Documentaries are a type of film that can give the viewer a vision of the subject in a way that is unable to be portrayed by other types of art. Documentaries are normally thought of as nonfiction works of film that show a subject in its normal habitat or surroundings. That being said, all films can have some aspects of documentaries in them. I believe that one way all films can be considered documentaries is all films record what is in front of the lens and what the viewer sees is exactly what it is. For example, if the movie batman shows a scene in which the joker is fighting batman. The viewer is watching the joker fight batman there must be two people fighting each other that has been recorded for the film. Unlike if an artist painted a …show more content…
In the film Capturing Reality there is a discussion about how nonfiction documentaries have this very real and raw feelings to them that cannot be captured in fiction films as well. While this is true, there is still the aspect of seeing maybe a stunt or a scene in a fiction film and the viewer understanding what might have had to go into that scene for it to be shot. That thought of thinking about how the scene was captured in the element of documentary that all films have. In reality at some point there had to be a team to design a scene where someone jumped off a tall structure. It is not like in a painting where an artist can paint the scene but no one having actually completed the scene in reality. This can also be shown more strongly in documentaries where the filmmaker shows the subject in its actual surroundings trying to capture a real aspect of society and not one designed for a fiction
Bridge to Freedom provides the historical documentary behind the events that served as the narrative for Selma. Instead of a drama, the viewers receive an actual documentary that shows the confrontations between the marchers and the government. Like Selma, it highlights the violence, the deaths, and the beatings, but also goes further back in time to show society’s treatment of African Americans.
In this paper I used outside sources such as Hurley’s book, Gawthrop’s, Jacobson and Moakley articles to clarify and develop deeper thinking about Coles’ ideas in “The Tradition: Fact and Fiction,” with focal points being: human actuality, the interiority of a photograph, and the emotional impact of cropping. Throughout Coles’ essay he portrays a documentarian as one who creates their work to meet their own standards based on personal opinion, values, interest and their audience. He also shows, in correlation to the title, that there is no line between fact or fiction in documentary work; they are loosely mingled, overlapping and only seen separately from a biased standpoint.
This report aims to make light of certain elements of documentary making that are perhaps more susceptible to influence on the director’s part, and once again explore the effect of these decisions on the audience’s reaction to the information presented.
Many of the scenes are filmed in front of a camera as the "filmmakers" pose and answer questions regarding their research before it transitions into their story outside of the film-making process. The Conspiracy is a mockumentary but doesn't necessarily make fun of the documentary process as other mockumentaries do, and neither does The Watermelon Woman. Both of these films, The Watermelon Woman and The Conspiracy, allow for easy understanding from any type of audience, and they both offer plots and storytelling-patterns that flow in ways able to be comprehended by any type of
You are starving and your family is starving, but the law told you that you could not feed your family, would you obey the law or do you decide to feed your family anyway despite what the law says? To Tommy Pikok Sr., “When I am hungry, I can protest the law. I can use my stomach as a reason to protest the law” (Edwardsen, Duck-In). In the documentary, The Duck-In, the Iñupiat people of Barrow, Alaska fought against the law by coming together as a whole community to get what should be their right as native people. The Iñupiat people would rather hunt for their food than consume white people food on a daily basis. It is our culture, tradition, and duty to hunt for food and no one or anything could change our way of thinking. The citizens of Barrow, Alaska should watch the Duck-In because the documentary informs the citizens
many trends in the movies and novels societies that are portrayed in our society as well.
The movie Psycho was created in 1960, and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. This film has many meaningful moments behind it, which all lead up to a shocking yet interesting twist for an ending. Many clips corresponded well with Bill Nichols thoughts, and opinions on how “Every movie is a Documentary.” By comparing both the Nichols reading, and the film Psycho, it is easy to see that this film is a wish-fulfillment documentary. This film shows what could be a scary reality in many people’s lives. It gives us examples of what could be our deepest nightmares and dreads, influences an opinion over people who have multiple personalities, and even feeds some people’s interests.
Analysis Of Two Documentaries I will be analysing two very different types of documentary, 'Dogtown and the Z-Boys', which takes the role of being a full length movie type documentary, and 'Teenage Transsexuals' which was recently shown on Channel 4. 'Dogtown and the Z-Boys' is a documentary which takes a look at the transformation of surfing into skateboarding. The film follows the evolution of skating through it's heyday in the 70's, to it's decline in the 80's, and then back upto it's popular return in the 90's. It also follows the Zephyr team, a high profile surf/skate club which revolutionised the skating industry right upto the present day.
I watched the documentary called, “The Power of an Illusion: The House We Live In”. The documentary talked about how the laws and policies in America create a racial divide; in addition, the documentary talks about how our federal housing policy has oppressed people of color throughout our culture. This was an interesting documentary that certainly talks about how our policies and laws in America have always been to benefit the whites and to exclude people who are non-whites.
Documentary has been heavily associated as a representation of the truth and reality due to its absence of fictional elements and control by the filmmaker (Chapman, 2009). It aims to entice the audience perception of the information presented as fundamental and legitimate (Beattie, 2004). With today's technology, the question of manipulated facts and proclaimed evidences presented in documentaries has heightened concerns in providing the audience with the truth and the real. Hence, with reference to the documentary on "Biggie and Tupac" (2002) directed by Nick Broomfield, we will explore how the documentary has managed to capture the real in terms of structure, style and modes of documentary.
The documentary A Place at the Table reveals some very startling facts about food insecurity in the United States. The directors, Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush, relate the stories of three people to present the struggles common to people who are faced with food insecurity. Barbie is a young single mother who struggles to provide for her two young children. Rosie is a young student who has trouble focusing in class because she is hungry. Trmonica is another young student who has health problems, which are worsened by the unhealthy diet that her mother is able to afford. Through the stories of these three people and the testimonies of some experts, the directors present an argument dealing with food
In this chapter the author Bill Nichols reflects on how documentary filmmaking found its voice. He points out that no one set out to invent this voice or build a documentary tradition. In the present day, it comes with an aspiration of filmmakers to understand how things got to be the way they are. The goals of those before them were to make a film that answered their needs and intuitions about how to represent the subject of their choice. This tradition of experimentation continues to this day but in relation to new forms and new techniques from animation to reenactments. This is what allows documentary to remain a lively and vital genre. The rise of documentary involves the story of the cinema’s love for the surface of things with its distinctive ability to capture life as it is. This distinctive ability served
2. Nichols, Bill. ‘Documentary Modes of Representation (The Observational Mode).’ Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington & Indianapolis; Indiana University Press. 1991. 38-44
This is a critique of" Roger And Me", a documentary by Michael Moore. This is a film about a city that at one time had a great economy. The working class people lived the American dream. The majority of people in this town worked at the large GM factory. The factory is what gave these people security in their middle working class home life. Life in the city of Flint was good until Roger Smith the CEO of GM decided to close the factory. This destroyed the city. Violent crime became the highest in the nation, businesses went bankrupt, people were evicted from their rented homes. There were no jobs and no opportunity. Life was so bad that Money magazine named Flint the worst place to live in the entire nation. When news of the factory closing first broke, Michael Moore a native of flint decided to search for Roger Smith and bring him to Flint.
Arguing on the reality documentary film portrays, Trinh T. Minh-Ha states that documentary films has a reality of its own kind. Minh-Ha observes that although documentary films creates illusion, ‘such illusion is real; it has its own reality, one in which the subject of knwoledge, the subject of vision, or the subject of meaning, continues to deploy established power relations, assuming to be the basic reserve of reference in the totalising quest for the referent, the true referent that lies out there in nature, in dark, waiting potentially to be unveiled and deciphered correctly’