Transcript Expository Documentary

Expository Documentary
• Expository
documentary is a
mode of
documentary
which focus’s on
social problems
within the world.
• It emphasises
rhetorical
content.
• It usually uses a voiceover (can be god like)
which is used to drive the narrative.
• This is a much more spoken in relation to
poetic who leaves the audience to gather the
information via visual interpretation.
• Nichols described the editing in expository
documentaries as “evidentiary editing,” a
practice in which expositional images
“...illustrate, illuminate, evoke, or act in
counterpoint to what is said…[we] take our
cue from the commentary and understand the
images as evidence or demonstration…”
(Nichols 2001)
Example of Expository
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnjx6K
ETmi4 – The inconvenient truth.
Observational
• Unlike the content of poetic documentary, or the
“rhetoricalness” of expositional documentary,
observational documentaries tend to simply
observe, allowing viewers to reach there own
conclusions.
• The camera is unobtrusive. Allowing the events to
occur naturally.
• Pure observational documentarians proceeded
under some bylaws: no music, no interviews, no
scene arrangement of any kind, and no narration.
• The fly-on-the-wall perspective is championed,
while editing processes utilize long takes and few
cuts.
Example of Observational
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNNSJc
GnRNw- Big brother
Poetic Documentary
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Poetic documentaries typically show excessive amounts of creative camera
work and experimental editing (montages) in order to connect or translate a
mood or emotion onto the audience.
Poetic Documentaries often have a style of editing that offers discontinuity in
graphic qualities, violations of the 180 degree rule, and the creation of
impossible spatial matches.
This is Sergei Eisenstein’s theory of montage. He states that "A Dialectic
Approach to Film Form" when he noted that montage is "the nerve of
cinema", and that "to determine the nature of montage is to solve the specific
problem of cinema".
Soviet montage theory shows an approach to understanding and creating
cinema that relies heavily upon editing (montage is French for "putting
together").
An example of this that is commonly used in filmic documentaries such as
Robert Flaherty’s ‘Nanook of the North’, is juxapostional editing.
This style of editing is the process of showing one thing and another which
are unrelated and through combining the two or making a sequence, creates
a new meaning.
Expository Documentary
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Documentary forefather John Grierson offers an explanation for the move away from
poetic documentary, claiming filmmakers, “got caught up in social propaganda…We
got on to the social problems of the world, and we ourselves deviated from the poetic
line.” (Sussex 1972) The expositional mode diverges sharply from the poetic mode in
terms of visual practice and story-telling devices, by virtue of its emphasis on
rhetorical content, and its goals of information dissemination or persuasion.
Narration is a distinct innovation of the expositional mode of documentary. Initially
manifesting as an omnipresent, omniscient, and objective voice intoned over footage,
narration holds the weight of explaining and arguing a film’s rhetorical content. Where
documentary in the poetic mode thrived on a filmmaker’s aesthetic and subjective
visual interpretation of a subject, expositional mode collects footage that functions to
strengthen the spoken narrative. This shift in visual tactics gives rise to what Nichols
refers to as “evidentiary editing,” a practice in which expositional images “...illustrate,
illuminate, evoke, or act in counterpoint to what is said…[we] take our cue from the
commentary and understand the images as evidence or demonstration…” (Nichols
2001) The engagement of rhetoric with supporting visual information founded in the
expositional mode continues today and, indeed, makes up the bulk of documentary
product. Film features, news stories, and various television programs lean heavily on
its utility as a device for transferring information.
Poetic Documentary
• Continuity editing is not used, which means that a sense
of specific location is lost.
• Emphasis of visual association, tone or rhythm - Images
are juxtaposed to create meaning – Kuloshov effect.
• Descriptive passages are often used.
• Actors often don’t become full characters.
• Demonstrates different possibilities in the transfer of
knowledge.
• However, there is a lack of specificity in poetic
documentaries.
• Examples of Poetic documentary makers : Ivens, Bunuel
and Dali, Fischinger, Menken, Flaherty.
• Example: Man of Aran (Flaherty, 1934)
Joris Ivens
Robert Flaherty
Man of Aran (Flaherty, 1934)
Interactive / Participatory
Documentary
• How it came to be: When more mobile equipment was
available, filmmakers could make their perspective more
evident – they become part of the events recorded.
• This mode engages with individuals more directly whilst
not using exposition interview styles.
• Archive footage is often used to avoid re-enactments /
staging and ‘voice of God’ commentaries.
• However, it relies a lot on history and can be too
intrusive in it methods.
• Examples of directors: Rouch, de Antonio, Connie Field,
Michael Moore, Broomfield.
• Example: Kurt and Courtney (Broomfield, 1988)
Connie Field
Michael Moore
Kurt and Courtney
(Broomfield, 1988)
Reflective Documentary
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Makers of Reflective documentaries consider the quality of the documentary, they
consider its process and its implications on their audiences.
•
For example In Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929,)
He has footage of his brother and wife shooting footage and editing, respectively.
The goal of shooting these images was, “to increase the audiences understanding of
the process of how film is constructed.
Another example is Ruby Mitchell’s ...No Lies (1974,)
which was different to Dziga’s man with a movie camera, as it questioned the
observational mode, Ruby’s no lies commented on observational techniques and
their capacity for capturing authentic truths. In this way, the reflexive mode of
documentary often functions as its own regulatory board, policing ethical and
technical boundaries within Documentary film itself.
Reflective Mode
• (Vertov, Godmilow, Raul Ruiz)
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Reflective mode makes the convention representation
more obvious and apparent, it also challenges the
impression of reality which other three modes normally
conveyed unproblematically.
•
Reflective mode is the most self-aware mode - its
reflexivity helps audience acknowledge how other modes
claim to construct "truth" through documentary practice.
•
It uses many of devices of other modes but sets them
on edge so viewer attends to device as well as the
effect.
Performance Mode
• (Resnais, Julien, Riggs)
1.Performance mode is like a Reflexive Documentary, it also raises
questions about knowledge
2. Performance mode emphasizes personal experience (in tradition
of poetry, literature)
3. Performance mode tries to show the audience how understanding
such personal knowledge can help us understand more general
processes of society
4. performance mode mixes elements of different documentary
modes to achieve a link between subjective
knowledge/understanding of the world, and more general
understandings, i.e. historical ones.