Source: Directing the Documentary – Michael Rabiger

A Brief History – Where documentary film making began and the development of it. John Grierson – The British documentary filmmaker who produced the first nonfiction film to be introduced and known as a documentary. Grierson believed documentary to be “creative treatment of actuality”.

Robert Flaherty was another practitioner who explored the concepts of filming real life situations and making a statement with the context of the film. Nanook of the North was distributed in 1922 which focused on an Esmiko Family. Flaherty, who began filming the family in 1915, gave this family direction in how to go about certain activities; it was to be shown like a piece of fictional film. So in hindsight Flaherty intended on shooting a staged documentation from a real life situation, to bring more drama to what is the “actors” reality.  The film never had a real connection to the living conditions of this family. It begs to question how fictional is a non-fictional piece of text? Is the audience being misled into believing a “truth” which not necessarily proven?  “One often has to distort a thing to catch its true spirit” – quote by R.Flaherty

Direct Cinema and Cinema Verite

Direct Cinema – observational

This approach to documentary filmmaking is one that takes a back seat by staying behind the camera and filming the solely what is happening in front of us, showing the subject as they are. Its aim is to be objective, by having an impartial response to what is being shown or told in the documentary. The audience expect the film to represent the truth and have a sense of realism. This questions the ‘cinema’ it is obvious that ‘cinema’ is staged. However, may portray elements of reality; or do they steer away from reality for a sense of escapism. This may be the reason to why many issues in film are exaggerated and often farfetched. 

E.g. Fred Wiseman, The Titicut Follies (USA 1967)

Cinema Verite – participatory

This approach to documentary film making began in theatre, technical term known as “Breaking the 4^th wall” where actors would be inclined to address the audience during the staged production. Bertolt Brecht a German play writer, director and producer had his own interpretation of constructing a performance this is where “epic theatre” came about which projected the underling themes on the political matter of that era. According to critic… Brecht deliberately “seeks to distance the audience emotionally from the story being acted onstage to break the fourth wall to never let us forget that we are watching actors.

 Directing a Documentary

• Development, conflict and confrontation –  To avoid our film looking static we will use a variety of camera shots e.g. close ups, low shots and high angle shots to create a unique visual style. As our chosen topic is a controversial issue it will have context that conflicts from view to view. This will not be an issue for our production to film as these opposing views are expressed in separate locations. We will need to be assertive when filming, knowing what to film and when to film it. At the Greyhound Stadium there may be some people who do not want to be filmed we agree to their wishes to avoid confrontation

• The dramatic curve - beginning with an issue which rises as the tension is built up reaching a climax.It is often resolved by the end of the film. 

• Exposition, Facts and Narration - We hope that our documentary is clear and gets across all points of views; we will create a shooting script, which will plan the visuals and words – questions for the interviews and narration. In the pre production stages we have been thoroughly researching into the background/history of greyhound racing, training and treatment at rescue centres so that we are clear on all our factual evidence. We are considering using voice of God and I may appear in interviews but we will focus on our subject    

Pre and Post production 

We understand that our audience is the vital part of our documentary. We have conducted primary research by creating surveys and sending them out to people over Facebook. Although we got a substantial amount of responses, I believe this will give us a niche market as the majority of the people who participated in the survey were our age range so we have decided to post more surveys on forums to give us a wider audience and be able to cover the political side as well as the personal aspects of it. We will be exporting our documentary onto Vimeo, YouTube, Exposure room and our Wix website.

To promote our website we will be and have already began doing a wide range of marketing strategies these being; radio slots on BBC One Extra and Sound Radio, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, a Wix website, a teaser trailer to be hosted on our YouTube, website and Facebook to attract as many people as possible. Other outlets include the following - posters, flyers, business cards, our production t-shirts etc. We will come up with more ways to promote our documentary so that it creates more of an awareness of our topic and the conflicting issues portrayed – our ideal strategy would be a film festival which will make our production expand and be heard by other production companies and audiences. I have signed up to withoutabox.com so we will know when upcoming festivals are so we attend with our film

Interviews will be carried out during our filming at each location we visit. Our main primary contacts are the following; John Hutchinson and Morris Massey who are owners of greyhounds and frequently attend races with their dogs. As the director I will be conducting the interviews with both primaries. I will ask open questions such as ‘what does training consist of?’ How is this beneficial to their greyhound? How long have they been going to races? And how did it catch their interest? Etc. I will avoid using double-barrelled questions e.g. Does training interfere with your job? how many times do you go racing? This is to prevent our interviewee getting confused and skipping the question all together.

Our aim for our documentary is to expose the truth of greyhound racing and the companionship between one man and his dog.  We are interested in investing the issues of abandoned greyhounds and the opposing side with a trainer who adores his dog.  Putting our beliefs aside, we intend on being objective to get a fair argument on both sides of the fence. Although we will be asking questions that are conflicting i.e. ask the greyhound stadium – What they think about the Animal Law act which states “

We have researched into the greyhound racing we found this on the Greyhound Board of Great Britain it goes through the history of when it first began and when it was broadcasted, about racing, results, rules and regulations, welfare, knowledge base – which has advice for trainers, ownership, training and education and anti – doping – which is checking/regulating the medication of the greyhounds so they race clean and steroid free.

We believe our topic has never been covered before in the way that showing not only the dark, gritty side to greyhound racing but the positive side as well. I think that is the reason some people who are against this sport do no fully understand what its about. Some people who are for state that "it's similar to horse racing", we would like to know whether this is true and if so why is horse racing not portrayed negatively in the media.

Throughout the Christmas break and right through until we begin filming we will be keeping in regular contact with our primaries, the stadiums and the rescue centres. This will ensure us that they are willing to participate in our documentary and ensure them that we are trustworthy and reliable. This will also help us to get to know each of our contacts better and be comfortable talking to them and interviewing them on the days of filming. We are fortunate to have a growing number of trainers who are willing to show us what greyhound racing is all about and giving their views and opinions on the sport.