Documentary Research

Brief Definition of a Documentary:
Refers to film or video that explores a subject in a way the public expects
to be factual and accurate. Documentaries may be balanced by including
various viewpoints, or they may be subjective, offering the viewpoint and
impressions of one producer.

Voiceover:
The voiceover will usually be authoritative in some way, encouraging the
audience to think that they ither have some kind of specialist knowledge.

Real footage of events:
Documentarys are essentially seen as 'non fiction' although there are
deabtes around this. However, a convention of documentary is that all events
presented to us are to be seen as 'real' by the audience.
Documentarians often go to great lengths to convince us that
he footage is real and unaltered in anyway, although editing and voicover
can affect the 'reality' we, as viewers, see.

Technicility of realism:
Including natural sound and lighting.

Interviews with 'experts':
Used to authenticate the views expressed in the documentary.
Sometimes they willl disagree with the message of the documentary,
although the film-maker will usually disprove them in some way.

Use of text and titles:
The use of words on screens anchors image in time and space.
Labels, dates etc tend to believed unquestioningly and are a quick and
cheap way of conveying informtion.

Sound:
The use of non-diegetic sound is very popular as it gives off certain
effects in particular scenes. Music used should be relevant to the subject
and it shouldnt inerfere with any interviews, this is because the audience
should be able to clearly hear what is being said.

Visual Coding:
The use of mise-en-scene and props makes it more believeable for the viewer.

Editing:
In the interviews the questions are edited out, the editing creates pace for
the documentary so it flows much better. The cutaways used should always
be relevant to what is being talked about.
Other visals used over the interviewee is called creative editing.