Documentary Mini-Task

Documentary Mini-Task

A documentary is a genre of movie/TV making that shows the viewer a particular story, viewpoint, message or experience, documentary’s typically use video & film scenes, photographs and/or sound of real people and real events. I would define a documentary as a film that shows you precisely a part of life that you wouldn’t particularly think about or a story that dates back in the 1800, you can make a documentary from any topic you can think of, I also think that you will always learn something new from a documentary whatever the topic is. Documents can come in five different types which are expository, observational, interactive, reflexive and performative which we will talk more about later in this document.

Expository documentaries expose a topic which is given by the name expository, they typically use a commentator to talk over the images and videos specifically to the audience, questions, facts and opinions, this gives you the insight of the topic you are watching. I watched an expository documentary with the class called ‘we are the Lambeth Boys’ which follows a group of members from the Alford House Youth club in London where you follow them about during their time at the youth club and after when they go to work. It was interesting to watch and see what the youths did in London in the 1950’s.

Observational documentaries observe events that happen around us typically using hand held cameras with no interviews or voice over during the documentary also a lot of long takes are used to capture the scene. High School which is an observation documentary that looks into the lives of the 60’s teens in an American high school, in this documentary you look at the different aspects of the high school when you get to be inside the office where they deal with bad behavior in and outside of the class room or you are in side some of the class room where you get to see the students being taught English, people using typewrites and at the sports hall where you see the girls doing their sports lesson. In this documentary you see a lot of the long takes in this documentary which gets a bit boring especially with no voice over but It was nice to see what it was like in a 1960’s school and how it is different to the British high schools we have now. 

Interactive documentaries typically have the filmmakers participate in the documentary, watching the presenter interview people about the topic, questions and all this together to back up the opinions of the presenter which can be biased sometimes as the documentary can be edited in the favor of the presenter. I watched an interactive documentary with my class called Louis and the Nazis which the presenter of the documentary called Lousi Theroux travels to America to talk to one of the most racist people in America called Tom Metzger and going to skinhead rallies where he interviews the people about why they are racist and why do they do it. I really like this interactive documentary as Louis in never scared to ask questions that people may not like which you get to see tensions rise between the presenter and the interviewees.

Reflexive documentaries attempts to show off the conventions of documentary to the audience typically using shots that capture life using different shot types. I found this the hardest to watch as it is such a dull and boring documentary. We watched a reflexive documentary called powaqquatsi in lesson which looked at the everyday life of the public in a third world county, it looks more of the detail of the film where the mise en-scene is very important.

Performative documentaries usually use re-enactments to give a better idea of the story, uses exaggeration in camera positions and soundtracks to bring the audience into the story a bit more, it is a more professional documentary with a lot of murder case’s becoming a more famous topic for the performative documentaries. One that I watched on Netflix called ‘Making a murder’ really shows the typical conventions of a performative documentary using re-enactments and a lot of interviews with people on the case. Using re-enactment is very well know and it very good in performative as you get to see what everyone that witnessed the murder and sometimes you feel like you were there at the murder scene which really immerses you into the documentary.

If you are doing an interactive documentary where you are trying to go against a topic like racism or any type of discrimination you would want to use accurate and factual information as you want the viewer to be on your side but sometimes if you use facts some people still will decide what they want at the end of the documentary. I think documentaries should just put a message out and at the end of the documentary the view will just make his mind at the end, but the unfair editing in interactive documentaries can be biased on the presenter’s side changing the view of the viewer.