Documentary

Documentaries are so-called because they attempt to 'document' some feature of the 'real' world. They can be used to verify, or provide irrefutable 'proof' of an event, or point- of-view - a function that may take precedence in the narrative organisation of material. Like news programmes, documentaries deal with facts: real places, events and people rather than fictional creations. The construction of a documentary is determined by assembled documentary evidence: such as written records, attributable sources and contemporary interviews. It is often suggested that the aim of the documentary should be to present an impartial narrative with no imaginary elements. The extent to which this aim can be achieved is, of course, questionable: 'factual' texts are as inevitably structured as their fictional counterparts through selection and omission, and the need to present separate details and incidents as a coherent whole, or documented argument.

Although it is sometimes claimed that 'the camera cannot lie', it is clear that the way a director decides to film any event: how it is filmed, what is recorded and what is ignored, can bias the presentation considerably. Kawin (1992) argues that in 'Triumph of the Will' (1935) Leni Riefenstahl used many low angle shots of Hitler, pointing her camera up at him to make him seem a powerful and imposing presence, and intercut close-ups of his face with long shots of excited crowds to suggest that Hitler was:

'..a galvanising speaker who could, excite, control and lead his people. A British news company might have represented the same event (a Nazi Party convention) in a very different manner, giving the impression that Hitler was dangerous and erratic, a lunatic conqueror at the head of a pliable and frightening mob.'

The documentary, in fact, is a far less objective genre than is commonly supposed. The author's views can either be heavily disguised or clearly foregrounded depending on the style of presentation. Many documentarists deliberately keep the structure of their films simple and unobtrusive, or have little or no 'voice over'. They want their version of the facts to suggest the same apparent randomness as life itself. Nevertheless, a totally 'impartial' narrative is impossible - the production of a documentary, as with any media form, necessitates the mediation of reality.

In fact, documentaries are frequently subject to controversy particularly where a single point of view is obviously signposted. These are sometimes described in the industry as 'authored documentaries'. Michael Delahaye describes how such documentaries present problems for broadcasting organisations subject to statutory obligations to remain impartial, as with the BBC:

'An 'authored' anything in television is like a primed bomb, usually only defused by sticking 'A Personal View' belatedly across the titles. It's dangerous enough when the author - someone like James Cameron, say - is on screen and answerable to the extent that he is at least visible. But the director remains behind camera. Thus the idea of doing ...authored documentaries raises questions about objectivity, accountability, balance, and - not least - truth.'

These questions rehearse many of the issues discussed in the chapter: News. They are also closely associated with the apparent 'realism' of such programmes which, as Clark (1987) remarks, like the realism of crime series or soap operas, has to be carefully contrived. To appreciate how such realism is historically and stylistically determined it is necessary to briefly examine the history and developing styles of the documentary genre. As with fictional film, the codes and conventions of documentary have changed significantly throughout the twentieth century and, as Bill Nicholls remarks in his book 'Representing Reality', each change in style and format has produced claims of a closer contact with the 'truth'.

A History of Documentary Styles

Early Years

The earliest projected films such as 'Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory' (1895) simply showed workers leaving the factory at the end of the working day and were filmed in a single, continuous 'take'. These films are called 'Actualites' or 'factual films' and these terms also descibe most home movies and medical films where the intention is an objective recording of real events.

The tradition of the subjective or formalistic documentary , according to Louis Giannetti, can be traced back to the Soviet filmmaker Dziga-Vertov. Like most Soviet artists of the 1920s, Vertov was a propagandist as well as an early practitioner of 'cinema verite' conventions. He believed that the cinema should be a tool of the Revolution, a way of instructing workers about how to view events from an ideological perspective. 'Art', he once wrote, 'is not a mirror which reflects the historical struggle, but a weapon of that struggle.'

Like most formalists, Vertov believed that filmmakers shouldn't merely record external reality; rather, they should analyze it. They must see beneath the surface chaos of the external world to reveal its infrastructure - its underlying connections with the institutions of power. The revolutionary documentarist teaches ideological lessons, explaining social and economic relationships that aren't always apparent, especially in capitalistic societies, where the interests of the ruling class are served by keeping the working class in ignorance about how the economic system works.

Documentarists in this formalistic tradition, Gianetti suggests, tend to build their motives thematically, arranging and structuring the story materials to demonstrate a thesis. In many cases, the sequence of shots and even entire scenes can be switched around with relatively little loss of sense or logic. The structure of the film is not based on chronology, but on the documentarist's argument.

'Classic' Documentary

Flaherty

Very few filmmakers in the 1920's outside the Soviet Union were active in the area of documentary and only a handful of non-fiction films gained commercial distribution in America and Europe. Robert Flaherty, regarded by some as the founder of modern documentary, was one of a group of explorers who took their cameras to exotic destinations to record the people, customs and landscape to be found there. Flaherty, director of 'Nanook of the North' (1922) about everyday Eskimo life, 'Moana' (1925) (a film about life in the South Seas to which the term 'documentary' was first applied) and 'Louisiana Story' (1948) about oil drillers at work, did more than record the lives of the people he encountered on his travels, but arranged, or set up, certain scenes to illustrate his own opinions.

In Flaherty's most famous documentary 'Man of Aran' (1934), as in all his films, he spent a great deal of preparation time choosing a group of the most attractive characters he could find to make up a 'family' through which he could tell the story of the remote Irish coastal community. 'It is surprising how few faces stand the test of the camera' was Flaherty's justification for this 'casting'. More controversially, actions were frequently 'staged' for the camera. In a particularly notorious episode a school of basking sharks, averaging twenty-seven feet in length, appeared close to the shores of Aran. Excited by the cinematic possibilities of the huge creatures, Flaherty was determined to include a spectacular sequence showing the islanders hunting them with harpoons. This despite the fact, according to a Flaherty biographer, Paul Rotha, that no islander had ever handled a harpoon let alone hunted a shark with one. Flaherty was so determined to shoot the scene that production was delayed for a year so that the islanders could be trained for the highly dangerous endevour. 'Sometimes you have to lie' the director once said of documentary film-making. 'One often has to distort a thing to catch its true spirit.' (International Film History Book)

Grierson and 'the Voice of God'

The documentary form had fallen out of favour in the late 1920's both with Hollywood studios and with the Soviet film bureacracy which, like Hollywood, had become decisively committed to fiction. With the coming of sound in the 1930's however, there was a revival of interest in non-fiction forms and documentary remained an important form in world cinema until the end of the Second World War. The 30's were a decade marked by political and economic crises in America and the United States as governments, commercial organisations and individual filmakers seized on the possibilities of presenting moving images and sound for the purposes of advertising, propaganda and persuasion. Many films of this era are characterised by booming orchestrations and strident, 'authoritative' voice-overs, a narrative technique critics later described as 'the voice of God'.

Typical of this style were films by the Empire Marketing Board (EMB), a government body responsible for promoting the products of Britain and its colonies. The Scottish producer John Grierson, an important figure in the development of British documentaries, oversaw the making of more than a hundred films as head of the EMB film unit. He described documentary as, 'The creative treatment of actuality.' and gained a reputation for carefully crafted work. Grierson worked, initially with Flaherty (who left as EMB funds dried up), on 'Industrial Britain' (1933) which was regarded as innovative at the time. However, the film has been described as 'the prototype of the heavy-handed documentary' and was also criticised for having nothing to say about mass unemployment and the problems of the depression:

'Though Flaherty's images are frequently memorable, they are overpowered by the music of Beethoven and an actor's voice delivering didactic commentary directly addressed to the spectator: "And so you see, the industrial towns are not quite so drab as they seem." Its ideological message was that modern industry depended on the personal skills of individual workers, and it aimed to give assurance that the British worker took pride in tradition, craftsmanship, and quality.' (International Film History Book)

Other famous, commercially sponsored documentaries include 'Song of Ceylon' (1934) about tea cultivation and traditional culture on the island of Ceylon and 'Night Mail' (1936) about the postal train from London to Glasgow, both from the GPO (General Post Office) Film Unit, which Grierson had taken charge of following the closure of the EMB in 1933. 'Night Mail' used non-professional actors performing scripted scenes which included employees shown sorting mail in a wagon rocking back and forth to the movement of the train as they worked. However, camera equipment of the day made this scene technically impossible to shoot and the actors were, in fact, 'recreating' the action in a stationary wagon. Along with a voice-over recounting factual details of the night mail and the postal workers speaking about their job, there were scenes designed to capture the romantic element of the train journey emphasised by a score by composer Benjamin Britten and verse especially written and read by the poet W.H. Auden.

Grierson, working within the framework of industrial sposorship, believed in the power of documentary to promote national and civic goals. He said of his own work: 'somehow we had to make peace exciting if we were to prevent wars'. He has been criticised, however, for a narrow doctrine of filmmaking, hostile to other types of cinema and for showing a faith in economic progress that bordered on political naivety. Grierson certainly never attempted to politicise the documentary movement, although he was dedicated to the social uses of film to improve the lives of ordinary people.

Social and Political Documentary of the 1930's

'I think one of the things documentary did, and I think it was a very valuable thing, is that in England since Shakespeare the working classes were considered as comic relief in the theatre and in films, and little by little, documentary imposed the workers as dignified human beings. I think that is perhaps the most important result of the documentary movement.' (Alberto Cavalcanti)

'Housing Problems' (1935) sponsored by the British Commercial Gas Association was one of the first films to use direct address by working-class interviewees in addition to recording background sounds on location, such as dogs barking and children's voices. The director Ruby Grierson expressed the matter bluntly to the contributors:

'The camera is yours. The microphone is yours. Now tell the bastards exactly what it's like living in the slums.'

A mother describing, directly to the public, the slum conditions she and her children were living in might seem a curious form of promotion for a commercial sponsor. However, the message of 'Housing Problems', like other films the Gas Association funded, was that reconstruction could only be to the advantage of the whole of society. In reality, it was a canny and far-sighted piece of sponsorship because the gas industry would be one of the first to benefit from such reconstruction.

Films with a strong social and political agenda were also being made in the United States. The Film and Photo League (FPL) was a left-wing organisation dedicated to documenting 'news' events, involving social and political issues or trade union protests, ignored or covered unsympathetically by the Hollywood newsreels. According to (International Film History):

'Its cameramen covered political rallies and marches, capturing historic footage of clashes between police and demonstrators, and the U.S. Army's destruction of the Bonus March encamped in Washington, D.C., in 1932. Carrying hand-held equipment (and working without sound), the cameramen got close to the action and sometimes in the middle of confrontations. Footage was edited and screened in union halls, churches, and at FPL branches in New York and other cities.'

Luis Bunuel's 'Las Hurdes'/ 'Land Without Bread' (1932) approached the subject of social deprivation from a surrealist perspective, using footage of a poverty-striken, rural region of Spain with a sarcastic, blackly humorous voice-over. Bunuel's strategy was to startle his audience into revulsion at the conventions of documentary, and the suffering which the genre preyed on voyeuristically.

Nazi Filmmaking

The Nazi Government of Germany (1936-45) made extensive use of the 'documentary' form, although, along with much political filmmaking of this era, it is more commonly referred to as 'propaganda'. The term 'propaganda' is a slippery one because, as G.F. Sanger, editor of 'Movietone News' expressed it 'One man's news is another man's propaganda.' Typical of the documentaries that the Nazis funded was 'The Warsaw Ghetto' (?) which purported to show Jews as enormously rich and both responsible for, and indifferent to, the poverty of the Germans in their city. The extraordinary lengths to which scenes were contrived to illustrate this viewpoint, even as the 'extermination programme' was proceeding against Jews in Poland, has been well documented. Jewish 'actors' - in fact starving civilians brutally forced into roles in front of the cameras - were required, for example, to eat mountains of food in visibly 'Jewish' restaurants wearing fur coats and top hats, while poor, hungry-looking, unemployed Germans pressed their noses to the windows.

Post War Documentary

Social and political documentary went into decline after the war, mainly due to the growth of television, but also because during the so-called 'Cold War' between the United States and The Soviet Union any film appearing to advocate the need for improvement, or change, in society was viewed with suspicion, if not hostility. In the era of Senator McCarthy's witchhunts a filmmaker with a social conscience was often regarded as a 'communist' sympathiser and was liable to be blacklisted. Travelogues, arts documentaries and other non-political filmmaking were now all that remained of a once vigorous genre.

Only in the 1960's did documentary regain a sense of direction, spurred on by new techniques developed mainly in television. The death of cinema newsreels with their strident music, overbearing narration and obtrusive, montage-style editing signalled a new attitude to the presentation of events. The, by comparison, apparently unmediated nature of live television suggested that a more truthful, unedited transmission of reality was possible. On live TV, it seemed, anything could happen at any moment - an exciting possibility for audiences accustomed to the lectures they had received at the cinema.

The styles developed in the 1960's are sometimes described as 'candid' documentary, a term which covers what is described below as ''fly on the wall', and 'cinema verite' which are, in fact, often closely related. As the term 'candid' suggests, both styles of non-fictional filmmaking claim a direct and more truthful relationship to the material they explore than the heavily edited expository style of 'classic' pre-war documentary.

'Fly on the Wall'/ 'Direct' Cinema

'Fly on the wall', 'Observational Documentary' or 'Direct Cinema' are all terms that are broadly applied to a style of documentary filmmaking that became possible with new, lightweight, portable cameras and soundrecording technology. Until the Second World War filmmakers were hampered working outside the studio by bulky equipment. Paul Rotha, notes with regard to pre-war filmmaking:

'If you took out sound on location then you had to take out a thing that looked like a London general omnibus.'

Lightweight 16mm camera equipment had been developed for military use and reporting in the war. Television also had to capture news stories quickly, efficiently, and with a minimal crew, giving further impetus to new technology. According to Gianetti, this technology included:

1. A lightweight 16mm hand-held camera, allowing the cinematographer to roam virtually anywhere with ease.

2. Flexible zoom lenses, allowing the cinematographer to go from 12 mm wide-angle positions to 120 mm telephoto positions in one adjusting bar.

3. New fast film stock, permitting scenes to be photographed without the necessity of setting up lights. So sensitive were these stocks that even nighttime scenes with minimal illumination could be recorded with acceptable clarity.

4. A portable tape recorder, allowing a technician to record sound directly in automatic synchronisation with the visuals. This equipment was so easy to use that only two people - one at the camera, the other with the sound system - were required to bring in a news story.

Some of this technology was developed, and many of the techniques of 'direct' cinema pioneered, by Robert Drew and his early associates Richard Leacock, DA Pennebaker and Albert Maysles. Drew worked as a journalist at 'Life' magazine which was dominated by the sharp, intimate photographic style of the Magnum photo agency. Drew hoped to develop a parallel film style that would be equally candid and immediate, without the usual 'word of God' narration to direct the viewer's response. According to Drew the problem at the time was the heavy and noisy equipment:

'I knew that it was possible to do something about it, that it would take money and time to adapt. In the end we had to experiment with sawing cameras in half, developing batteries, making the machines quieter so that they didn't scare everyone when we turned them on.'

The Drew Associates production unit of the broadcasting division of Time-Life publishing corporation made its first, and perhaps most famous film, 'Primary' in 1960. "Primary' followed the young Senator John F. Kennedy in the run-up to the presidential election. The documentary used four hand-held cameras with synchronised sound, often at different locations filming simultaneously, for instance, being able to film both the future president and his brother Bobby talking to each other by phone from different offices. It was a unique, behind-the-scenes picture of American political life and an intimate portrait of the man who was shortly to become the most charismatic president in the United States' history.

While 'Primary' was met with critical silence in America, in France the film was acclaimed by important filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard and the documentarist Jean Rouche. The influence of Drew and his associates was clearly influential in the work of avant-garde filmmakers like Godard and Andy Warhol as well as the documentary movement in general.

As with cinema verite with which it is closely associated, 'direct' cinema rejected scripting, pre-planning or interference by the filmmaker. An instance of this can be detected in Drew's description of his coverage of the Vietnam War where he claims that his express purpose was to merely show what is was like to be in combat:

'I wasn't trying to prove that it was a bad war, or that the people doing it were evil. But we shot things that people should have been surprised to see, from which they could draw their own conclusions.'

War documentaries frequently exemplify another characteristic of 'direct' or 'fly on the wall' documentary which is the uninhibited use of hand-held camera (jerky or wobbly shots are frequently included) and the use of natural sound only, sometimes at the expense of audibility or coherence. Sometimes this documentary 'look' is copied in the fictional material to give it a more authentic, charged feel - as in Oliver Stone's 'Platoon', a film which is also about how it feels to be in combat.

From Drew and others in the direct cinema tradition, re-creations, even with the people and places involved were frowned upon as it was considered far better if filmmakers could capture events as they occurred. Lengthy, continuous takes were encouraged with editing kept to a minimum to preserve actual time and space. A characteristic of the 'fly on the wall' style was the minimal use of voice over, or ideally no voice over at all, as this would provide an interpretation of events, which the advocates of direct cinema claimed should always be left to the viewer.

Cinema Verite

Cinema verite (literally 'film truth'), also known as 'interactive' documentary, shares many of the characteristics of direct cinema, except that there is a far greater sense of dialogue between the filmmaker and the interviewees. Whereas 'fly on the wall' can give the impression that the subject is unaware of the camera crew, who appear to be merely recording events as they occur, and not intervening in the action; the interviewees of 'cinema verite' are clearly aware of the presence of the camera and frequently make their point of view known directly to the viewer, usually through interviews with the filmmaker. As Bill Nicholls in 'Representing Reality' says:

'.textual authority shifts towards the social actors recruited: their comments and responses provide a central part of the film's argument'

As with 'fly on the wall' there is a preference for lengthy, continuous takes, a reluctance to employ any kind of montage-editing (as sometimes found in the hyperactive style of newsreel) , and voice-over narration or music are also used minimally, if at all. (Part 1.) decribes cinema verite as 'an amalgam of documentary and the actualite (factual film) that acknowledges the interaction between filmmaker and subject as a way of attaining comprehensive realism.' While the underpinning philosophy of the American 'direct' cinema and French cinema verite remain distinct, in practice the two traditions overlap, with many documentarists employing techniques from both.

Well known films in the 'direct' cinema and cinema verite tradition include Pennebaker's documentary about a Bob Dylan concert tour of England "Don't Look Back' (1967) and David and Albert Maysles' 'Gimme Shelter' (1970) about the famous Rolling Stones Altamont Freeway Stadium concert, in which the camera recorded Hell's Angels 'security' attacking and murdering a member of the audience, an event which raised serious ethical questions about the documentary form. The importance of the 'candid' style to music documentaries can also be seen in Lech Kowalski's punk film 'D.O.A.' (1981) which included grainy, hand-held footage of the Sex Pistols tour and Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen filmed talking in bed, visibly suffering in an advanced stage of heroin addiction.

Andy Warhol is one amongst several avante garde directors to clearly show the influence of verite and direct documentary in his work. His early experimental film 'Sleep' (1963) is a six-hour continuous shot, without camera movement, of a man sleeping. Both his more commercial films 'Chelsea Girls' (1966), set in twelve rooms of New York's Chelsea Hotel, and 'My Hustler' (1965), about the shifting relationships between three gay men, employ lengthy takes, naturalistic sound recording and other verite conventions. The influence of candid documentary is also distinctly apparent in 'social-realist' films, such as those made by directors like Lewis Gilbert, Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, as well as much television drama, including police series such as 'The Bill'.

Bill Nicholls identifies a fourth style of documentary to emerge in recent years, which he describes as 'reflexive'. In fact, 'reflexive' documentary is only an extension of the verite notion of a 'dialogue between filmmaker and subject' in which the audience is made aware of the actual process of filmmaking. As with verite there is a 'dialogue' between filmmaker and subject, but the filmmaker's intervention may be more marked. Nick Broomfield's documentaries such as 'Chasing Maggie', 'The Leader, The Driver... ?' about Terre Blanche and 'Hollywood Madam' about Heidi Fleiss are examples of this style in which, for instance, we see the director/ interviewer also carrying, or moving, the sound equipment about in front of his interviewees, or revealing to the viewer the practical difficulties encountered in making his film. Broomfield acts as therapist, comic and provocateur, at one time spurring his interviewees to confess their deepest fears or at another, humiliating and enraging them. This style is also common in programmes such as 'The Cook Report' . Cameras are frequently visible, and scenes in which the interviewer harrasses his subject for an interview, often on the other side of a closed door, or where violence is shown being perpetrated against the film crew are typical, and built into the expectations of the programme.

see also: http://cinecollage.net/cinema-verite.html

Contemporary Documentary

O'Sullivan et al (1994) suggest that the more spontaneous, 'candid' forms of documentary outlined above have become increasingly popular with television institutions because of:

'.. the reduction in the size of recording equipment that now allows film crews to be much more 'discreet', and partly because of the humour that can result from 'real people' not modifying their language or actions for the camera. These programmes also tend to be relatively cheap to produce, as they rely upon 'real people', not actors, and 'real' environments, not constructed sets.'

In practice, most documentaries today adopt a variety of techniques from the styles identified above. The 'lecture' film approach developed in the 'classic' tradition of Grierson is alive and well, particularly in wildlife and science programmes, and while the accompanying 'voice of God' may not boom as loud, it is still found in many documentaries on television. Clark (1987) divides those documentaries that rely for their structure on 'argument' from those that use a 'story':

'..the argument consists of a rational sequence of points, usually heavily dependent on the effectiveness of commentary, while the story has the emotional charge which engages the audience and makes them care about what they are seeing. Both of these are aspects of the ever present narrative of television programmes, but they clearly imply quite different types of approach. The former is perhaps distanced from its subject, rather dry, but capable of producing a compact, clear exposition. The latter is exciting, involved with the events depicted, but not necessarily at all clear about connections between them or about causes and effects.'

Many documentaries strike a balance between, what Clarke calls, 'intellectual respectibility and crude audience appeal' by mixing elements of story with argument, a mix which is often apparent in the blend of 'classic' and 'candid' styles adopted. James Saynor writing in 'Sight and Sound' dismisses what most viewers would think of as documentary as, in fact, little more than current affairs or educational television with social pretensions. They are, in his view:

'..a series of images coercively mediated by a well-researched commentary or series of hit-and-run, news-style interviews.'

Saynor argues that, for much of the time, current documentary practice in Britain as exemplified by series such as BBC2's '40 Minutes', ITV's 'First Tuesday' and Channel 4's 'Cutting Edge' is cut off from interesting developments in the genre occuring abroad and is 'indeterminate' in style: 'mixing and mismatching elements of the spontaneous documentary and the lecture film.'

Perhaps the most significant recent development in 'documentary' has to be the 'Video Diaries' series of BBC Bristol, although some critics prefer to class it along side 'Beadle's About' and 'It'll Be Alright On The Night' as 'reality television', whatever that means (!). This on-going series of short films puts control of television technology and, crucially, the editing process, firmly in the hands of the subject, be it a pensioner, housewife, or twelve-year old with a desire to record something to share with the general public. The results are, frequently, refreshingly free from the contrived 'argument', 'story' or stale 'techniques' of many documentaries.

The Status of Documentary

Documentaries have quite tiny viewing figures by comparison to other, cheaper genres, such as game shows. As many documentaries are comparatively expensive to make, it seems worth asking the question: why do television channels make them at all ? The answer lies partly in the public service broadcasting obligations that British television has towards its audience (see chapter Public Service Broadcasting). Film-maker Roger Graef informs us that, when it comes to documentary:

'..British viewers may not appreciate that no other country in the world offers anything like such variety.'

As the legislative responsibility for television 'to educate as well as entertain' dwindles, this position may change. Nevertheless, documentary remains a prestigious area of broadcasting, attracting critical attention in the press, and kudos for the filmmakers and broadcasters. This may be due, at least in part, to the type of audiences documentary regularly attracts: indicated by the 'upmarket' broadsheets and magazine supplements where such programming is most commonly reviewed.

That is not to say that only 'upmarket' audiences watch documentaries, far from it. The current affairs documentary series 'World In Action' in 1992 had average audiences of 7-8 million, and the composition of an audience for a one-off documentary or series of episodes is, arguably, more influenced by the scheduling and subject of the programme than anything else.

The appeal of documentary to mass audiences may equally be influenced by the background of those normally associated with its production. While there have been advances within documentary with regard to the representation of groups normally stereotyped in other genres, working-class voices are still regularly presented within a faintly superior, or mocking public-school and university-educated framework. As Clark (1987) asks rhetorically:

'... is the status of documentary something to do with a peculiarly British awe of experts, especially those of the right background ? It is very noticeable that the vast majority of television experts distributed liberally throughout most documentaries are white, male, middle-class and middle-aged.'

Realism

'I use situations that are real. But the films are an imagined dream of what really happened.'

(D.A.Pennebaker)

'Realism' has been defined in a variety of ways. For some critics, such as Raymond Williams, it is a 'movement' with a clear historical development which can be traced back to the paintings, drama and novels of the nineteenth century. Williams suggests that this movement is characterised by a concern with everyday events, contemporary issues and ordinary people (i.e middle class and working class people rather than nobility). For other critics, realism is a 'style', or set of techniques. Giannetti, writing in relation to film, contrasts realist with formalist styles:

'Generally speaking, realistic films attempt to reproduce the surface of reality with a minimum of distortion. In photographing objects and events, the filmmaker tries to suggest the copiousness of life itself. Both realist and formalist film directors must select (and hence, emphasize) certain details from the chaotic sprawl of reality. But the elements of selectivity in realistic films is less obvious. Realists, in short, try to preserve the illusion that their film world is unmanipulated, an objective mirror of the actual world. Formalists on the other hand, make no such pretense.'

In filmmaking and television production this involves the use of particular codes and conventions, such as 'natural' lighting and sound, real locations, conversational dialogue, a simple, 'life-like' plot (that may include seemingly 'natural' digressions from the main storyline), the possible use of non-professional actors, and an unobtrusive camera and editing style. This mode of production, sometimes described as the 'documentary look' is found in the work of the Italian neo-realists such as Roberto Rosselini and British social-realist filmmakers typified by the work of directors such as Tony Richardson, Ken Loach and Mike Leigh.

This realist style is not to be confused with that of Hollywood, where films are made in a style described as 'classic realism', a style that has become predominant, although not unchallenged, in international filmmaking. Here the effect of realism is achieved by attention to surface details such as period costume, or sets that look like real locations; characters that are consistent, if not predictable, in their behaviour; a tightly controlled narrative, a more or less plausible plot development (moving from equilibrium through disruption to a new equilibrium and closure); and the use of a series of techniques that help tell the story and allow the spectator to suspend disbelief. These techniques are also dominant in television. They include the use of continuity editing, granting the audience a privileged point of view in the narrative (who usually know more about the events unfolding than the characters involved), hiding the means of production (cameras, mikes, crew) and keeping to an 'expected' or conventional pattern of shots, angles, lighting setups etc.

Broad definitions of term suggest that the 'effect of realism' is determined by the extent to which a viewer can identify with, and accept, what is portrayed as being plausible and having some relation to the real world they know. In this sense realism is highly subjective and specific to cultures, historical moments and the media experience of the audience. Greta Garbo's acting, for instance, was regarded as realistic and powerful in the 1920s' and 1930s', but is considered melodramatic by many modern audiences. What a western audience considers realistic may appear totally puzzling and nonsensical to, for example, an Amazonian Indian not previously exposed to television. As Fiske et al (1978) make clear:

'Consider for a moment how easy it is for us, when watching the most realistic of programmes, to accept that at its beginning or end the oddest occurences may take place. People's names appear in the sky, music emerges from nowhere, and suddenly the world we have been watching dissolves. We are unperturbed. It is easy enough to say that these manifestations are conventions to which we have become habituated, but the question remains: how is it that we accept these particular conventions so easily ?'

Furthermore, the codes and conventions that establish the realism of any text are genre specific. Graeme Burton (1990) illustrates the point with reference to what is 'acceptable' within a variety of media genres:

'For example, in situation comedy canned laughter is acceptable. In documentary, long shots of someone talking to camera are acceptable. In radio journalism recordings of someone talking through a poor telephone link are acceptable. In film fiction, sudden bursts of romantic music are acceptable - you can easily extend these examples. But generally we don't mix these sets or rules. So once we have locked into a particular set of rules for a particular kind of realism then we have set up particular standards for and expectations of the quality of realism in the product.'

Hence, different genres operate according to different 'modes of realism'. This wider view of realism, as a set of 'acceptable' or conventional media codes (what Brecht refers to, in relation to theatre, as self-effacing, seamless 'illusionism' ) leads some critics to describe realism as a 'bourgeois mode of representation'. For what is conventional, commonplace, self-disguising and taken-for-granted denies alternative ways of seeing, or thinking. Realism, in this sense, conceals the fact that it is constructed, and prevents the audience from thinking critically about either the mode of representation or the actions represented. The role of the viewer of realist television is thereby confirmed as that of a non-critical consumer of escapist entertainment.

Realism and Documentary

No matter how much we are drawn into the 'realisms' of genres such as soap opera or police series, we are ultimately aware that these are fictions - stories written, produced and broadcast for our entertainment with, at most, a limited relation to the world they mimic. This is not the case with documentary, which claims a direct relation to the real world. The evidence of documentary is certainly compelling. In 'Hearts and Minds' (1975) directed by Peter Davis we see newsreel footage of Vietnamese children running from their village with their clothes literally burned off their bodies by napalm dropped by an American aircraft filmed moments before. Few would suggest that this event never occurred and only the most posturing academic could claim, as the French postmodernist Jean Baudrillard in fact does, that the subject of the documentary - the Vietnam War - 'didn't happen'.

However, this visual evidence can and has been interpreted in a number of ways. The commentary that accompanies this appalling event can suggest widely differing viewpoints of the specific atrocity, or the wider war, by anchoring the images to specific 'meanings'. In interpretation the bombing raid was described as 'accidental' - a justification used by American military sources following the outcry that followed the screening of the footage, despite the fact that villages were routinely bombed with napalm in this manner. The same commentary suggests that 'It was images such as these that eventually turned the majority of Americans against the war.' Hence, TV 'images' of 'accidental' acts are held responsible for turning the tide of public opinion against involvement in Vietnam. Not, it is thereby implied, the 'fact' of thousands of young American men flown home in body bags, or with missing limbs, and not the possibility that Americans were revolted by the failed policy of bombing a far-away country 'into the stone-age'. Finally, the same commentary concluded, in relation to the image of naked burnt children, that, 'in no other country except the United States would such self-damning footage be allowed on the public airwaves - which are controlled, or at least regulated by governments. No other country has a First Amendment.' In this way, the victims of an American napalm bombing become a celebration of American liberty.

Realism and Television 'Rhetoric'

So, while documentaries can provide evidence, such evidence can be faked, altered, or turned on its head by a commentary. The same film footage has often been used by enemy countries in a war as evidence of the other side's barbarity. Len Masterman (1985) argues that awareness of the following rhetorical techniques in the media can provide a method for interrogating any text, and how its realism is constructed.

Selection

The first question to ask is: in the selection of a particular event as the subject of a documentary, whose interests are being served ? Selection is a central aspect of media production. This shot is chosen over that, that angle preferred to this, one interview recorded rather than another, this much of an interview used, this music chosen, and a certain order adopted (as opposed to other possibilities). These are just a sample of the many choices made, both during filming and editing. As Masterman notes, the act of selection is, itself, evaluative:

'The media mark particular people and events as more significant than other simply by reporting them. For 'what is noted' to repeat an earlier observation of Barthes, 'is by definition notable. The media, therefore, carry out what is perhaps their most important ideological role through a process which is generally regarded as being ideologically innocent, the process of reporting 'the facts'.'

Branston et al. (1996) make reference to the work of Frederick Wiseman who made documentaries about institutions such as a police force and a high school in the late 1960s'. Wiseman spent a great deal of time in these institutions, filming enormous amounts of footage and he found when it came to editing that he was forced to select, order and interpret his material for the audience. His mediating role became a crucial one in shaping the audiences' understanding of the institutions represented. Wiseman's dilemma was, in fact, no different from any documentary filmmaker's: most documentaries will shoot 20 or 30 hours, for every one hour screened. Recognition of the inevitably structured nature of documentary, like news, or any media text undermines any claim the genre makes to be an objective 'window on the world'.

The rhetoric of the image

Masterman argues that visual images are highly 'authentic', but at the same time 'ambiguous'. We can (almost) be sure that those events and people captured by the camera were there, although computer technology is making even this modest claim subject to doubt. For example, when Janet Jackson dives from the top of the Statue of Liberty in an MTV video, or when Forrest Gump shakes hand with President Kennedy in a feature film, we know that this is a special effect; but will we always know when events have been created in this way ?

As previously discussed, the authenticity of images may be used to underscore a point of view which is highly subjective, or has no basis in fact. Anchorage may be provided by a commentary or visual text, but anchorage is also possible without either of these. British fly-on-the-wall director Paul Watson's film 'The Fishing Party', made in the late 1980s', made devastating use of juxtaposition and overlay (putting the protagonists' words over footage shot at another time and place) to point up the discrepancy between what the wealthy subjects were saying and what they were doing.

In fact, commentary is continuously supplied in documentary, and all television genres, without the use of spoken or written language at all. Images alone are quite enough to construct a point- of-view. The juxtaposition of images of, for instance, homeless beggars next to well dressed passers-by, needs no voice-over to suggest a discrepancy in the distribution of wealth in a particular country.

Image and text

The use of commentaries, or captions, in documentary has already been briefly illustrated. Masterman argues that sound is every bit as selective and open to manipulation as the image, and just, if not more, important to the construction of televisions 'realism', or what he terms 'illusionism'. Sound, unlike images, provides continuity, and cues for how the images should be interpreted, the mood of a particular scene, and points of maximum interest. A daily example of this 'rhetorical technique' can be found as the camera zooms in for a close-up 'reaction shot' at the end of a scene in a soap opera. Dramatic music invariably accompanies the moment so that there can be no mistaking the scene's significance.

Masterman gives several examples of how sound can be used to construct a point of view. In the coverage of the 1984-85 coal dispute, for example, wildtrack 'riot' sounds were used to cover images shot at different times and places, whilst news commentators described those who remained loyal to their union as 'militants', and those who disregarded union policy as 'moderates'. In relation to documentary, a simple choice such as the placing of microphones in a school classroom may illustrate the intentions of the filmmaker: 'Give dominance to the teacher's mike (as in the BBC's series on the public school Radley) and you get a very different impression from the chaos of sounds which results from the dominance of a mike in the middle of a classroom.' (1985)

The effect of camera and crew

The well known book book on photojournalistic technique 'Pictures on a Page', by the former Times editor Harold Evans, shows a photograph of a young woman next to an unconscious figure, surrounded by a crowd of spectators and a doctor, or nurse. The picture is bizarre because although the woman is clealy associated with the unconscious person, she is smiling at the camera. Similarly a dull party, or dreadful holiday will be transformed for a moment by the appearance of a camera as everyone dutifully smiles. The arrival of a television camera and crew at virtually any location or institution will create a far greater stir than a lone photographer. Behaviour, dress, speech, even the location itself is likely to be altered for the benefit of the camera. Bob Woffinden writing in 'the Listener' contends that what appears on the screen in a documentary can, sometimes, amount to little more than a sanitised public relations job:

'A government agency might spend thousands of pounds on image-building with a promotional film in the middle of News at Ten. On that scale, an access documentary could represent millions of pounds-worth of free publicity. How many recruiting ads was John Purdie's 'Sailor' (1976) worth ? After that series - shot aboard the Royal Navy's Ark Royal aircraft carrier - all branches of the armed forces started putting out the welcome mat for the BBC. The less edifying aspects of service life - bullying in the army, perhaps - could always be resumed once the cameras had left.' (1988)

Set-ups

It is not at all unusual for television makers working outside a studio to set up a situation that will be more photogenic than the everyday reality they initially encounter. Flaherty's training of the Aran islanders to hunt basking sharks with harpoons is an extreme example of standard media practice in this respect. Sometimes, such setups will be for speed and convenience. A radio journalist was invited into a classroom in which I was working to record a burst of sound for a piece on local education. Without a moment's hesitation she asked if I could chalk some words on the board and say these words to the class. The sound was duly recorded and she left satisfied. The students were disappointed that they would not hear their own voices on the radio, and I felt that the set-up had been a 'cheat' as I never used the blackboard, and the sound reinforced the notion of teaching as 'chalk and talk'.

What is expected of a particular institution or event, may be just as influential in the outcome of a documentary as what actually occurs during filmmaking. A director entering a comprehensive school will be heavily influenced in what they record, or 'ask to see' by their private views of state education. A hostile director will concentrate on any evidence of graffitti, broken equipment, noise, violence, disillusioned or lazy teachers and signs of poor educational standards generally. These elements can easily be amplified and subtly encouraged in the filmmaking process. A director who (privately) supports comprehensive education will of course look for, and find evidence of a positive, clean, friendly, hard-working, progressive, well run institution with high educational standards and ideals. Not all set-ups are necessarily dishonest if they help recreate a typical situation, although giving stones to children in Northern Ireland to throw at soldiers, as a French film crew were once alleged to have done, would be an example of a wholly unwarranted 'recreation'.

Film and sound editing

In editing, the filmmaker creates new meanings from fragmented and often unrelated occurrences. Masterman argues that the meanings of a piece of film are not implicit within the original events which they represent, but are the product of the film itself. This is related to the other effects of editing which are: to select, compress and omit a range of material; to falsify the dimension of time; and to organise the text 'according to a narrative, thematic or aesthetic logic which, again, is the creation of the filmmaker rather than an inherent quality of the original events'.

Fiske (1987) argues that another effect of motivated (continuity) editing is what is called 'suture'. This literally means 'stitching', and works by rendering the construction of the film invisible so that our experience of it is one of 'seamlessness', thereby 'stitching' the viewer into the narrative. While this theory is usually applied to examples of classic realism such as Hollywood filmsm,

'This attempt at seamlessness is not confined to fictional realism. In news or current affairs programs location interviews are normally shot with a single camera trained on the interviewee. After the interview is finished, the camera is then turned onto the interviewer who asks some of the questions again and gives a series of "noddies", that is, reaction shots, nods, smiles, or expressions of sympathetic listening. These are used to disguise later edits in the interviewee's speech. When a section of this speech is edited out, the cut is disguised by inserting a "noddy", thus hiding the fact that any editing of the speaker's words has occurred. Without the "noddy", the visuals would show an obvious "jump" that would reveal the edit.'

Interpretative frameworks

Anchor persons, interviewing strategies and pre-broadcast reviews are some of the means that may be employed by television makers to 'nudge' audiences towards a particular interpretation of what they watch. We are sometimes warned that a documentary may contain graphic language or disturbing scenes. The words an anchor uses to introduce a documentary-drama film such as 'Threads' or 'War Games' , about the effects of nuclear war, will have a strong influence on the way people view those films, and may even have many people reaching for the off button on their televisions, before they view a single minute of the programme.

Visual codings

Television employs specific visual codes, such as the use of direct address (the speaker making 'eye contact' with the viewer), appearance (such as shaven or unshaven), dress (compare the 'meanings' of suit and tie against jeans and t shirt), and framing (tight, claustrophobic close ups, more 'comfortable' medium shots, or more 'objective' and distanced long-shots). Masterman quotes Hood (1981):

'The convention is that in "factual" programmes they (subjects) should be shot from eye-level and not from above or below, since shots from either of these angles would represent an image slanted in more senses than one. The other convention deals with the question of how "tight" a shot may be. Generally, important figures will be shown in medium close-up which shows them from the waist up. This may be replaced by a close-up which shows only the subject's head and shoulders. It would be very rare for a big close-up - a shot showing only the head - to be used of an important person. Just as in our normal social intercourse we observe certain conventions about how close we come to other people and how close we allow them to come to us, so when choosing their images, television cameras keep a certain distance from their subjects....It is almost inconceivable that one should see on the television screen a big close-up of a figure of authority - of a prime minister or international statesman. The camera stands back from them. But in the case of ordinary people it is not unknown for the camera to come close in, particularly if the subject is in a state of emotional excitement, grief or joy.'

Masterman also draws attention to the role of location. Since Margaret Thatcher's studio grilling over the sinking of the General Belgrano in the Falkland's War by an ordinary viewer, Mrs Diana Gould, both Thatcher and John Major have been shy of studio confrontations. The Prime Minister is now more commonly interviewed, on special occasions, at ten Downing Street where the interviewer is generally more reverential.

Finally, Fiske (1987) describes a particularly powerful aspect of the visual coding of documentary which helps construct the specific 'realism' of the genre: what he calls the 'visibility of form' - a technique he contrasts with the invisibility of 'dramatic' (classic) realist modes:

'the documentary appears to use an objective, but recognized camera, and thus uses conventions like the hand-held camera, the cramped shot, and 'natural' lighting, often supported by unclear or inaudible (and therefore 'natural' ) sound. The documentary conventions are designed to give the impression that the camera has happened upon a piece of unpremediated reality which it shows to us objectively and truthfully: the dramatic conventions, on the other hand, are designed to give the impression that we are watching a piece of unmediated reality directly, that the camera does not exist.'

Narrative

Documentary, like any other genre, tends to package its content as stories. Directors are usually careful to find the narrative structure: in basic terms - the beginning, middle and end of their proposed programme - before they begin filming. In the absence of a clear narrative pattern, a structure may be imposed or borrowed, as is suggested by some of titles adopted by documentarists: a 'Sunday Times - A Life in the Day', 'Ten Days in Holloway', 'Fourteen Days in May', or 'Culloden: A Year in the Life of a Primary School'.

Where no clearly defined closure can be imposed for the narrative of events, the documentary may, instead, rely on the narrative of drama to be found in relationships, and between characters, which are most interesting when in a state of tension or crisis. Hence the popularity of institutions as the subjects of documentaries such as; 'The Family', 'The Duty Men' (customs and excise), 'The Chosen Few' (the civil service), 'Dolebusters' (Department of Employment), 'Police', 'The Ark' (London Zoo) and 'Turning the Screws' (prison). The most memorable of these documentaries tend to be where tensions and crises are emphasised, as in Roger Graef's celebrated 'Police' (1982) series which became infamous for a scene in which a rape victim was interviewed in an apparently hostile manner. The controversy which the programme caused resulted in changes to interview procedures in suspected rape cases, and also in the temporary loss of access to several institutions for many documentary filmmakers.

Production Practices

Bob Woffinden 'Inside Out' The Listener 20 October 1988

'If the institution concerned is prepared in principle to allow access, then a working agreement will be hammered out. In the case of Lambert's 'Dolebusters', the Department of Employment insisted on previewing the completed programme, being allowed to make representations, and being assured that any representations would be taken seriously. 40 minutes was prepared to accede to those demands. After all, the BBC was granted as much access to snoopersquad activities as they needed, and they retained full editorial control over the film. If either conditions had not been met, the programme would not have been made.'

From Features and Documentaries by Clark, M (1987) 'Teaching Popular Television'. Heinemann

definitions - factual programmes - arts etc

realism

contradictions eliminated

technical decisions eg sound, cameras

Marketing documentary - series title eg World in Action, First Tuesday, linking programmes according to topics, or by a single presenter e.g. Wheeler on America, or by a style of filmmaking.

'Other 'marketing devices' include the serial (Police, Kingswood), where there is a possibility both of developing 'viewer loyalty', and also of building 'word of mouth' following. Both of these are clearly impossible in the one-off documentary which, like the single play, is a comparitive rarity.'

Reading

Roger Graef Times 12-2-93.

'..British viewers may not appreciate that no other country in the world offers anything like such variety. Whereas all television stations invest in news, documentaries are concerned with the impact of decisions on people's lives - in contrast to the litany of facts and figures that litter our screens in a form we can seldom digest or remember. Documentaries about public institutions such as prisons and zoos translate these abstractions into everyday experience: we put ourselves in the shoes of the keepers, the prison officers and governors. Our excitement is heightened by the knowledge that, as in life, they do not know what will happen next - nor do film-makers. These are true-life dramas.

Why do normally closed institutions let film-makers in when the results are not predictable and not always flattering? The case I put to such bodies as the prison service is that the public impression gained only through headlines - usually bad news - is too crude to be accurate. The media shorthand used to describe troubled institutions leaves out the human dimension which allows the public to identify with their predicament and whatever efforts they make to resolve it.'

Reading Exercise

Write brief answers to the following questions:

1) How is documentary different from fiction film ?

2) How did technology influence the development of documenatry cinema ?

3) What are distinctive characteristics of cinema verite ?

Reading Exercise

Write brief answers to the following questions:

1) Why did documentary revive as a form in the 1930s' ?

2) How might British documentary funding have influenced the treatment of its subjects ?

3) What technical limitations did filmmakers face and how were they overcome ?

4) What examples are given of 'faked' events ?

Essay

What is a documentary ? How have notions of 'realism', objectivity and authenticity changed with its development as a form in Britain and America ? Discuss in relation to named films and filmmakers.

Essay

How objective is the documentary genre ?

Essay

Have documentaries become more truthful as the century has progressed ?

Essay

'Ingmar Bergman's films are a product of his own genius. He wrote the scripts; found the money, the actors, the crew; directed and edited his own films. Such film-making is called 'auteur' (author) production. Bergman shares credit or blame with no-one for his films.' (Kaye et al. 1992)

To what extent could documentary be considered an auteur genre ?

Exercise

Watch a documentary. Make notes on the following elements in the programme:

- Subject

- 'Story'

- 'Argument' (there may be more than one)

- Conclusion (if there is any)

- Number of interviews/interviewees

- Locations used

- Use of voice-over, talking heads, montage editing, continuous shots, sound (including music) and, taking all these elements into consideration, the 'style', or mix of styles used. i.e 'classic', 'direct', 'verite' etc.

How successful do you think the documentary was in marshalling all these elements ? Was the film a coherent piece of work ?

Exercise

Produce a short (5 minute) investigative documentary on a topic of public interest to your local community. The programme must be clearly identifiable as an investigative documentary programme and should include interviews and/or vox pop.

or

Produce a short (5 minute) documentary on the problems of homelessness/unemployment among young people in your town/city.

Sources

Crisell, A. (1994) 'Understanding Radio' Routledge

Cooke, T. (1993) Documentary Student Pack Oldham Sixth Form College (unpublished)

Delahaye, M. 'Camera ! Life ! Action !' The Listener (1 December 1988).

Clark, M (1987) 'Teaching Popular Television'. Heinemann

Evans, H. (1978) 'Pictures on a Page' Heinemann

Nonfictional Narratives - Louis Giannetti ? Understanding Movies

Kenvyn, M. (1992) 'Documentary Realism' Haywards Heath College (unpublished)

Francke, L. 'Nothing but the Truth' The Guardian (13th March 1994)

Hood, S. 'On Television' Pluto Press quoted in Masterman (1985)

Rotha, P. (1952) 'Documentary Film' Faber and Faber

Film Education News and Newsreel Information Sheet Momi Education

Kaye, M and Popperwell, A. (1992) 'Making Radio' Broadside Books