The first historical importance that represented documentaries was a polish poineer named Boleslaw Matuszewski. He wrote two books in the late 1800s named "A Source of History" and "Animated Photography" which are recognised today as the movie manifestos that display a source of historical and documentary value of films.
The first documentary in the late 1800s of surgical operations taking place in Warsaw and Sait Petersburg hospitals. With this in mind, a surgeon named Doyen took around 60 documentaries on surgical operations that have helped guide and assist other surgeons with technical errors that they were not certain of.
Throughout the years we have had film makers focus on historical events of people, places and events that have occurred as well as realistic scenarios that have occurred in that time period.Expository Documentaries
An Expository Documentary is where you provide facts and arguments towards the audience, with a clear voice over narrating the piece whilst the images are being shown. Below is my own example of an Expository documentary showing the rise of alcohol prices and peoples views on this. Within this documentary we see a voice over informing us what the documentary is about and how it is related to the images and moving pictures presented to the audience. It provides a lot of evidence focused to the topic and plenty of factual information to make the piece realistic.
Observational Documentaries
Observational documentaries have no presence of the film maker/director and allows the audience to have their own view on the documentary. For my example I found a short clip focusing on hair cuts. Throughout this clip we see close ups and medium shots of a woman having her hair cut short. As the clip continues we see a lot of silent footage we see a lot of particular sounds that we expect to hear when in a hairdressers. The clip has no talk over the process of the hair cut and we are given very little, if not none, about the director/film maker of the documentary. There is also plenty of clips to allow the audience to understand what is going on and allows them to make their own personal choice of the clip.
Interactive Documentary
An Interactive Documentary is slightly different compared to the other documentaries. Compared to an Observational Documentary it shows some elements of a film maker being present with them being a part of the clips. The film maker is shown throughout the clips providing facts and questions towards people he is having in the documentary, to allow the audience to have some knowledge of the required topic the film maker is focusing on.
Due to having the film maker being present in the documentary and seeing him discuss his key topic with guests and other people. Throughout discussing various topics with people, there will be the high tendency of arguments being brought into the discussions. In the documentary I had found we see Louis Theroux inside prison and discussing racial segregation with the prisoners. Throughout the documentary we see Louis learns the basics in safety, and the prisoners views. From this we also see a voice over to narrate the story, as well as the life of prisoners and how some came to be behind bars.
Reflexive Documentary
A reflexive documentary is one that consists of several shots that have been captured on an everyday basis. All of the shots that are placed within the documentary enable the audience to see a vast range of colour, sights, sounds and more with no dialogue throughout. For my example I found a short documentary made by OXFAM portraying the life of people living in Bangledesh. Within this documentary the audience is able to encounter the shocking and horrific disasters that have occured towards these people, and the suffering it has caused also. We also get to see the daily life of people living in that location and how damaging the natural occurances of the world can be.
Performative Documentary
The final key documantary is a performative one which provides a lot of cinematography to seperate from the other ones. Examples of this would be re-enactments, over exaggerated camera shots and the soundtrack also. The aim of these particular documentaries is to show the subject (person) or topic in a particular way. For my example of this type I chose a short performance piece by Lenny D which provides the audience a sense of what a performative documentary is. When looking back at this documentary the audience is able to see a lot of low angles to connote her power of singing and enables us to see that she is good at what she does. With the use of a narrative also, it helps to express what we are seeing and what we expect to happen next.
The dramatisation used in the performative documentary is the use of close ups on her face as well as the low angles of Lenny D performing. The re-enactments that are shown within this is the amount of different shots and angles whilst she is singing the song. This enhances the dramatic effect that the audience feels due to seeing close-ups, long shot and low angles to connote different emotions to the viewers.
Conclusion
To some extent I believe there should be factual information provided in the documentary if you have a particular point that they wish to come across. If the documentary is a reflexive documentary however, then the only factual information provided for the documentary would be the actual footage displayed to the audience. My belief for the documentaries would be that as long as the footage displayed enough realistic actions and guests to discuss the relative topic, then there is no more need for further factual information within the documentary, regardless of its type.
No comments:
Post a Comment