Wisegeek Documentary

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 can also be a compilation film of footages collected from various means or through government sources

Typically, documentaries rely heavily on statistical evidence and facts to show the audience proof that their problem is real. However, Citizenfour relies on none of these, and instead relies solely on personal experience and expert testimony as evidence. While, most people may see this as a weakness, in this case, for Citizenfour, it is understandable, due to the content of the documentary.

The documentary created was more subjective than objective as the group used various persuasive techniques as mentioned before rather than absolute facts and data. However, the presentation had elements of an objective documentary. For example, the statistical evidence

GasLand, a documentary by Josh Fox, is an extremely informative film about the negative externalities that consumers have to incur since they live in close proximity to a hydrofracking facility. Throughout the film, Fox travels around the country and meets with families that have been negatively impacted by fracking companies moving into their communities. Due to the amount of pollution that hydrofracking can cause, many of the families that Fox meets with no longer have the luxury of clean water supplied through their faucets. GasLand really opened up my eyes to the dangers of hydrofracking, and the negative externalities that consumers have to bear.

A documentary is informative if it tells you new and interesting information about the topic the documentary is on. “Finding Home: Utah's Refugee Story” is informative because it tells the audience interesting information like how you have to go through an interview to become an American citizen ( "Apply for Citizenship" 1 ). “Living Without Water: Contamination Nation” is equally as informative because it too gives interesting information on its topic.

Dramatisation; mainly creating a drama out of a real life situation so may include things like cliff hangers, voice overs and music. This is all done through a re-enactment of the situation. It is making the viewer wanting to watch the documentary even more as they want to see what is going to

The Ethos of Participatory Documentaries When it comes to persuasive drive, classically the appeal for change derives from Aristotle’s ethos, pathos, and logos. By using these three appeals, one could formulate a presentation of public speaking that tailors best to the target audience. The same logic can be applied to the modern medium of documentary. According to Bill Nichols, documentary serves as a narrative form of reality in which the filmmaker layers an argument (Nichols 2010). Some films such as Ken Burns’ work or a direct cinema piece such as Salesman relay heavily on factual narratives that uses logos to convey historical fact almost to the point of an informative lecture.

“Our criminal justice system, on paper, is the best in the world… but we're human, and so we make mistakes. If you execute and execute and execute, at some point you will execute an innocent man.” - Randall Adams Belgian documentary filmmaker Jean-Pierre Dardenne was quoted as saying that “in documentaries, you're confronted with reality; you can not manipulate or move it”. The documentary film genre has always been at the forefront of cinema, providing insight into humanity at its core. The focus of my study is documentary film with the purpose of bringing an injustice to light, in the hopes that the film will help galvanize the masses, particularly in regards to criminal justice.

BILLY: I believe the stubbornness in the genre distinction between documentary and fiction has something to do with the secret desire for movies to be real. For some reason (history perhaps) the realness of traditional documentary remains unchallenged, as long as it includes: talking head interviews, slow zooms into photographs, b-roll, etc. When a documentary uses a different set of formal elements, its validity instantly goes on trial. Why is a couple filming themselves talking until

To begin with, some of the significant differences between documentaries and fiction films are transparency and aesthetics. Documentaries present existing, authentic narratives supported by original stimuli of the situation-

Documentaries are often assumed to be credible and filled with factual information; they do, after all, document reality. This is not always the case though. There are many factors that determine the reliability of documentaries: the editing, the director’s agenda, the film’s style, confirmation bias, and choice of interviewees, among other things. Documentaries are a representative medium, after all, and although they are able to give audiences insight into people and events that they were not able to experience first-hand, there is much ambiguity surrounding the truthfulness of non-fiction film. While it may be possible to inform and persuade people through film, it will never be able to accurately represent reality. By comparing two documentaries about Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, it will become apparent that there is still a blurred line between what is fiction and what is not.

92.) This statement could be perceived in a way that shows doubt in what the purpose of documentary is. Although Lee-Wright has claimed that documentary should be truthful, the aspiration of truth he has also spoken about could mean that this is not always achieved. If the documentary filmmakers follow this claim, a trusting relationship is built between not only the filmmakers and audiences, but also the participants that are featured in the documentaries. The subjects would want their story to be told with the upmost accuracy and respect, which argues that the importance of telling the truth is critical in documentary filmmaking in order for relationships to remain mutual and

As documentary by its very nature introduces itself as factual, concerns exist as to where the boundary between the truth of subject and the fiction produced by its creator emerges. As anything that has been edited has by definition removed certain aspects and enhanced others, there must be at best an innocent naturally occurring bias formed from individual perception, and at worst purposefully manipulated misinformation. Through researching various sources, I intend to discover the difference (if any) between these two methods making factually based programmes, to determine any variables that lie in the ‘grey area’ between the two extremes, and to ascertain the diverse forms of conduct in which truth (and in turn documentary) can be

A large part of the documentary production style relies on interviews, which underscores the authority on the subject. That idea gives the audience a picture of what is and what isn’t true, however, that is a problem because even though documentaries spend more time researching the topic of the narrative they are “edited,” which makes it impossible to know the legitimacy of its narrative.