Searching For The Truth In Documentaries

Documentaries are a representation of reality and are constructed as they cannot just point a camera at someone and expect them to behave naturally (unless they are a single celled organism with no brain or a vegetable). A good example of this is the Lumiere Brothers collection of films as the people in the clips respond to being recorded. 


There films were "actuality" style in which a camera was left to capture events that happened over time. Notable films are 'Workers leaving the factory' and 'un train arrivee.' 


However, as we as humans react when a camera is placed noticeably in front of us and change our behaviour, it poses the question can you really capture reality?

Documentary film-makers have many approaches they can take to create the effect they desire. This can be narration and having the film-maker as part of the story to make it a more personal approach. Interviews are a key part of an approach as this is an account by a reliable source (which can be done in a confessional style). Other parts of the approach can be use of archive footage, photos and music to add to the story.


The documentarians have the ability to choose what is appropriate for the statement they want to make using the codes and conventions I have outlined in 'What is likely to be in a Documentary'. Using these, they can sculpt the narrative into whatever they want to, even by using staged scenes or re-constructions and then editing the clips into short fast paced scenes to emphasise key parts of the narrative.

The description of these factual films as a documentary first derived when John Grierson called Robert Flaherty's, 'Nanook of the North (1922) as "a creative interpretation of reality". Grierson was head of GPO film unit in England in the 1930's and often used a "poetic-realist" approach to documentary.

'Nightmail' is one documentary that used this approach produced by the GPO using it to show the London to Edinburgh overnight postal train. It used some music and narration which caused much debate over this kind of editing but Grierson argued it was the new "poetic" style.

 

With the cold war looming, a new major development in documentary took off in the USA during the 1950's and 60's, it was called 'Direct Cinema'. It presented social and political issues in a direct, unmediated way using the 'as if you were there' point of view. Through this breakthrough, new advances in technology rocketed as camera's that were smalled and lighter and used less film stock were developed.

 

At the same time as "Direct Cinema", "Cinema Verite" was a movement happening in France that also used a seemingly direct view but used a minimalist style. Jean Roach, an important documentarian used this style in the 60's. But the same style has been used in fictional drama films such as 'Kes (1969)' directed by Ken Loach.

  

This technique is also used in modern times to create "Mockumentaries" which make humorous events seem 'real'. Larry Charles in known for using this method when following Sacha Baron Cohen's various characters.

Today, people still debate over whether a documentary is completely truthful when claiming to be so.

Over recent years, starting in the 1980's, new breakthrough documentary styles have developed such as the hybrid 'Prankster Cinema' which uses similar themes to 'Mockumentary'; performance, art, slapstick and satire. This is where unsuspecting subjects are pranked and their reactions are viewed by the audience for comedy value. Other new styles developed are ones which use interrogation in interviews which Errol Morris uses in 'Fog of War'. In 'Supersize Me' Morgan Spurlock put himself at risk to make a point which Yaniv Schulman does in 'Catfish'.

Errol Morris': Interrotron