Comparing Documentaries: 9/11 and September Mourning

Comparing Documentaries: 9/11 and September Mourning

The ways in which the codes and conventions are used the documentaries

are that many of them have an interviewer this is sometimes either an

invisible interviewer or the interviewer is present and is can be

picked out by the audience. Also the camera work differs. The two

documentaries I will be concentrating on will be '9/11' by the 'Naudet

brothers' (9/11, Naudet Brothers, 2002, Fr/US) '9/11'was released by

21st Century Fox, it was released as a film. September Mourning' by

'Roger Graef' (September Mourning, Roger Graef, 2002) this was

released by Roger Grief's own production company, this was released as

a T.V. documentary. Both of the documentaries are about the incident

that took place on September 11th 2001. The main differences between

the two documentaries are that 9/11's narrative was about a rookie

fire fighter and the events of September 11th just happened to be at

the same time. Also, '9/11' has many narratives. '9/11' tells you the

story of September 11th from a fire fighter's perspective and how the

Americans coped with it. Whereas 'September Mourning' is about the

after effects and how the families have coped with it.

In both documentaries there is hand-held camera work. In '9/11' the

'Naudet' brothers are filming the fire fighters and in 'September

Mourning' Roger Graef has spent 6 months with the relatives of the

victims. '9/11' has an introduction in which Robert Di Niro is in, he

is from New York and is a well known actor so he feels as if he was

involved in September 11th. He is standing in what looks like a 'fake

background' in a studio. It is also dark and on...

... middle of paper ...

... and he has a shot of her in

between 2 trees, this makes it looks like she is trapped and has no

way to go. In another shot of the New York skyline it is behind a

gate, this shows that the city of New York is under threat and that it

can't get away from what happened. Another victim of the attack is

'Simon Turner' he went for a business trip to New York for 4 days and

he died. He left a 7 month pregnant wife.

In another shot of the New York skyline there is the Brooklyn bridge

and this shows that New York is not alone and that it has a lot of

people from different places supporting it. In 'September Mourning'

Roger Graef only has the relatives talking and he just films this, he

doesn't talk in it. He probably does this to show people that the

relatives were affected and they should be able to talk instead of

him.