Documentaries defined

Documentary 
-Document an event with evidence
-Can be numerous definitions
-What distinguishes documentary is the portrayal of the recorded sounds and images of activity
-The creative treatment of actuality-1926 documentary first coined
-Example would be- Panorama
-Sensational and Emotional
-Often offer balanced view
-Authenticity is important
-Fake to an extent- angles, sound, narrative
-Truth is what you actually come away with at the end of seeing the film. It’s your truth that you’re seeing. Everybody who makes a film is putting their own truth on the screen
-Publics right to know is the main reason for Documentaries
-Can result in change in laws and legislations
-It is critical that filmmakers be rid of the fantasy that the documentary can be unproblematic representation of reality and truth can be conveniently dispensed and received like valium
-Ideas of truth and reality can be conflicting at times
-Evidence rather than truth
-Can be bias
-Represents the transformed
-Sex, violence, law and order are the popular ones
-Controversial are not popular with networks, offend advertising
-Often about societies victims
-People in it, people that make it, audience response.
-Humans are evidence

Creative treatment of actuality
-Sub Genre’s
-Must be elements of recorded images and sounds of actual reality
-Current affairs programmes are usually between news and documentary, discuss weighty social issues

5 central features-Observation
-Interview
-Mise En Scene
-Exposition
-Dramatisation

Observation
-Works as a witness to what happened
-Could come in the form of a reconstruction

Interview
-Rely on interviews
-Can contrast footage
-Involve cutaways
-Placed in segments

Dramatisation

-Appears to take place naturally

Mise En Scene
-Advance the argument
-Allows the drama to unfold
-Back round and set up

Exposition

-Line of argument
-Plain, Direct, Indirect, Hidden
-Observational reliance weakens exposition