Overcoming Obstacles Of The Ethical Codes Of A Documentary Film

Firstly, it is important to understand how the documentary form is best suited to illustrate the film’s theme. In order to do this, one must have an overview of the documentary style of filmmaking. Documentaries concern themselves with the “exploration of

A documentary is a genre of film that provides a factual report on a particular story, viewpoint, message or experience. In this essay, two documentaries, Bowling for columbine by Michael Moore and Made in Bangladesh by CBC news will be explored to show how persuasive techniques are used to make an audience feel a particular way.

Discuss the relationship between truth and fiction in The Thin Blue Line. This should include reference to Bill Nichols’ ‘reflexivity mode’ in documentary filmmaking.

Those who pursue social science research (documentary work) walk quite a fine ethical line. Works of all types- from film to research studies to photography and videography including daily news stories- are open to criticism for the versions of reality they produce for their audiences. Indeed, there exist academic and professional guidelines explicitly itemizing set standards of practice for various mediums, for example- broadcast news stories, magazine articles and documentary films. And although they may have been meticulously outlined, these standards simply cannot account for all who make up the intended viewer or readership. Described as the study of human interaction and how it functions in society, social science research possesses an ethical dilemma that exists in large part because of an unavoidable subjective nature that can never be fully separated from the undertaking. American author and child psychiatrist, Robert Coles, contends this notion in his book

The purpose of a documentary is to promote one's views or beliefs, in order to provoke change in society. This is evident in Michael Moore’s documentary Bowling for Columbine and Louie Psihoyos, The Cove. Both documentaries manipulate the audience into taking the composers side of the argument. Bowling for Columbine uses satirical humour and interviewing techniques to make an extremely persuasive argument highlighting issues such as gun violence levels in America and the Columbine High School massacre itself. Louie Psihoyos’ The Cove uses statistics and archival footage to persuade the audience that dolphins are beginning unnecessarily slaughtered, and there is something underhanded going on in Taiji, Japan.

It describes how documentary films can be used to explore new or ignored realities not seen in narrative films. This way of viewing documentary film draws on new cinematic perspectives and techniques which focus on real world events. Documentary films can also be viewed as confronting assumptions or altering opinions in which some films work to pursued the viewer to challenge conventions through offering a new perspective. Another way that these kinds of film’s can be viewed is as social, cultural or personal lenses such as one could view the two traditions of documentary cinema; the social documentary and the ethnographic film. The main goal of social documentaries is to authentically represent how people live and interact in certain societies, cultures, and situations. One could view The Stories We Tell as a social documentary. Ethnographic cinema, however, traces it’s roots back to early cinema and it focuses on cultural revelations by showing specific peoples, cultures, and rituals marginalized by mainstream culture. This form of filmmaking relies on cinéma vérité, or truthful cinema, meaning that documentary films must approach and report on these cultures with integrity. Mocumentary’s are humorous and comedic films presented in a documentary style which show a fictional

(SLIDE 1) According to the Oxford dictionary, documentaries use pictures or interviews with people involved in real events to provide a factual report on a particular subject. However, documentaries are much more than that, they educate the general public and make them aware of what is going on in the world and within our society, some are for entertainment purposes or can just be observational. Good morning / afternoon fellow documentary filmmakers, my name is Charlotte Thompson and the documentary I am presenting to you is ‘Food, Inc’. ‘Food, Inc.’ is about how the production of food has drastically changed since the 1950s, how it is controlled primarily by a handful of multinational corporations and it has changed my perspective on food consumption as it has shown the negative consequences of cheap fast food.

The creation of a documentary is a fine balance. One must be cognisant not to have misconstruing messages within the film, while still not trivializing those very same messages. It must strive to present its case with as little bias as possible. Moreover, that message must succeed in reaching the audience. With this in mind, Andrew Morgan succeeds in being a skilled documentary filmmaker with The True Cost; a documentary with hard hitting commercial implications, social/political implications and manages persuades the audience using facts and figures to its advantage.

Aaron Quinn, in his article, called Accepting Manipulation or Manipulating what is Acceptable? He indicates the declining of public trust in photojournalism due to the obscurity of journalists’ integrity to provide accurate news to the public. He also indicates the existence of two moral dilemmas in photojournalism profession: post- shoot manipulation and the dependence on a machine to make a decision rather than a human being, as well as the ethical problems that come with the two moral dilemmas such as inconsistency, lack of integrity, and inaccuracy. He also presents two important questions to discuss. The first question at stake is what are the proper ethical guidelines of post- shoot photo manipulation? The second question at stake is

While acknowledging that selectivity and dramatisation compromises the actuality of the film, Antonioni points out that the truthfulness of a documentary is based on the congruence of film representation to real life, rather than on the exactness of which film can reproduce reality. Hence, the essay argues that it is the extent of this congruence that affects a film’s truthfulness, more so than the ability to exactly replicate of reality. This focus on representation is echoed by Nichols (2001), who states that “documentary is not a reproduction of reality, it is a representation of the world we already occupy”. With regards to this, the reconstructed scenes in Black Prison-White Playground would affect the film’s representation of reality based on how similar these scenes are to the events that have

Commercial film narratives can also drift from the reality of our world by creating fictional lands, races, and characters, while documentaries are solely based on our world, giving the audience a chance to either see or experience what the documentary covers in their daily lives. The ethical aspect of film documentary can make or break the perception the audience has of it, the filmmaker to either choose to focus on their own culture or expand their point of view towards another culture. Many documentaries exploring different cultures can be highly successful, but there is always a chance of the film failing if the filmmaker fails to show this other culture in a way to best represent and demonstrate the truth behind this culture for outsiders without being disrespectful. Avant-garde can also push the perception of the world through filmmaking as many of these films can be abstract in order to challenge the current mediums and their use in the

Racial profiling is a term society has become familiar with in the past few years; however, it is not a new phenomenon. Racial profiling according to Fredrickson, "occurs when law enforcement officials rely on race, skin color, and/or ethnicity as an indication of criminality, reasonable suspicion, or probable cause, except when it is part of the description of a particular suspect" (1). There are many opposing views on racial profiling; some believe it to be a useful tool used by law enforcement, while others believe it to be another way to discriminate against minorities. This paper sets out to examine racial profiling from its origin to present day, taking a look into both sides of the racial profiling issue to find what if any laws are

In his book, Introduction to Documentary, Bill Nichols talks about how documentaries are defined, the different modes of documentaries, and the ethical issues that may arise when making a documentary. Nichols talks about how there isn’t a set definition for a documentary, but how there are many different modes of documentary’s. We can see examples of these things in the two short documentaries that we viewed in class. James Clauer’s Aluminum Fowl and Cooper’s Superman are two documentaries’ that use these different modes of documentary filmmaking to inform the viewers of their subjects.

For close to a decade, the ethics behind the existence of reality TV have been questioned. While there are ardent viewers of reality TV, researchers and other scholars disapprove them, and claim that the world would have been in a better place. Reality TV shows, especially in America, are extremely profitable to media owners, and this has increased their popularity in the recent years. The main target audience for these shows are teenagers and women, who spend a lot of time discussing about them, even hours after the shows. Most of the reality shows in America and other parts of the world have common ideas. The most fundamental aspect of most reality TV shows is that they display people who go through embarrassing, painful and humiliating ordeals. This is what the reality shows expect their audiences to be entertained, and presumably laugh at the situations the people go through. For this reason and many more, it has been found that they are more detrimental than entertaining to the society, and therefore, the world would be in a better place without them (Pozner 89-91).

Media producers all around the world have discovered that so called “Reality Television” programs are the key to maximising viewer bases and therefore profits. It is undisputed that Reality Television makes money. This has resulted in immense amounts of these programs being plastered across our screens. While these programs line the pockets of producers and companies, they are not necessarily beneficial to their audiences and the society we live in.