looking at conventions of a documentary and what a documentary consists of, what techniques are used, the simple research to create a good documentary. As i have decided to create a documentary of horse racing, and the preparation what goes into the racing but the brutal truth at the end of the horses racing life. i have also emailed one of the managers at beverley race course to organise dates when i am going to film and who i am going to interview.
Here is my script so far..
Conventions
So the question is what makes a documentary?
From my research looking at short documentary’s, I have found the conventional expectations of a documentary are..
It has to be non-fiction, discussing the ‘real’ historical, political and cultural events ect.. basing itself on observations rather than interventions, Making it educational to others trying to uncover something, showing pros and cons of its genre.
There are various documentarys on..
Motorbikes, cars, coins, diseases , fashion and anything you could imagine.
They often contain a voiceover, someone talking about the facts of the subject, also they do many interviews talking to various different people related to your genre of your documentary’s finding different opinions to make controversy and create different sides to the genre and what you are talking about, Going into depth within the genre splitting up into sections, often containing alot of repition, jumping from one subject in the genre to the next.
The voiceover.
The voiceover is usually very authoritative encouraging the audience to believe that they have some sort of knowledge as in the case of people like Michael Moore and Nick Broomfield ‘the right’ opinions that people should pay attention to.
Language used
Some of the language techniques they use to shape realism in a documentary is..
Placing the audience in the action by Location Shooting, Un even, hand-held camera work to show that it is not all serious, also using Natural Light to do the same, Following the action so that the audience is following the documentary’s journey, and Amateur effect.
Others techniques that allow the audience to be ‘objective’ are allowing the material to structure into an argument and also allowing it to structure into a narrative.
Interviews
The interviews with experts .. are used to authenticate the views expressed in the documentary some may disagree with the the message of the documentary and the argument it is creating but the film maker usually disapproves them in some way to balance the argument and get a clear understanding to the audience.
Text
There are not much text or many titles used in a documentary if text is used it is normally to anchor images in time and Labels,dates etc tend to be believed unquestioningly and are a quick and cheap way of conveying information to the audience. In short documentarys I have found that they do have credits at the end of the documentary and logos of the distribution company at the beginning this also makes the documentary believable.
