Booklet 1 - Introduction to Factual Programmes and Documentary Formats

BTEC National Certificate in Creative Media Production (TV & Film) Documentaries

Studying Documentary Forms

The popular success of television shows such as Big Brother (Channel 5) suggests that we are as
keen on watching real lives for entertainment today as audiences were at the beginning of the last
century, when short films of people doing everyday tasks were popular side shows.

Documentary is an umbrella term that covers a multitude of different forms (both in film and
television) and styles, all of which have at their heart some element of the presentation, or a visual
document or record, of reality.

The controversy that surrounds recent programmes also suggests that we are not entirely
comfortable with this mixture of real life and entertainment. Questions about the authenticity of
documentary products, their purposes and their relationship to the audience have been asked for
as long as we have recognised the form of documentary. One of the key points of debate has been
about reaching an agreed definition of the documentary form.

In 1936 John Grierson, a highly influential early maker of documentaries, proposed that
documentaries were ‘… the creative treatment of actuality’.

Conventionally, documentary is associated with objectivity, authenticity and truthfulness.
However, Grierson’s definition seems to suggest an element to documentary that is almost the
opposite of these ideas - creativity.

Clark, V.; Baker, J.; Lewis, E. (2002) Key Concepts & Skills for Media Studies: Hodder & Stoughton

Grierson coined the term documentary in the 1930’s and it was his belief that documentary should
be an instrument for information, education and propaganda as well as a creative treatment of
reality. Grierson wanted, like other members of the British establishment, to use film as a method
of educating people, particularly those who could vote, and he used documentaries to do this. In
the 1930’s he was the producer of forty-two documentaries for GPO, which focussed on presenting
aspects of British life, institutions, governmental agencies and social problems – all with the
intention of involving citizens in their society. Coalface (1935), about the miners and their labour,
and Night Mail (1936), about the Post Office workers are exemplary films in this regard.

Documentaries can, however, be traced back to the earliest days of cinema. In the 1890’s, the
Lumière brothers were making films which appeared to simply capture or follow events as they
occurred. One of the most famous examples would be La sortie des Usines Lumière (Workers
Leaving the Lumière Factory) from 1895.

Q. How real do you find these texts? Do they reflect/depict reality?

Nanook of the North (1922)
Can you be ‘natural' when a
camera is pointed at you?

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BTEC National Certificate in Creative Media Production (TV & Film) Documentaries

The purpose and aim of documentary

Documentary texts exist so that a producer, director, etc., can make a point about a particular
societal, political, ethical, etc., issue and/or so a filmmaker can present an audience with a media
text centred around a topic for which they have a particular affinity, dislike, interest in, etc.

It is often assumed that the documentary filmmaker simply observes and makes an objective
record of real events. But documentary filmmakers do not simply point the camera towards
their subject and let the camera roll; they employ a wide variety of techniques in putting
their films together.

Nichols, B. (1992) Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary: John Wiley & Sons

Depending on the subject and filmmaker, a documentary can be presented in one of the following
formats which according to Bill Nichols are:

• Expository documentary
• Observational documentary
• Interactive documentary
• Reflexive documentary
• Performative documentary

Nichols, B. (1992) Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary: John Wiley & Sons

For your practical projects, you will be making a short documentary on a current (and personal)
topic. This will be in the style of the Chanel 4 documentary series, 3 Minute Wonder. Please go to
the teaching blog and complete the 3MW research post.

“3 Minute Wonder is a short Channel 4 television slot that broadcasts
first time directors' three-minute TV programmes in the middle of the
channel's weekday primetime schedule. It offers first-time directors and
assistant producers the opportunity to air their work to a large audience,
and in doing so, to take a first step into the competitive UK film industry.

The 3 Minute Wonder strand is part of the Channel 4's 4Talent initiative to help new talent break
into the very competitive UK television industry. Other projects in the scheme include FourDocs and
the Channel 4 Sheffield Pitch documentary competition.

Channel 4 offers new directors £4000 and their assistance in making their shorts which are then
broadcast at 7.55pm every weekday.

The films shown on the series are primarily documentaries that generally highlight a current issue
that is not in the public eye, for instance synesthesia or domestic abuse.

It has previously featured Karl Pilkington in a series of 4 and was mentioned on The Ricky Gervais
Show”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_Minute_Wonder

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BTEC National Certificate in Creative Media Production (TV & Film) Documentaries

We are the Lambeth Boys (Karel Reisz, 1957)

A nostalgic look at London life in the 1950's. B&W

Director
Karel Reisz
Production Co.
Graphic Films
Sponsor
Ford Motor Company
Producer
Leon Clore
Photography
Walter Lassally
Editor
John Fletcher

Members of Alford House Youth Club in Kennington, London, are
seen at school, at work, and taking part in the club's activities.

Sociologist Richard Hoggart talked of it as a 'film essay' rather than a documentary, because,
as he claimed, "it sets out to show, not the whole truth, but some aspects of the truth,
wholly". The film suffers similar drawbacks to Every Day Except Christmas: the unnecessary
voice-over commentary gives it a paternalist tone which undermines the sensitivity of Reisz's
images and natural sound, and seems obsolete to today's spectator. The film also loses some
of its 'poetic authenticity' by trying too hard to show how nice these youngsters are.

Q. How real did you find We Are the Lambeth Boys?

Q. What do you think detracted from the authenticity of the text?

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BTEC National Certificate in Creative Media Production (TV & Film) Documentaries

High School (Frederick Wiseman, 1968)

A look at education in Philadelphia in the 60’s. B&W

Cast & credits
Direction
Frederick Wiseman
Production
Osti Films

High School is a 1968 American documentary film directed by
Frederick Wiseman that shows a typical day for a group of
students at Northeast High School in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania.

Frederick Wiseman's documentaries elicit a familiar list
of responses from critics: no voiceover, text, or score;
no clear protagonists, no simplistic narrative or chronological spines, bounded locale, etc. No
this, no that - until eventually you realise you're talking about a film-maker in a special
category. In the four decades since Titicut Follies (1967) initially classed him with
practitioners of Direct Cinema, Wiseman has gone far beyond that movement's oddly
celebrity-oriented preoccupation with in-the-moment truth. He has achieved his own form of
realism in work of consistent richness and variety to produce films which are both social
documents and great art.

Reflections in a Golden Eye: BFI Online

Wiseman is now regarded as “one of the most trusted voices in film-making”.

Reflections in a Golden Eye: BFI Online

Q. How real did you find High School?

Q. What do you think detracted from the authenticity of the text?

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BTEC National Certificate in Creative Media Production (TV & Film) Documentaries

Louis and the Nazis (Stewart Cabb, 2003)

A look at modern day Nazis and white supremacists in
America.

Cast & credits
Director & producer
Stewart Cabb
Writer
Louis Theroux

Louis travels to California to meet the man dubbed "the
most dangerous racist in America", Tom Metzger. Louis
meets him, his family and his publicity manager as well as
following him to skinhead rallies and on a visit to Mexico. He
also encounters the Nazi-pop folk duo ‘Prussian Blue’ and
their mother and maternal grandfather.

The Louis Theroux Method is probably already being taught on media studies courses in our
newer universities; if it's not, it should be. The armoury of tricks - the rumpled sexiness, the
pregnant silences, all that disarming business with mugs of tea - is the most effective in the
business right now, eliciting confidences from the most reluctant subjects.

[In Louis and the Nazis] Theroux was rightly disappointed that these hateful people were so
ineffectual because it made them difficult to hate. Without power or influence, they were
only hurting themselves and their families, and we were forced to consider the human cost
of their delusions.

There were some hairy moments along the way, most memorably when Theroux's skinhead
hosts turned nasty over his dogged refusal to tell them whether or not he was a Jew. We saw
a lot of Sieg-Heiling and other posing, which was about as threatening as a two-year-old
playing with his willy. Theroux resisted the temptation to revel in the comedy of it all, and
left California in a sober mood, wondering what it all meant. By refusing to provide any
answers - to his anti-Semitic tormentors, or to his audience - Theroux sowed instead the
seeds of doubt.

Smith, R (2003) Reich and Wrong from The Guardian: Guardian News and Media Ltd.

Q. How real did you find Louis and the Nazis?

Q. What do you think detracted from the authenticity of the text?

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BTEC National Certificate in Creative Media Production (TV & Film) Documentaries

Powaqqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1988)

An exploration of technologically developing nations and the
effect the transition to Western-style modernisation has had
on them.

Director
Godfrey Reggio
Executive Producer
Francis Ford Coppola

Powaqqatsi is a Hopi word meaning "parasitic way of life" or
"life in transition". While Koyaanisqatsi focused on modern life
in industrial countries, Powaqqatsi, which similarly has no
dialogue, focuses more on the conflict in third world countries
between traditional ways of life and the new ways of life
introduced with industrialisation. As with Koyaanisqatsi and
the third and final part of the 'Qatsi' trilogy, Naqoyqatsi, the film is strongly related to its
soundtrack, written by Philip Glass. Here, human voices (especially children's and mainly from
South America and Africa) appear more than in Koyaanisqatsi, in harmony with the film's message
and images. IMDB

There are images of astonishing beauty in Godfrey Reggio's Powaqqatsi, sequences when we
marvel at the sights of the Earth, and yet when the film is over there is the feeling that we
are still waiting for it to begin. The film is not so much a sequel as a continuation of
Koyaanisqatsi, the 1983 film in which Reggio drew contrasts between the world of nature
and the world of man.

In that film, he used speeded-up film to show us clouds climbing the sides of mountains, and
then thousands of cars speeding crazily up and down the canyons of Manhattan. The
message, I think, was that man has taken the beauty of the world and turned it into an
overcrowded, environmentally insane travesty. The logical flaw in the film was that Reggio's
images of beauty were always found in a world entirely without man - without even the Hopi
Indians whose word for "life out of balance" provided the title for his film. Reggio seemed to
think that man himself is some kind of virus infecting the planet - that we would enjoy Earth
more, in other words, if we weren't here.

Roger Ebert (http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/powaqqatsi-1988)

Q. How real did you find Powaqqatsi?

Q. What do you think detracted from the authenticity of the text?

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BTEC National Certificate in Creative Media Production (TV & Film) Documentaries

The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1988)

A film about inconsistent testimony in a murder case.

Director
Errol Morris
Producer
Mark Lipson
Written
Errol Morris
Starring
Randall Adams
David Harris

The film presents a series of interviews about the
investigation and re-enactments of the shooting (of a Dallas
police officer), based on the testimony and recollections of
suspects Adams and Harris, and various witnesses and detectives. Two attorneys who represented
Adams at the trial where he was convicted of capital murder also appear: they suggest that Adams
was charged with the crime despite the better evidence against Harris because, as Harris was a
juvenile, Adams alone of the two could be sentenced to death under Texas law.

The Thin Blue Line is the fascinating, controversial true story of the arrest and conviction of
Randall Adams for the murder of a Dallas policeman in 1976. Billed as "the first movie
mystery to actually solve a murder," the film is credited with overturning the conviction of
Randall Dale Adams for the murder of Dallas police officer Robert Wood, a crime for which
Adams was sentenced to death. With its use of expressionistic re-enactments, interview
material and music by Philip Glass, it pioneered a new kind of non-fiction filmmaking. Its
style has been copied in countless reality-based television programs and feature films.

Terrence Rafferty in The New Yorker has called it "a powerful and thrillingly strange movie.
Morris seems to want to bring us to the point at which our apprehension of the real world
reaches a pitch of paranoia - to induce in us the state of mind of a detective whose scrutiny
of the evidence has begun to take on the feverish clarity of hallucination.

From errolmorris.com/film

Q. How real did you find The Thin Blue Line?

Q. What do you think detracted from the authenticity of the text?

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BTEC National Certificate in Creative Media Production (TV & Film) Documentaries

The five formats: summary

Expository documentary

• Disembodied and authoritative voiceover which directly addresses the audience on what is
happening in the accompanying images (giving meaning to the images – not opinion)

• Facts and arguments are provided by the voiceover which also provides ‘captions’ for the
images

• A series of images (which are descriptive/informative) are used to compliment the voiceover
• The effect of the expository documentary is (predominantly) one of objectivity, of direct and

transparent representation.

Observational documentary

• Unobtrusive construction and depictions – presents a slice of life
• Non-intervention of the filmmaker – they are an uninvolved bystander
• The filmmaker/director is hidden from the audience
• More centred on what is not contained, e.g., commentary, intertitles, interviews etc.
• Presents a transparent record of an event and is neutral/non-judgemental
• Audiences decide what to think/decode from the text.

Interactive documentary

• The filmmaker’s presence is evident – they are a participant
• There is interaction between interviewees, the presenter and also the audience
• Arguments (agendas) are usually presented
• Manipulation of the text through editing is more evident
• Sometimes criticised for ‘misrepresentation’ and ‘manipulation’ but defended by filmmakers

due to the projected image being more important than fine details.

Reflexive documentary

• The filmmaker attempts to expose the conventions of documentary to the audience
• The construction of documentary texts are exposed and also experimented with
• The documentary text will consist of shots that have captured ‘everyday life’ but they are

then used as bricks which can make vastly different/experimental films.

Performative documentary

• Represents the world indirectly and emphasis is on presentation rather than content
• Use of re-enactments, exaggerated camera positions and soundtracks help to submerge the

audience into the diegesis
• Aims to present the subject matter in a subjective, expressive, stylised, evocative and

visceral manner.

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BTEC National Certificate in Creative Media Production (TV & Film) Documentaries

Documentary ‘mini-task’

This task is designed to cover the final terms (in bold) that contribute to part of & GC2 (this will be marked
alongside the news task when we come to it). You may produce this work in any format but please ensure
that you use images and detailed examples, whatever the method of presentation. Do not use examples
from the sheets given in class - find your own!

Aim to focus on the ‘presentation of truth’ and how some formats appear more authentic than others.
Follow this short plan to ensure you cover everything that’s required and be sure to use the following terms:
realism, dramatization, narrativisation, accuracy, balance, impartiality, objectivity, subjectivity, opinion,
bias, representation, access and privacy (data protection and what you can / can’t show). You’ll notice that
the terms listed fit in well with how you would define and describe the conventions and traits of the
following formats:

Introduction
• What is a documentary? / How would you define ‘documentary’?

Paragraph 1
• Identify the key features of expository documentaries
• Provide your own example of an expository documentary

Paragraph 2
• Identify the key features of observational documentaries
• Provide your own example of an observational documentary

Paragraph 3
• Identify the key features of interactive documentaries
• Provide your own example of an interactive documentary

Paragraph 4
• Identify the key features of reflexive documentaries
• Provide your own example of a reflexive documentary

Paragraph 5
• Identify the key features of performative documentaries
• Provide your own example of a performative documentary

Conclusion Which format is your favourite?
• Which format presents information in the most objective / unbiased way?
• Do you feel that documentary producers have a contract with the viewer to show them
• honest, unbiased and accurate information or are documentaries purely entertainment?

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