Documentary & DocumentationDigital Media Foundations - MD4004

Primary/secondary documents [A] "document" is considered a basic theoretical construct. It is

everything which may be preserved or represented in order to serve as evidence for some purpose. The classical example provided by Suzanne Briet is an antelope: "An antelope running wild on the plains of Africa should not be considered a document, she rules. But if it were to be captured, taken to a zoo and made an object of study, it has been made into a document. It has become physical evidence being used by those who study it.

“Indeed, scholarly articles written about the antelope are secondary documents, since the antelope itself is the primary document." (Quoted from Buckland, 1998 [1])

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document

Documentation is the procedure of producing documents

We need to consider… The nature and content of the documents used The author and his/her story The way the story is told The medium/technology, and their characteristics Agreed conventions The context in which the work was made and shown.

Funding bodies and audience.

Documentary: a secondary document, but also a representational genre

Actualités (approx. 1895–1902)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dgLEDdFddk

Auguste and Louis Lumière

Robert Flaherty’s ‘Nanook of the North’ 1922

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVbQVWkdcFk-Nanook’s wives were Actually Flaherty’s wives

-Camera would not fit inan igloo – a three wall onewas used instead

-Nanook was normally hunting using a gun not Spears

- Funded by French fur company Revillon Frères!!!

+++ See:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanook_of_the_North

‘Voice of God’ era:Documentary and Oil Companies

The Persian Story (1951) funded by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (BP): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctfK5BRE07k

Essay about the film: http://www.asia.si.edu/research/articles/documenting-the-modern-oil-city.asp

Shell Film Company (1934- now): e.g. Housing Problems (1935), The Smoke Menace (1937)

Documentary and war propaganda

Leni Riefenstahl and Nazi propaganda

Triumph of the Will (1935, Germ.) Olympia (1938, Germ.)1936 Berlin Olympics:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TI6yIo-tcc

Frank Capra and US War Department

7 WWII newsreel-style films: Why We Fight (1943) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWOoG0JTj1A

Challenging early conventions: the1960s

Direct Cinema in the US (D.A. Pennebaker, The Maysles Brothers, Fred Wiseman), aimed to present social and political issues in a direct, unmediated way giving the impression that events are recorded exactly as they happened without the involvement of the filmmaker. (e.g. http://www.criterion.com/films/663-salesman )

Cinéma Vérité (‘cinema truth’, e.g. Jean Rouch): a minimalist style of film making that conveys the sense that the viewer is given direct view of what was actually happening in front of the camera without the artifice usually incorporated in the film-making process. (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxk-fg771r8 )

New conventions

Smaller, lighter handheld film cameras, smaller film stock (16 mm instead of 35 mm film), following the action, natural lighting, location filming, direct sound, filmmaker’s visible presence, interviews with witnesses

Objectivity is established through: voiceover, archive footage, expert testimonial, material shaped into a narrative, material structured into an argument.

In fact, the filmmaker is still in full control.

Documentary and conventions:

‘The conventions of documentary are just that: conventions. Many of these ‘natural’ lighting, indistinct sound, and jerky camera movements – may be motivated by the conditions of recording, but they remain conventions.’

(Goodwin in Nicholas, J. and Price, J., 1986, p. 124).

Direct cinema / Cinéma Vérité tactics are retained in many genres:

Reality TV Public Affairs e.g., panorama, dispatches Video Diaries, e.g. cops with cameras. Theatrical documentaries such as Bowling for Columbine

These codes and conventions have also been used to fool audience into thinking a programme or a film is factual when it isn’t…

Mockumentary, e.g. Borat, The Blair Witch Project. Drama film-makers such as Ken Loach leading to the term

‘drama-documentary’ being used to describe films like Cathy Come Home (1966).

Dogma 95 (Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg),

Werner Herzog and ‘truth’…

‘I am not a cinéma vérité person, I hate cinéma vérité, by the way. These is such a thing such as the plain truth, but there are also different dimensions in truth – and in film there are more dimensions beyond the cinéma vérité truth. That’s where it starts to become exciting’ (Cott 1976: 56)

Wodaabe (1989) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVI914vMHcQ

Lessons of Darkness (1992) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNeCsHNjIbM

‘It is perhaps more generous and worthwhile to simply accept that documentary can never be the real world, that the camera can never capture life as it would have unraveled had it not interfered, and the results of this collision between apparatus and subject are what constitutes a documentary’. (Bruzzi 2000, p. 6-7)

Contemporary DocumentaryTechnological changes:

Greater capacity of storing and accessing information (e.g. http://www.indiewire.com/article/time-launches-new-documentary-film-company-red-border-films )

Cheaper ways to produce documentaries New voices to be heard – personalised storytelling, more inclusive (e.g. Family

Affair: http://www.c-linefilms.com/ , Riot from Wrong: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x10bql8_riot-from-wrong-awarding-winning-doco-on-youth-in-revolt_shortfilms#.UgFzruc05Vo.facebook )

Independent distribution (http://everythingisaremix.info/donate/ ) New aesthetics:

Newer, smaller cameras and ’fly on the wall’ tactics, sousveilance (http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/collections/p0048522, http://elahi.umd.edu/)

Interactivity (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgk9z9ZBvvE ) Animation (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylzO9vbEpPg )

New Challenges:

Have documentaries changed? Is the distribution of information more democratic? The

digital divide Are we interested in all unedited, random material on

the web? Individuation Is all material non-censored/ objective? Underlying

power structures

Bibliography and Links

Bruzzi, S. (2000) New Documentary: a Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge.

Cott, J. (1976) 'Signs of Life: Werner Herzog’ , Rolling Stone, No 226 (November 18). pp. 48-56.

Nicholas, J. and Price, J. (1998) Advanced Studies in Media. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons.

New documentary trends in the digital: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2012/01/6-filmmakers-talk-about-documentary-films-in-the-digital-age009/

See also: http://collaborativedocumentary.wordpress.com/6-types-of-documentary/ www.philbu.net/media-anthropology/ginsburg_digital_age.pdf http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2012/01/6-filmmakers-talk-about-documentary-films-

in-the-digital-age009/

Announcements: 1. Maria might be late/ not be able to come to class

tomorrow!2. Maria’s tutorial group in ‘How Media Changed the

World’, needs to attend class today 13:00-14:00 at JG3015.

Use this opportunity to talk about your EXAM ESSAY!!!