Charles Forceville's 'Source-Path-Goal' Theory (2006)

 

When looking at Forceville's theory of Source-Path-Goal, he suggests every filmmaker undertakes a journey. The concept of this journey is that there is a starting point, a trajectory, and a destination and the record of this is made in the form of a novel, comic, film, documentary or blog. The events that take place during the journey can lead to a change in path and goal, as obstacles can change the direction in which the journey travels on.
 
When relating our work to this theory, we will be going on a journey when producing the documentary. We are currently intrigued about the Brony sub-culture and want to understand more about the unusual fantasy of the unconventional fan base. This is our starting point/our source. When looking at the path, we will go on a search to find answers to our queries and discover facts that we were not specifically intending to find out. We hope to learn from what we find out and gain an insight into their fervour. We want to know more so will be visiting events and filming the reactions to our questions and the events themselves. Our goal is for us to have our questions answered and for a clearer understanding of the culture which many would find bizarre.

 

 

John Grierson - "The father of documentary film"

The term ‘documentary’ was coined by John Grierson in the late 1920’s when reviewing Robert Flaherty’s ‘Moana’. This put Grierson as a major figure behind the ‘British Documentary Movement’. He describes his work as “the creative treatment of reality”, however due to the constraints of technology, these ‘real’ events which were known as ‘actualities’, were often re-staged. Audiences accepted this, but as technology improved in terms of portability, filmmakers were able to start shooting easily on location – yet some footage remained re-staged due to poor filming conditions on location. Documentaries gave viewers an insight into previously unexposed ways of life. For example Grierson’s most famous documentary, ‘Night Mail’ (1936) followed a mail train. As Britain contributed to the World Cinema through documentaries, a new generation of filmmakers issued a proposal for Free Cinema – allowing filmmakers to step aside from the mainstream expectations and traditions and become more subjective. This was followed by the influence of technology and impacts of television to give us the documentaries we have today.

 

 

Third World Reporting

 

Trivundža’s findings identify the way in which reporting on developing and third world countries has changed since the 1980’s. His studies find that international news reports cohere with government policies. He also found that due to audiences having limited channels of information, news reporting can shape and impact audiences perceptions of other countries. Third world reporting covered a third of all international news stories in the eighties, but at present only covers less than ten percent. This large drop shows the way in which the reciting information can change as institutions adapt for their audience and their perceptions. However photojournalism has replaced more textual coverage as a symbolic method of reporting. This is important when considering our documentary, as photojournalism is key to providing symbolic images to the audience. 

 

 

Yin Yang Theory
The Yin Yang Theory consists of two juxtaposing elements within an image. The two main point locations draws the eyes in to the juxtaposing image. This is evident in our documentary with the juxtaposition of grown men with beer and plush pony toys. 

 

 

How real is Reality in Documentary Film
Filmmakers have the power to manipulate the truth despite the famous phrase, “the camera doesn’t lie”. Whether it through manipulated response, postproduction editing or an actor to constitute. No matter how ‘real’ a documentary attempts to be, there is always the question as to how real it is, depending on the circumstances from start of the production to the finish. Hidden cameras are potentially the most real however in you are left to question the situation of how they got there.