Dokumentari

Documentary

Every documentary aims to present factual information about the world , but the ways in which it can be done are just as varied as for fiction films. In some cases , the filmmakers are able to record events as they actually occur. For example , in making Primary : an account of John Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey campaigning for the 1960  Democratic presidential nomination , the camera operator and sound recordist were able to closely follow the candidates through crowds at rallies. But a documentary may convey information in other ways as well. The filmmaker might supply charts , maps or other visual aids. In addition , the documentary filmmaker may stage certain events for the camera to record. 

Its worth pausing on  that are filmed. It is true that , very often , the documentary filmmakers records an event without scripting or staging it. For example, in interviewing an eyewitness , the documentararist typically controls where the camera is placed , what is in focus , and so on : the filmmaker likewise controls the final editing of the images. But the filmmakers doesn’t tell the witness what to say or how to act. The filmmakers may also have no choice about setting or lighting.

Still both viewers and filmmakers regard some staging as legitimate in a documentary if the staging serves the larger purpose of presenting information. Suppose you are filming a farmers daily routines. You might ask him or her to walk toward a field in order to frame a shot showing the whole farm. Similary , the cameraman who is the central figure in Dziga Vertov’s documentary Man with a Movie Camera is clearly perfoming for Vertov’s camera. 

In some cases , staging may intensify the documentary value of the film. Humphrey Jennings made Fires Were Started during the German bombardment of London during World War II . Unable to film during the air raids , Jennings found a group of bombed – out buildings and set them afire. He then filmed the fire patrol batling the blaze. Although the event was staged , the actual firefighters who took part judged it an authentic depiction of the challenges they faced under real bombing. Similarly , after Allied troops liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp near the end of World War II, a newsreel cameraman assembled a group of children and had them roll up their sleeves to display the prisoner numbers tattooed on their arms. This staging of an action arguably enchanced the film’s reliability.

Staging events for the camera , then , need not consign the film to the realm of fiction. Regardless of the details of its production , the documentary film asks us to assume that it presents trustworthy information about its subject. Even if the filmmaker asks the farmer to wait a moment while the camera operator frames the shot, the film suggests that the farmers morning visit to the field is part of the days routine , and it’s this suggestion that is set forth as reliable.

As a type of film , documentaries present themselves as factually trustworthy. Still , any one documentary may not prove reliable. Throughout film history , many documentaries have been chalenged as inaccurate. One controversy involved Michael Moore’s Roger and Me. The film presents, in sequences ranging from the heartrending to the absurd, the response of the people of Flint, Michigan, to a series of layoffs at General Motors plants during the 1980s. Much of the film shows inept efforts of the local government to revive the town’s economy . Ronald Reagan visits, a television evangelist holds a mass rally , and city officials launch expensive new building campaigns including AutoWorld , an indoor theme park intended to lure tourists to Flint.

No one disputes that all these events took place. The controversy arose when critics claimed that Roger and Me leads the audience to believe that the events occurred in the order in which they are shown. Ronald Reagan came to Flint in 1980 , the TV evangelist in 1982: AutoWorld opened in 1985. These events could not have been responses to the plant closings shown early in the film because the plant closings started in 1986. Moore falsified the actual chronology , critics charged , in order to make the city government look foolish.

Moore’s defense is discussed in ‘’ Where to go from here’’ at the end of this chapter. The point for our purposes is that his critics accused his film of presenting unreliable information. Even if this charge were true , however , Roger and Me would not therefore turn into a fiction film. An unreliable documentary is still a documentary. Just as there are inaccurate and misleading news stories, so there are inaccurate and misleading documentaries.

A documentary may take a stand, state an opinion , or advocate a solution to a problem. As we’ll see shortly, documentaries often use rhetoric to persuade an audience. But again , simply taking a stance does not turn the documentary into fiction. In order to persuade us , the filmmaker marshals evidence and this evidence is put forth as being factual and reliable. A documentary may be strongly partisan but as a documentary , it nonetheless presents itself as providing trusthworthy information about ist subject.

Defining Documentary 

Documentaries bring viewers into new worlds and experiences through the presentation of factual information about the real people , places and events , generally portrayed through the use of actual images and artifacts. A presidential candidate in Colombia is kidnapped ( The Kidnapping of Ingrid Batancourt ); children in  Calcutta are given cameras and inspired to move beyond their limited circumstances ( Born into Brothels); executives and traders at Enron play fast and losse with ethics and the law ( Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room ). But factuality alone does not define documentary films; its what the filmmaker does with those   elements , weaving them into an overall narrative that strives to be as compelling as it is truthful  and is often greater than the sum of its parts. ‘ The documentarist has a passion for what he finds in images and sounds – which always seem to him more meaningful than anything he can invent,’ wrote Erik Barnouw in his 1974 book , Documentary. ‘’ Unlike the fiction artist , he is dedicated to not inventing . It is in selecting and arranging his findings that he expresses himself.’’

Story is the device that enables this arrangement . A story may begin as an idea , hypothesis or series of questions. It becomes more focused throughout the filmmaking process , until the finished film has a compelling beginning , an unexpected middle , and a satisfying end. Along the way , the better you understand your story , even as its evolving , the more prepared you’ll be to tell it creatively and well. The visuals you shoot will be stronger. You’re likely to cast and scout locations more carefully and waste less time filming scenes that aren’t necessary. And perhaps surprisingly , you’ll be better prepared to follow the unexpected – to take advantage of the twists and turns that are an inevitable part of documentary production and recognize those elements that will make your film even stronger.

Who wants documentary stories?

In today’s documentary marketplace , nearly everyone is looking for strong stories. A small sampling:

-     From the website for the Sundance Documentary Fund: “ In supporting independent vision and creative , compelling stories , the Sundance Documentary Fund hopes to give voice to the diverse exchang of ideas crucial to developing an open society” ( www.Sundance.org)

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          From the Discovery Channel website for producers , a list of  “ Required Materials” includes: “One – to two page treatment that describes the proposed program , story line , visual approach , acts , and production team ”  ( http://discovery.com/utilities/about/submissions/faq.html)

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      From Channel 4’s “Documentary Briefing” ( May 2006 ) , Commissioning Editor Meredith Chambers: “Cutting Edge can take the form of a present-tense adventure … a single - narrative story where people go abroad , in the wider sense , to do something extraordinary , and where we do not know the outcome at the start of filming. This is where the risk is and it should be clmear we have taken that. Something inherent in the situation is going to unfold in a way that cannot help but be interesting.”( www.chanel4.com/ /commissioning/documents/Docs2006.pdf)

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       From the website for the National Endowment for the Humanities , which funds American public media: “NEH.. seeks to fund those films that will best bring the issues approaches and materials of the humanities to broad public audiences. Producers should have a well-thought-out story outline, define the target audience and have a strong commitment to the project” (www.neh.gov)

Who tells documentary stories?

The range and breadth of documentary filmmaking worldwide is actually quite astonishing. Some documentary filmmakers work within production houses or stations. In the United States , many work independently , with varying degrees of financial and corporations. Some filmmakers work to reach regional or local audiences including community groups: others strive for national theatrical or broadcasr release and acclaim at pretigious film festivals worldwide.

A common element at all levels of production is story. In 1992 , for example, musician Peter Gabriel cofounded a group called Witness , which provides video equipment and training to people worldwide who want to document injustice as part of a struggle for human rights. The first chapter of the groups Practical Guide for Activists, available on the web ( www.witness.org) is titled “ How to tell a story”. Filmmaker and writer Onyekachi media storytelling in raising awareness of African involvement in spectrum , some of the longest running and most influential documentary series on American public television today, including the science series Nova , are founded on the notion that complex ideas can best be conveyed through powerful storytelling.

    

      Theory of Documentary

    The perspective on phiosophical realism offered here is founded upon three central convictions : i) reality exists independently of representation , ii) that reality  and representation can ‘converge’ , and iii) that such convergence can never be unqualified and so the ‘danger of divergence between thought and reality can never be averted’ ( Papineau , quoted in Trigg 67). Philosophical realist positions contend that , through the institution of various conceptual means and by dint of viewing realism as  ‘’ regulative conception’ , :  a realism ‘ of intent’ , rather than of ‘definitive truth’ , correspondence between reality representation can be theorized , and the compass of conceptual relativism constrained ( Rescher , in Trigg 202 )

    Philisophical realist attempt to theorize “convergence” between  represntation  and reality must pay considerable attention to the role played by empirical experience , because , realists believe , such experience constitutes our most dependable , thogh circumlocutory relation to a reality , both observable and unobservable , which exists outside our conceptual shemes.

    

     Classical empiricist philosophy , which is founded on a belief in the epistemological primacy of experience and the directly observable and on a conviction that methodological procedures based on inductive analysis can enable interpretations of reality to arise which are comparatively  “theory neutral” (Hesse “Duhem, in Morick 209 )  While , such an interpretation there is no possibilty of direct admittance to the facts , and no likehood of developing any “theory neutral language of observation;” because all appropiations of empirical data are already necessarily pre-laden with supposition ( Keat and Urry 37 ) In concurrence with this stance , the critique of classical empiricism , with emerged from the I950s onwards , in the work of Putnam , Hesse and others , rejects the idea of the “practical fact “ which can be encountered in a direct way  ( Hesse in Morick 2II ); and replaces that idea with the notion of the “ theoretical fact,” which can be encountered indirectly , from within the imprisoning framework of a conceptual scheme ( Hessen in Morick 2I2)

     

     The idea of the “theoretical fact” also implies that , in contrast to orthdox empiricist tenets , empirical evidence cannot provide the fundamental grounds for proving that one theory is qualitatively superior to another , because such evidence is always appropriated by those theories from the outset ( Harre 38 ) . This notion is also associated with another of the theorectical models to emerge form the critique of classical empiricism: “the network theory of meaning.” According to an extreme version of this theory , appropriation of empirical materials occurs because of the nature of conceptual schemes as intricate “networks” of terms and relations , which can be re-organized in order to preserve the core premises of such schemes in the face of any conceivable evidence ( Hesse , in Morick 2I2 )

    

   One model of rational theory formation which draws upon the network theory , and which attempts to accommodate the empirical in ways consonant with the latters freshly conceived , but now distinctly moderated epistemological status , is Hilry Putnam’s theory of “internl realism”. Here , it is not the evidence which plays the crucial role in adjudicating between the respective merits of different theories , but sets of rational methodological principles , which Putnam variously refers to as “rationl assertability” conditions , “warranted assertability” statements , and “canons and principles of rationality” ( Putnam Many Faces 34 )   

      Principles of Documentary

     First principles. I) We believe that the cinema’s capacity for getting around , for observing and selecting from life itself , can be exploited in a new and vital art form. The studios film largely ignore this possibilty of opening up the screen on the real world. They photograph acted stories againt artifical backgrounds. Documentary would photograph the living scene and the living story. 2) We believe that the original (or native) actor , and the original  ( or native ) scene , are better guides to a screen interpretations of the modern world. They give cinema a greater fund of material. They give it power of interpretation over more complex and astonishing happenings in the real world than the studio mini can conjure up or the studio mechanician recreate 3) We believe that the materials and the stories thus taken from the raw can be finer ( more real in the philosophic sense than the acted article

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      First principles of documentary I) It must master its material on the spot , and come in intimacy to ordering it. Flaherty digs himself in for a year , or two maybe. He lives with his people till the story is told ‘out of himself’. II) It must follow him in his distinction between description and drama. I think we shall find that there are other forms of drama or more accurtely , other forms of film , than the one he chooses: but it is important to make the primary distinction between a method which describes only the surface values of  a subject and the method which more explosively reveals the reality of it . You photograph the natural life , but also , by your juxtaposition of detail , create an interpretation of it.

Types of documentaries

Participatory documentaries believe that it is impossible for the act of filmmaking to not influence or alter the events being filmed. What these films do is emulate the approach of the anthropologist: participant-observation. Not only is the filmmaker part of the film, we also get a sense of how situations in the film are affected or altered by her presence. Nichols: "The filmmaker steps out from behind the cloak of voice-over commentary, steps away from poetic meditation, steps down from a fly-on-the-wall perch, and becomes a social actor (almost) like any other. (Almost like any other because the filmmaker retains the camera, and with it, a certain degree of potential power and control over events.)" The encounter between filmmaker and subject becomes a critical element of the film. Rouch and Morin named the approach cinéma vérité, translating Dziga Vertov's kinopravda into French; the "truth" refers to the truth of the encounter rather than some absolute truth.

Reflexive documentaries do not see themselves as a transparent window on the world; instead they draw attention to their own constructedness, and the fact that they are representations. How does the world get represented by documentary films? This question is central to this subgenre of films. They prompt us to "question the authenticity of documentary in general." It is the most self-conscious of all the modes, and is highly skeptical of 'realism.' It may use Brechtian alienation strategies to jar us, in order to 'defamiliarize' what we are seeing and how we are seeing it.

Performative documentaries stress subjective experience and emotional response to the world. They are strongly personal, unconventional, perhaps poetic and/or experimental, and might include hypothetical enactments of events designed to make us experience what it might be like for us to possess a certain specific perspective on the world that is not our own, e.g. that of black, gay men in Marlon Riggs's Tongues Untied (1989) or Jenny Livingston's Paris Is Burning (1991). This subgenre might also lend itself to certain groups (e.g. women, ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians, etc.) to 'speak about themselves.' Often, a battery of techniques, many borrowed from fiction or avant-garde films, are used. Performative docs often link up personal accounts or experiences with larger political or historical realities.