CORE STUDIO: INTRO TO TIME-BASED MEDIA › week nine › session one

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• DOCUMENTARY FILMS:
  
• — A complex craft where its definition or what constitutes a documentary has been disputed or debated for years.
• — "Documentary occupies a complex zone of representation in which the art of observing, responding, and listening must be combined with the art of shaping, interpreting, or arguing." (Nichols)
• —"Two kinds of film: (1) documentaries of wish-fulfillment and (2) documentaries of social representation. Each type tells a story, but the stories, or narratives, are of different sorts.
  
  Documentaries of wish-fulfillment are what we would normally call fictions.These films give tangible expression to our wishes and dreams, our nightmares and dreads.They make the stuff of the imagination concrete-visible and audible. They give a sense of what we wish, or fear, reality itself might be or become. Such films convey truths if we decide they do. They are films whose truths, insights, and perspectives we may adopt as our own or reject. They offer worlds for us to explore and contemplate, or we may simply revel in the pleasure of moving from the world around us to these other worlds of infinite possibility.
  
  Documentaries of social representation are what we typically call non-fiction. These films give tangible representation to aspects of the world we already inhabit and share. They make the stuff of social reality visible and audible in a distinctive way, according to the acts of selection and arrangement carried out by a filmmaker.They give a sense of what we understand reality itself to have been, of what it is now, or of what it may become.These films also convey truths if we decide they do.We must assess their claims and assertions, their perspectives and arguments in relation to the world as we know it and decide whether they are worthy of our belief. Documentaries of social representation offer us new views of our common world to explore and understand." (Nichols)
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• SIX TYPES OF MODES OF DOCUMENTARY (Bill Nichols):
• — 1] EXPOSITORY
• — 2] POETIC
• — 3] OBSERVATIONAL
• — 4] PARCIPATORY
• — 5] PERFORMATIVE
• — 6] REFLECTIVE
• *Documentary Modes - chief characteristics and deficiencies
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• — 1] EXPOSITORY (voice of God)
• — what we identify with the documentary - it "emphasizes verbal commentary and argumentative logic"
• — most associated with television news programming
• — often using a narrator
• — addresses viewer directly, using titles or voices
• — editing generally establishes/maintains rhetorical continuity more than spatial/temporal
• — example: many nature documentaries
• — 2] POETIC (subjective / artistic expression)
• — opens up possibility of alternative forms of knowledge to straightforward transfer of knowledge
• — moves away from the objective reality of a given situation or people to grasp an inner "truth" that can begrasp by poetical manipulation
• — 3] OBSERVATIONAL (window on the world)
• — best exemplified by the cinema verité or direct cinema
• — non-intervention of filmmaker
• — editing doesn't construct time frame or rhythm but enhances impression of lived or real time
• — uses indirect address, speech overheard, synchronous sound, relatively long takes
• — attempts to capture objective reality with filmmaker as a neutral observer
• — sounds and images recorded at moment of observational filming in contrast to voice-over of expository mode
• — filmmaker stays behind the camera
• — 4] PARCIPATORY / INTERACTIVE
• — unlike the observatory mode, the participatory mode welcomes direct engagement between filmmaker and subject/s
• — the filmmaker becomes part of the events being recorded and the filmmakers impact on the events being recorded is acknowledged
• — allows filmmaker to account for past events via witnesses and experts whom viewer can also see
• — archival footage becomes appended to these commentaries to avoid hazards of reenactment & monolithic claims of voice of god commentary
• — example: films by Michael Moore, film by the "Yes Men"
• — 5] PERFORMATIVE (filmmaker as participant)
• — emphasizes the subjective nature of the documentarian as well as acknowledging the subjective reading of the audience
• — tries to demonstrate how understanding such personal knowledge can help us understand more general processes of society
• — notions of objectivity are replaced by evocation and affect
• — example: "Supersize Me" by Morgan Spurlock, arguably, films by Michael Moore
• — 6] REFLECTIVE
• — recognizes the constructive nature of documentary
• — conveying to people that it is not necessarily "truth"- "a" truth not "the" truth
• — the artifice of the documentary is exposed - the audience is made aware of the editing, sound recording, etc.
• — example: Vertov's "Man with a Movie Camera"
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• (source: Film Art, The Craft of Editing, Intrduction to Documentary by Bill Nichols) 
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