A documentary film, as opposed to a film which simulates or portrays a work of fiction, is, technically, a film whose object is to document some aspect of reality. There is wide latitude under this definition, and several genres which call themselves documentaries.1. The "true" documentary.
A "pure" documentary is the act of setting up a camera somewhere and then walking away and coming back later to pick it up. Set it up on a busy street sidewalk, turn it on, forget about it and just stand there and talk to your friend until the film or tape runs out. What you capture is an absolute true and pure "documentary" - that which unfolded in real life and real time in front of a camera. You have "documented" that particular slice of life for a certain period of time.
The closest I can think of to an actual pure documentary today is the film in a bank's surveillance camera, but even that is tainted due to the fact it is not running at real speed and therefore leaves time lapses, however short, to accommodate the size of the camera and it's limited capacity.
Perhaps a "real-time" camera in the halls of a hotel which are sent on a closed circuit to a security room is a better example. Sometimes, those are not even recorded on film or tape though.
2. The next step "down" in the hierarchy of documentary films are the films that consist of honestly edited footage which has been obtained in a documentary manner. These are what most of the documentary films you see today are, the most common.
These are produced by analyzing your subject or event and making a list of scenes you want to go out and capture. This requires that you know your story or event thoroughly, and have determined what elements an honest portrayal of that subject would consist of. Let's say I wanted to "document" San Francisco. Assuming I didn't want to go into great interpretive depth, my list of things to film would include the famous structures and streets and water and normal events that take place in San Francisco. I would go out and set my camera on a tripod and take some footage of the Golden Gate Bridge (if only to have viewers know where the film was taking place); then Market Street, a cable car, Coit Tower, maybe. Alcatraz footage would be obligatory as would Fisherman's Wharf and maybe the Tenderloin District. Maybe the Bay Bridge and sports stadiums. City Hall. Chinatown. Whatever.
Then I would come home and begin the VERY long and laborious process of post production: making my film out of the recorded scenes I had shot. Add interviews in the background and some music. Seagulls. The sounds of a crowd at a baseball game. Whatever. Hopefully the result would edify an out-of-town viewer about what a little bit of San Francisco tastes like.
That's a small, basic project. A huge project might be Ken Burns' documentary of the American Civil War, or the history of Baseball. Those are big-time, big-money projects that require investors. The key here is to tell the story truly, almost dispassionately. No axes to grind, no sponsors to please.
How about if someone wants a video of their wedding? Is that a documentary film? Sure. You set up the camera so you can see the audience, see the bride coming down the aisle, see the newlyweds dancing at the reception. And on-and-on ad-nausium. And that it is, make no mistake about it. But a documentary? Sure. You go home and edit out Uncle Charlie and his big stinky cigar pointed at the camera and Aunt Doris puking in the punch. Bingo. Documentary. (At least by this particular definition.)
3. The propaganda film.
Think Nazi Germany and Josef Goebels portraying the low down animal character of the Jews. Think of Michael Moore filming only the things that support his agenda and purpose, sticking the camera needlessly into the pathetic face of a dying Charlton Heston, or selecting snippets of conversation from the mouth of the CEO of General Motors. Like that. Now you know what a propaganda film is. However, if you take your propaganda to Cannes like Michael Moore does, you get a Golden Palm for an "Important Documentary, " just as if it really WERE a documentary. Whatever. The key to a propaganda film is to only present one side (YOUR side) and to leave out stuff that might diminish the sensationalism of your argument.
4. Reality TV.
This type of work is very common nowadays. It is one more step away from a "true" or "pure" documentary. Basically, in Reality TV, you stage events and scenes, but you don't rehearse. You take a non-professional "actor" and say, "Please ride your bike down this hill and smash into that truck over there" And then you film him as he smashes his bike. Maybe you leave the camera running until the ambulance has left. You collect several of these events and then you put together a film called "Jackass 2003" and sell it to MTV. I guess it is SORT of a documentary. The action is real enough.
I prefer number 2. How about you? I know, I know - Jackass 2003 for this crowd. Ha!
I like the careful, as unbiased as possible documentary. Reality TV makes me sick. Producers do all they can go gum up stuff just to add more trauma, and in the end it's still fiction--it's just fiction placed upon real people who can suspend their disbelief a little and pretend something real is going on.
ReplyDeleteI detest attempts to emotionally manipulate people, at least when they are blatantly obvious.
Personally, I like nature films, those that bounce between 1 and 2.
ReplyDeleteThe vast majority of films on people I've seen are 3, even films about Pharoahs and past wars.
Propaganda has been used by every side of every conflict ever, from the honest portrayal of only one side of a disgraceful issue to blatant lies to promote a war or position. I only object if it's labeled "news."
I'm less irritated by deliberate attempts to manipulate people. Media does it constantly, from commercials to editorials to comedy. I'm only irritated when it works or it's based on obvious lies. Since I haven't seen an unbiased documentary about people in years, I don't expect it any more. Nor do I expect it in the news, sadly.
Propaganda is used because it works. Propaganda in the form of novels have a long history of success, actually, from Uncle Tom's Cabin to The Jungle, spurring change, often for the better. Others are considered classics like Farenheit 451 and 1984 and Animal Farm.
Propaganda isn't always bad, but can readily be misused if people are unwilling to check the facts or accept things blindly. The fact that people don't is often why it works, particularly when the "facts" behind it are specious.
Given the recent propaganda blazing at mind-ripping levels, I'm surprised you focused on Michael Moore. There's so much out there that is more recent, often masquerading as "news." That's the dangerous stuff.
Is there not another type of documentary, docufiction? I think I've come across it a few times, when a fairly straightforward documentary is factually accurate but dramatised.
ReplyDeleteI suspect, A, that there are many other distinctions none of us have made here.
ReplyDeleteYes, many more variations. I think I counted 18 or 19 and there are probably even more than that. I was trying to be as general as possible. You know how I hate long posts. :)
ReplyDelete@Shakespeare - I'm with you. I want documentaries who tell how something really is, or how something really happened. (I don't even like to hear opinions that are not backed up with facts, much less on film.) But almost every single thing we see is trying to manipulate people's emotions and sway opinion. I think Ken Burns tried to give a well-rounded account of his subjects without too much prejudice. I like his stuff.
@Stephanie Barr - "Call of the Wild" :)
I don't think any news program is impartial or fair and balanced. I think even the act of choosing which stories to run shows the editor's bias. Ah, well. It's probably too much to ask a filmmaker to squelch his personality altogether.
I focused on Michael Moore because I was trying to think of someone who may be Goebels' equal. Both were pretty darn good liars. Both were successful because their audiences were not exactly world-class thinkers. :) But, like you say, what ISN'T propaganda nowadays?
And don't say The History Channel. :) There is a category that is "good" propaganda presentation, though. Also a mode called "Poetic Documentation" but I think it is misnamed. Narrative gone, only pictures juxtaposed in some sort of rhythm which evokes emotion from the viewer. I think there is more to poetry than that, though.
Oh, so much more!
@A. Yes, indeed. Those are called "Hollywood Movies." :) :) :) Examples of that genre are the old Titanic one with Clifton Webb, and the more recent "Madness of King George III". Perhaps parts I and II as well. :) :)
Seriously, you may be speaking of "docu-dramas" where a real life story is told, but it has been spiced up a little. Or a lot. Artistic license. :)
One of the most used documentary genres are the "compilation documentaries" where there is a narrative, but they don't shoot their own footage, only using archival bits of other movies. The fairly recent documentary on Vietnam used only U.S. Government archival footage. The narrative was quite good; the movie MUCH too long - like 7 days or episodes. Almost as long as the war.
Did you want me to go into all the possibilities in my post? I can start over, you know. :)
@Stephanie Barr II - One example (I think) of a "good propaganda" documentary was the one about the cigarette companies lying about smoking being good for you. It was completely biased and therefore "propaganda" but I think it did a lot of good. A recent example of a "bad propaganda" film was "An Inconvenient Truth" because it purported to present all the facts and it only presented one viewpoint's evidence. So propaganda instead of being unbiased. Just trying to file it in the proper genre, not judge. algore doesn't rise to the level of Michael Moore, though. Not saying that.
The worst aspect of documentaries must be the inclusion of actors. These specimens of humanity fail to portray the individuals involved, and give a totally false impression of history. However without them the audience is often halved!
ReplyDeletePeople want facts spelled out with actors or they cannot see them!
Today there are also absurd camera angles, ridiculous close ups, often of the eyes or just eye, and image becomes more important than story!
I don't know a reputable scientist who doesn't consider "An Inconvenient Truth" propaganda (including myself) but every scientist I know considers it "good propaganda" much the same way as the smoking movie you mention.
ReplyDeleteTo them, the evidence is as overwhelming and something they've been talking about for decades. No one heard them until the movie brought it worldwide attention - the kind necessary to address it.
For the majority of the scientific world, manmade climate change is as obvious as the dangers of tobacco and we're just as confused why people refuse to see it.
What amazes me is how many engineers don't understand the science or appreciate it. Don't they teach engineers the scientific method?
@Adullamite - You bring out another type of documentary which I don't think we've yet spoken of - the "Reinactment Documentary." I tend to agree with you, and don't really like actors speaking in documentaries, usually. I think those kinds of things belong in the Hollywood movies which purport to retell an historical event or a biography. In documentaries, If there are people/actors shown, I like to see any actual people simply in the background such as an army fighting if one is doing a documentary of, say, the American Civil War. The documentarian Ken Burns did a very in-depth documentary of our Civil War, and I don't recall him using speaking actors. Sometimes he had interviewed people (historians, descendents of soldiers, etc., not actors) sitting there speaking, but the actual footage were either old photos or footage of what the various battlefields look like today. I did like his technique of having voices reading old letters and the like, though their faces didn't appear onscreen. No - I do agree with you that when you start having actors trying to "reinact" events of the past, that stuff is better left in the Hollywood type of movies rather than documentaries.
ReplyDelete@Stephanie Barr - Maybe you should get out and meet some more scientists instead of just hanging around the ones that think like you. Otherwise, you will slowly begin thinking all scientist think like you. :)
ReplyDeleteI once heard a Hollywood actress tell a reporter on tv, "I don't know ANYONE who doesn't think Obama is the right guy to be President. ANYBODY!" Well, I'm sure she was right about that, about not knowing anyone with a differing opinion. Soon, with constant reinforcement, and living in the same box, one begins thinking their opinion is OBVIOUSLY the right one and anyone who doesn't have the same brain patterns or lack of skepticsm is just stupid.
Anyway, my intent is to talk about documentaries in this post, not how stupid Michael Moore is or what a slug algore is. But there I go again.
Talk to me about documentary film-making techniques and genres, hey?
@Stephanie Barr - I guess the smoking one seemed so much more provable to me at the time. I don't want to say "obvious" and fall into the same trap as others. It's just that sometimes "evidence" turns out not to be what we think it is at first. Sometimes the evidence is pretty strong, like being able to look up and see that the sun is certainly "traveling across the sky" but, as the insurance companies like to say, further investigation may show something else is to blame (for the sun's movement across the sky.) Well, if you can't believe your eyes, what CAN you believe, right?
ReplyDeleteI don't disbelieve mankind is (or isn't) causing global warming. I do believe that some years are warmer than others, even several years in a row. I just haven't been blessed with knowing quite why it happens, or if it is unnatural or normal.
I do know, or think I know, that mankind has been on this planet only for the blink of an eye compared to the age of the planet. I don't think man has been here long enough to say with certainty what is historically normal or abnormal on this planet, with regard to weather.
Perhaps the dinosaurs thought they were doing something wrong be eating too much greenery and had caused their world to come to an end. Who knows? Perhaps they were scared because they seemed helpless to do anything about it.
I know for a fact, from personal observation in my own lifetime, that our air is incredibly cleaner than it was during the chimney-puffing coal-burning days of our past; I know the waters are almost unbelievably clean compared to the factory green foamy chemical discharges that used to go into our rivers as I stood there and fished as a child.
Most of all, I know firsthand that many groups of esteemed scientists have, during my lifetime, been very sure in their predictions that this or that certain disaster was soon to happen if we didn't change our ways. And, so, often we changed our ways. That was good, even though some "scientific certainties" didn't exactly materialize. Scientists are a lot like TV weathermen when something predicted doesn't happen; they continue on on the next day as if they hadn't predicted certain rain.
So, one does what he can, tries not to foul his nest too much, tries to leave the world a better place, tries to get off the oil addiction - good things even if there were no global warming. But some things are just too big to stay up at night worrying about. Sunspots periodically disrupt radio communications for a few years at a time, and so you change frequency until the sunspots finish their cycle. I can't help but think it is possible that other things are cyclical as well. Perhaps not.
The main, overriding, point here is still the same as it always has been: I don't know, and you don't know either.
"The main, overriding, point here is still the same as it always has been: I don't know, and you don't know either."
ReplyDeleteyou said it...
First you say you don't want to talk about the issue. Then you go on and on about it.
ReplyDeleteI only challenged that one was necessarily "good" propaganda and one was "bad" propaganda. How do you think the soot was cleaned from the air and the rivers stopped being so foul they could (and have) been set on fire? Not because industrialists took it upon themselves to do so, but because scientists stood up and said something. It helps to get the public moving when it's visible.
This isn't and a society that didn't use oil from the ground for 2000+ years of civilization now thinks they would evaporate overnight if we gave up (even to a small extent) oil. Why should we, people cry. You can't see the pollution!
I still recall the end of the world if we gave up CFCs (yet we did it with hardly an impact on the world as a whole - CFCs are also very effective greenhouse gases).
Tell you what, since I don't get out to see the right scientists, please give me a list of twenty reputable scientists who (a) aren't working for a oil-funded institute like the CATO institute, and (b) aren't TV meteorologists. Engineers, reporters and politicians (I shouldn't have to say) don't count. I have yet to find a reputable (and unpaid by oil money) scientist who had a viable argument against global change, but you clearly know scientists I don't.
Here's one place I started.
http://www.realclimate.org/ They have the raw data sources available, too.
Fell free to pretend this comment never happened. My next one will only talk about documentaries.
Personal pet peeve? Documentaries that not only reenact situations no one has seen in millenia, but also use cave paintings and tomb illustrations in Egypt as if they were detailed histories and clear indications of the Pharoah's daily life.
ReplyDeleteIt's like writing a history book using only data in eulogies. The view would be skewed.
@Stephanie Barr - First let me say I'm glad you are recovering a bit of fight. I hope you continue to feel better. Second, I DID go on and on, rising to your bait of misinformation and I really feel bad about not being stronger. However, since you come back to the same old argument with the same old "good propaganda" I will try to give another point of view.
ReplyDelete1. The air is cleaner, vastly cleaner, and the water is cleaner, vastly cleaner, because (and I hate to admit this) congress passed strict clean air and water laws in the 1960s and 1970s which said factories were going to get closed down if they didn't meet new clean air and water standards. Vehicle emmisision standards were born at the same time. Some factories DID get closed down. You can even breathe in Gary, Indiana, today. Of course, since it is hard to make steel without smoke, the factories closed and the jobs went away and crime moved in. Even Michael Jackson left Gary and moved to Motown. And we started buying steel from countries who didn't give a damn about smoke. You can't have your clean air and breathe it too, I guess. But scientists? Are you kidding? They were mostly working for Dow Chemical at the time, or working on better weapons systems. No, it wasn't so much the scientists. It was the coughing environmentalists who were pissed at what the factories were doing. That, and all the crops and fish dying. Scientists, of course, moved into action when the big corporations started hiring them to find ways to scrub their smoke and filter the heavy metals out of their their sewage. This, just in case you thought it was a corp of righteous scientists in their white coats marching on Washington in pure-like lockstep for clean air.
2. I would never say we should stop working on pollution, especially from oil, just because you can now see across the street on a clear day. But it IS an improvement from not being able to see the sun for the factory smoke. Or having Lake Erie catch on fire. Surely, you would agree with that?
3. It WAS the end of the world when the stupid congress outlawed CFCs. My car's air conditioner now takes a year to cool down thanks to the scientists' substitute for freon. Give me an update on the hole in the ozone layer. I think if closed up about the same time we were converting to 1-Diflluoroethane. (I just read that on the Made in Houston can that I use to spray the dust off my keyboard with.) Well, I feel stupid arguing with you about banning CFCs. You are right there.
4. Here's your list:
Worldwide scientific alternative views on globalwarming
Now, here I feel the need to repeat what I said earlier: "I don't know." I don't. I don't think your proof is so unshakeable, either.
I'm still glad you are back.
Would you tell me again what's so bad about "greenhouse gases?" Have you never walked into a greenhouse and took a deep breath? Another name for "greenhouse gas" is "oxygen."
ReplyDelete@Stephanie Barr - First let me say I'm glad you are recovering a bit of fight. I hope you continue to feel better. Second, I DID go on and one, rising to your bait of misinformation and I really feel bad about not being stronger However, since you come back to the same old argument with the same old "good propaganda" I will try to clarify things a bit for you. Or, as the namesake of the Johnson Space Thing once said, "Let us continyuh."
ReplyDelete1. The air is cleaner, vastly cleaner, and the water is cleaner, vastly clearner because (and I hate to admit this) congress passed strict clean air and water laws in the 1960s and 1970s which said factories were going to get closed down if they didn't meet new clean air and water standards. Vehicle emmisision standards were born at the same time. Some factories DID get closed down. You can even breathe in Gary, Indiana today. Of course, since it is hard to make steel without smoke the factories closed the jobs went away and crime moved in. And we started buying steel from countries who didn't give a damn about smoke. Can't have your clean air and breathe it too, I guess. But scientists? Are you kidding? They were mostly working for Dow Chemical at the time, working on better weapons systems. No, it wasn't so much the scientists. It was the coughing environmentalists who were pissed at what the factories were doing. That, and all the crops and fish dying. Scientists, of course, moved into action when the big corporations started hiring them to find ways to scrub their smoke and filter the heavy metals out of their their sewage. Just in case you thought it was a corp of righteous scientists in their white coats marching on Washington all pure-like.
2. I would never say we should stop working on pollution, especially from oil, just because you can now see across the street on a clear day. But it IS an improvement from not being able to see the sun for the factory smoke. Or having Lake Erie catch on fire. Surely, you would agree with that?
3. It WAS the end of the world when the stupid congress outlawed CFCs. My car's air conditioner now takes a year to cool down thanks to the scientist's substitute for freon. Give me an update on the hole in the ozone layer. I think if closed up about the same time we were converting to 1-Diflluoroethane. (I just read that on the can that i use to spray air on my keyboard with.) Well, I feel stupid arguing with you about banning CFCs. You are right there.
4. Here's your list:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport