HISTORY OF DOCUMENTARY STYLES AND GENRES
STYLES
Direct Cinema
Direct Cinema is a style of documentary that was produced in the 1960's. It came about as a result of the widespread availability of cheap, portable, lightweight audio visual equipment.
Direct cinema is purely an observational fly on the wall way of filming people and events. This left it up to the audience to draw their own conclusions.
An example of direct cinema is Albert and David Myles ‘Gimme Shelter’ (1970).
This documentary doesn’t used staged events, and nothing is pre-rehearsed. The Myles’ purely followed the journey of the Rolling Stones 1969 tour and the ‘tragic concert at Altamont’. (Sourced from: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065780/)
Direct Cinema has had a massive influence on contemporary TV including: reality TV, Video diaries and docu-soaps. This includes examples such as big brother, where the housemates are simply observed in a particular environment, and the audience come up with their own opinion of the house mates and who should ‘win’ the show.
Cinema Verite
This is a style of European film-making in the early 1960’s using documentary techniques such as ‘hand held camera to convey life in as realistic way as possible’ http://www.slideshare.net/mediastudent/tv-documentaries-styles-and-influences
Cinema Verite has clearly stemmed how film makers are now easily able to twist the truth in their documentaries, by using hand held cameras to create a notion of realism that an audience easily ends up believing to be true. This relates back to the ethical issues I researched earlier on in my ( ) page.
The cinéma vérité revolution opened a window onto real life and real issues. It freed the documentary from stilted, staged shots.
Peter Wintonick
Docu Soaps
Docu Soaps take ordinary, common experience and look at it through the eyes of the public. The reason they are related to sops, is because of their fast editing, multi strand narratives and are often part of a series that often end on a cliff-hanger.
An example of a Docu Soap is the Easy Jet documentary series about the crew and workers at easy jet. It focuses on difficult passengers, and is based around personalities who often ‘play up’ as these all link to the self gratification of the viewers. They feel better about themselves after watching Docu Soaps, as they aren’t in the situations that they’ve been shown.
Our Documentary will relate slightly to this form of documentary, as it will focus on different characters’ obsessive personality towards greyhound racing.
Public Affairs Documentaries
These are possibly the most traditional form of documentary- i.e. Dispatches. These types of documentary are usually shown by Public Service Broadcasting Channels such as the BBC, Channel 4 and they often explore current affairs and issues.
Dispatches Analysis
The opening scene of this documentary starts with a controversial issue about Muslims hating anyone who isn’t a ‘believer’. This affects the viewers through connecting to already negative feelings towards this religion after terrorism such as 9/11 being down to some Islamic believers.
The camera technique used is a hidden voyeuristic camera angle, with the identity of the people concealed. This makes the audience feel as though they are getting inside information. This is one of the many techniques that documentaries such as Dispatches use in order to create biased opinions.
The further subtitles are a tool to enhance what they’re saying, which stresses the negativity of this belief. The secret filming part of this documentary is accompanied by a voice of god telling the audience why they have gone undercover and what they have found. This camera technique creates realism of the events that take place.
Another technique they use is the juxtaposition of positive quotes against the negative images of their teachings at the school.
The audience forms an informative bond with the narrator, following her journey throughout the documentary as she tells the story using cinema verite techniques such as the hand held camera.
Overall, I can see why this is such a popular form of documentary, as it helps the audience to access undercover footage of real events and to use the narrator as a tool to ask the questions the audience wants to know.
‘Documentary film makers often take on the role of public representatives.’ Bill Nichols.
HISTORY OF DOCUMENTARY STYLES
Early French Shorts
Before 1990, films were extremely short (a minute or less) and really just captured moving images in a single event or scene.
The best examples of these black and white documentaries is the footage of the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiere, shot at their studio in Lyons, France.
Seminal Styles
1914- Two seminal documentaries indicated the development of divergent styles in longer form: story telling documentaries.
'Edward S. Curtis used reenactments to show true Native American life in the Land of the Headhunters
Footage shot on location revealed the hardships endured by the cast of The rescue of the Stephansson Arctic Expedition
Setting the Scene
Reenactment and setting the scene was commonplace in early documentaries. 'In his famous Nanook of the North (1922), Robert J. Flaherty shot on location, but frequently censored the behaviour of his subjects and even had them build an igloo without a roof so he could get sufficient light and space for his camera work.'
Sourced: http://documentaries.about.com/od/stylesofdocumentaries/a/docstyle.htm
News reels
A newsreel was a 'collection of topical news films collected onto a single reel, and shown in cinemas as part of the general entertainment programme. In the silent era newsreels lasted around five minutes, and contained around five or six stories per issue. In the sound era they were ten minutes or longer and would have eight or more stories per issue.'
sourced: http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/476463/index.html
Kino Pravda
(Cinema Truth) describes Dziga Vertov's 1920's newsreel series. Vertov believed the camera could see and capture reality more accurately than the human eye, and used various lenses; time lapse, shot and counter shot, slow, fast and stop motion to capture the cinematic reality of a moment in time.
Propaganda
Films were used as outright propaganda during the 1930s and 40s war years, when Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, which stirred Nazis to their fevered adoration of Adolph Hitler, was countered by Franks Capra's Why we Fight newsreels, which were produced to sway Americans to go to war.
Cinema Verite (1960) see above (Styles Of Documentary)
Direct Cinema (1960) see above (Styles Of Documentary)
Power of Persuasion
The propaganda potential of documentary film is still a factor in contemporary non fiction films, especially those dealing with political hot potatoes. For example, most films shown at the annual Human Rights Watch International Film Festival have strong social and political messages for viewers. Click here for festival website.
Sourced: http://documentaries.about.com/od/watchingdocumentaries/tp/Documentary-Festivals--Themed.html
DOCUMENTARY GENRE
Docu-fiction: cinematographic combination of documentary and fiction.
Robert Flaherty's, Man or Aran
Ethno-fiction: A blend of documentary and fiction film in the area of visual anthropology. A film style in which the portrayed characters (natives) play their own roles as members of an ethnic or social group.
Mockumentary: Is a type of film or show in which fictitious events are presented in documentary format. These productions are often used to analyse or comment on current events and issues by usings a fictitious setting, or to parody the documentary form itself.
Mondo Film: An exploitation documentary film, sometimes resembling a pseudo-documentary, usually depicting sensational topics, scenes, and situations. Common traits of Mondo films include emphasis on taboo subjects such as death and sex, portrayals of foreign cultures that have received accusations of racism and staged sequences presented as genuine documentary footage.
For examples of these Documentary Genres please follow this LINK to my Documentary Research page
