Six Qualities For Documentary Filmmaking
All documentaries try to fulfil several qualities with which make them more memorable or poignant. We are trying to get all six of these qualities in our own film however if we only achieve a few we will have still done well.
The six qualities are –
Relative Context – So the audience may relate to the film in their own way.
Shock and Expectation – The hardest quality to achieve. By breaking the expectations of the viewer by shocking them and showing something new or unseen.
Create Empathy – Making our audience realise some of the feelings of the documentaries main characters.
Emotional Content – Similar to the last quality but it makes the audience relate directly to the primaries in Documentary.
The Voyeur image – Allowing the audience to see something that appears real in the lives of the primaries.
The surreal and the weird – This opens the door to something never before seen and explores the topic in question.
Documentary Processes
The cutaway or filler
The cutaway or filler is a piece of material related to topic or subject that allows us to break away from the video we are seeing. They can be of importance but often they don’t have much real significance other than to help the editor fill out a sequence. After they have been played it is normal to cut back to first piece of video or the same sequence but at a different angle.
POV
POV, or point of view camera work is a great technique to create sympathy from an audience. They are put into the life of the subject and from this they begin to relate to the primary through their own memories and feelings. The film to the right will show you how POV works in film.
Ken Burns
Ken Burns is a documentary filmmaker who combines pictures with video. His ‘Ken Burns’ effect is now widely used in documentary filmmaking. The idea is to take a still image and move across the picture. This can be used to reveal some important information within the image. By doing this we make the image more active and effectual for the audience. We will use this technique in our own documentary. However we must be careful to not over do it with this effect on the same image as we can water down the content making it less powerful or profound. The right hand image shows how the still will move in from the green box to the red.
Let it Breathe
For documentary film making one technique used is to allow time for reflection. We know this as letting the piece breathe. Filmmakers can bombard the viewer with images, facts and video but taking 10 seconds to allow them to reflect on the content and think more deeply into the subject is important. It also allows time to build up in intensity as well.
Source Path Goal Schema
Focusing on the journey of the filmmaker. Movement is pivotal to the story telling of the documentary and drives the piece forward. The journeys end is no less important than the journey itself to the filmmaker. Information learnt along the way is just as important as reaching an end goal.
Documentaries in this style focus heavily on one single protagonist and are usually in a first person view. The idea of a documentary is to tell a story just as a film or novel does, it is just represented differently. Charles Forceville came up with this theory and his image links to more information on this topic.
The Six Categories for Documentary
The Poetic mode – A transformation of the real into something that is more abstract or lyrical.
The Expository Mode – By using direct address i.e. voice of god social issues can be assembled into an argumentative frame.
The Observational mode – By getting in and amongst the real life situations in which the documentary is made the film maker is free to capture footage in a less intrusive manner. This is made possible by new technology coming in, in the 60’s in the form of smaller cameras and sound recoding equipment.
The Participatory mode - In this mode the filmmaker will engage with subjects questioning them and sharing experiences with them.
The reflexive mode – This mode actively engages with the viewer by challenging their judgements and playing with their knowledge of realism and representation.
The Performative Mode – often autobiographical in nature they focus upon the emotion of the subject giving context and having different meanings for differing audiences.
