Documentary Research & Analysis:

LOVE ON THE TRANSPLANT LIST

Love on the Transplant List is a documentary by Mel Beer, filmed in a participatory mode, which explores how a young female adult battles with crippling cystic fibrosis whilst preparing for her wedding day as well as a lung transplant. The subject, Kirstie, takes the viewer on a journey as she prepares what is her dream day, getting married to her lover as well as finding a suitable donor for her urgent lung transplant. The journey is emotional, as her illness takes a turn for the worse and Kirstie is ultimately comatose.

                  The documentary is supported by a narration, which gives the audience additional background information on her illness, wellbeing and how many people are affected by this particular illness. The film is engaging, as Kirstie retains her audiences’ attention with her humour and light outlook on life, as well as her direct approach to the camera.

                  The documentary features non- diagetic sound, as a score builds the atmosphere to the overwhelming pressure of Kirstie’s illness. It has the typical codes and conventions of a documentary; the subject engaging with the audience, the narration, the additional interviews from family members and friends who are concerned of Kirstie’s health. The footage of the subject lying in a hospital bed, unconscious with tubes running through her body are powerful; they show the extreme vulnerability and weakness of Kirstie, as she lays so near death. It causes an emotional response from the audience, feeling sympathy or even empathy towards the subject.

MY TRANSSEXUAL SUMMER

My Transsexual Summer is a four-part Channel 4 documentary series, investigating the lives of six people as they come together to find out who they really are and the things they want in life. The series, produced by Sam Whittaker alongside Stuart Cosgrove, the Head of Diversity at Channel 4, is filmed using a reflexive mode, yet also exposes the hardships and social issues that the transgender community experience. Using the reflexive mode, Whittaker engages with the issues of realism and representation of this controversial community and how they are perceived through British society. The direct mode of address to the subject engages the audience, and an emotional response from the viewer is given even if the viewer does not feel particularly comfortable with this controversial issue.

                  Whittaker has produced this series in a way to shed light to such a closed and private community, exposing their problems and showing the everyday abuse from the British community they experience. It’s touching to see the group of six come to terms with their sexuality and their gender, and their bravery throughout the entire process. It is surreal cinematography at its best; exposing a private and misunderstood part of the British community in such a vibrant and exhilarating world, yet they also have their more human moments because they dislike the prejudice and the abuse they experience almost every day walking through the streets trying to be the person they thought they should have been born as.

                  The score for My Transsexual Summer enhances the documentary, with the more intimate interviews and scenes accompanied by slow and calming music, or the scenes of despair are supported by uplifting music, connoting that this community do not give in to the hate hurled at them.

                  Whittaker’s ability to create such a powerful docu-series in incredible; he exposes this closed community without ridiculing or discrediting them, and shows them as normal and determined people, with utmost bravery and strength. 

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT DAD

We Need To Talk about Dad is a documentary by Jessica Ross aired on Channel 4. The documentary is shot in the participatory mode, where the honesty of the subjects about their tragic family ordeal engage with the audience, pulling emotion from the viewer, such an angst, sympathy and horror, as the viewer learns of the horrific attack a woman’s husband performed in the eyes of his teenage son. It shows the reconciliation of the family, as well as the teenage son opening up to his father about why he attacked his wife, and what his motives were behind the assault.

                  The documentary consists of several interviews, mainly from the teenage son, now in his early twenties, reflecting over the attack he witnessed through his bedroom window, and how it has divided and isolated him between his family.  It is an investigative documentary looking into the upbringing of Henry, the teenager, and how he dealt with his father’s attack psychologically.

                  The use of music; humble acoustic guitars juxtaposed with long, eerie synths manipulate the audience’s emotions, making them feel threatened or scared when the lead-up to the attack takes place, and when the first family reconciliation happens before Christmas.

                  There are many close-ups in the film, especially of Henry’s eyes, which are deaden and cold, with raw tears brimming the lines of his eyes when he recounts the story of how his father put an axe in the back of his mother’s head, and seeing her covered in blood, almost unrecognisable.

                  Ross’s documentary is powerful, and it’s the manipulation of the main subject Henry that allows the audience to connect with the film, to realise the struggle he’s in to tell his younger brother what their father really did that fateful day.  The audience are drawn to the powerful family imagery of how things used to be, juxtaposed with modern day life with a broken family. 

UNDESIRED

                  Indian women face a cultural pressure to bear a son. If they bear a daughter, they have to pay a dowry, which can be seen as a financial burden for their family. If their family in law want more money and the daughter and her family cannot pay out, then there can be devastating consequences. 

Undesired, a documentary by Walter Astrada, is an expository film which depicts the hardships women of India face being a daughter, and the shame and burden they bring to their families. The expository mode is a direct address to the audience, which highlights social issues of a particular country or place and gives the viewer an insight into their harsh reality, which can shock and intimidate audiences. This happens is Astrada’s film, where he explains if families cannot pay the dowry to their in-laws, there will be horrific consequences to the family’s daughter, and in this particular case we are shown pictures of a women incredibly burnt, who lies as a corpse on a hospital bed, her face stricken with grief and shock. The images are powerful and they burn into our mind, and prompt some uneasy viewers to look away in disgust. We are left to feel empathy to the subject, which the documentary practitioner has intended us to feel; he shoots in the expository mode to create a reaction, for the audience to feel some emotion towards the subjects of his film, which in this case is sympathy.

                  The documentary is supported by non-diagetic music right from the beginning. The Bangladeshi score gives the audience the location; India. It’s follows the correct codes and conventions of an documentary about the Indian culture; shots of Indian girls wearing beautiful saris, the slums and the kohl- stricken eye make up.

                  Astrada acts as the voice of God, and his narrations runs through the whole film, denoting the images we see, especially of the burns victim and the differences between male and female life. The story is supported by two main interviewees, a male and female doctor who interject between Astrada’s narrations and offer their insight and beliefs into the film, criticising the sexism between both genders and stating the tragedy that around 7,000 female foetuses are aborted everyday in India.

                  Undesired is a hard hitting expository documentary, manipulating the emotions of the audience with the use of shocking images and by telling the audience how wrong the treatment of women in India is through their horrifying ordeals and troubles.