-length animation film, Pixar wanted to be the first to make a production good enough to win an Oscar. Toy Story was Pixar’s first time making a full-length animation film. By Disney approaching them to make a full-length production, they may have looked towards Disney for inspiration and ideas of how the generate their ideas for story’s and what it was like for Disney to make their first animation film (Snow White) so you could definitely say that Disney inspirited Pixar to make their first animated film (Which was a huge success) Pixar have now been making full length animation films since Toy Story and have quite similar in terms of success with them.        

In Conclusion I think that Disney has influenced animation to get better and better also they have forced more and more companies like Pixar and Warner Bros to raise the bar for themselves each time they make an animation film. Disney has made a huge impact on the animation world of films and shorts especially being known as the first company of animators to make the first full-length animation movie. Disney can easily be seen as an iconic image around the world as it set the standards for any other animation company in the industry by being the first to create a full-length animation film. Without Disney doing this, I doubt many other companies would be able to find much inspiration from others for their movies. Disney has pushed the boundaries of how amazing animations can be to this day. As I have said before most animation movies will now be done electronically using a computer to model each character and scene. However without Disney making these shorts and films they have it wouldn’t give much influence on computer software designers to make a program whereby you could make an animation film without as much stress or effort and also makes animation. 

The Differences and Similarities Between Documentaries and the News

different types of documentary

Different Types of Documenatries