Documentary Offshoot Genres
When it comes to truth-telling in film, documentaries unquestionably set the bar. Using archival or recently recorded footage of real events in real places, focusing our attention on real people as subjects, they put reality on the screen.
The obvious exception is reenactment, a technique used in documentaries since the invention of moving pictures. Reenactments are substitutions for actual footage of events.
And, in documentaries, they're always identified as such.
All narrative features, including those based on stories of real people and true events, take liberties in structuring scenarios for the greatest dramatic effect.
Despite essential differences, both documentary films and fiction features are in the storytelling business. Films of both types are most successful when they present audiences with well constructed scripts that reveal an understandable and plausible sequence of events--or plot points--set in locations that seem unquestionably real.
The fine line between fact and fiction may seem to blur.
Fact is, truths told in documentaries sometimes seems stranger than fiction-- witness, for example, the unexpectedly intricate interpersonal relationships seen in March of the Penguins. Does the anthropomorphizing animation film Happy Feet even come close to topping these unpredictable love affairs arranged by nature?
On the other hand, a great narrative feature will convince you that what you have seen is real--even if it is as famously fictional as Gollum and Mordor in Lord of The Rings.
Many filmmakers feel just as comfortable and function equally well in documentary and narrative feature mode. Michael Apted, for example, helms truth-based features like Amazing Grace, during off years on his lifelong documentary project, The UP Series. Davis Guggenheim, who won an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth, recently released Gracie, a fictionalized account of a high school girl's determination to play soccer on the boys' team.
Although based on true events that had historic impact and imparted insight into social values, neither Amazing Grace nor Gracie would have been nearly as engaging as documentaries as they were as narrative features.
Why? For one thing, their events were already over before the filmmakers arrived on the scene. So, as documentaries, they'd be missing archival and newly recorded footage, compelling eyewitness accounts and other dynamic elements that vitalize and add dramatic impact to nonfiction features.
It can be as simple as superimposition of the date and place name on the screen--as is commonly seen in breaking news stories--but, using this and other techniques, narrative feature directors can be very clever in adopting documentary elements to give their true-events-based stories greater impact.
To this end, mixing staged and archival or current footage is extremely effective. Philip Noyce's Rabbit Proof Fence, for example, is based on the real story of aboriginal girls removed from their families and taken to schools where they're supposed to unlearn and forget their culture. After we have seen the young actresses finding their characters' way back home through blazing deserts and other seemingly insurmountable obstacles, it's extraordinarily moving to be introduced, as the film ends, to the real women who survived this ordeal. Steven Spielberg accomplished the same emotional effect by showing holocaust survivors at the end Schindler's List.
In effect, these films aren't real--but they are!
In the purely fiction feature, Forrest Gump, Robert Zemeckis places Forrest (Tom Hanks) in the middle of archival footage of government officials, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and other historic events to enhance the real-but-larger-than-life quality of this made up mythic Everyman story.
On the other hand, some documentary directors discover that the real life stories they're presenting in nonfiction films are so compelling, they decide to remake them as narrative features so they can pump up the drama or explore semi-truths or speculations that might not play out in the documentary format. Werner Herzog's recently released Rescue Dawn, about the only American pilot to escape from a prisoner of war camp in Laos, is based on his documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997), which Herzog, himself, narrates.
Because documentaries can be made for comparatively little money, filmmakers sometimes produce them as trailblazers on their challenging path to funding for bigger budget truth-based narrative features they wish to make.
Another narrative genre blurs the borders between documentary and satire. Best exemplifying this crossover comedy style are director Christopher Guest's 'mockumentaries.' Best in Show, in which Guest and his ensemble of actors improvise--which certainly gives events a sense of immediacy and life--reenact a competitive dog show, and in doing so, make it and its participants the butt of every imaginable joke and applicable cliché. You laugh until you cry, but only because Guest so cleverly captures the absurdity within the reality of that which he chooses to mock.
The very successful Blair Witch Project, which pretends to be a documentary about the demise of a documentary film crew researching mysterious phenomena, turns out to be a mockumentary send up of documentary film, the horror genre and student filmmaking.
Where, you might wonder, does reality TV fit in?
On TV. And in the tabloids.
Sure, reality TV shows present real people with real goals--but only after the participants have been meticulously groomed and their quests quite carefully staged.
Although reality TV can be highly entertaining--perhaps even addictive--it has little to do with documentary filmmaking. In fact, for the most part, reality TV shows bear less resemblance to documentary film's reality and truth than many true-event-based narrative features do.
Is reality always real?
The obvious exception is reenactment, a technique used in documentaries since the invention of moving pictures. Reenactments are substitutions for actual footage of events.
And, in documentaries, they're always identified as such.
All narrative features, including those based on stories of real people and true events, take liberties in structuring scenarios for the greatest dramatic effect.
Despite essential differences, both documentary films and fiction features are in the storytelling business. Films of both types are most successful when they present audiences with well constructed scripts that reveal an understandable and plausible sequence of events--or plot points--set in locations that seem unquestionably real.
Blurring fact and fiction
The fine line between fact and fiction may seem to blur.
Fact is, truths told in documentaries sometimes seems stranger than fiction-- witness, for example, the unexpectedly intricate interpersonal relationships seen in March of the Penguins. Does the anthropomorphizing animation film Happy Feet even come close to topping these unpredictable love affairs arranged by nature?
On the other hand, a great narrative feature will convince you that what you have seen is real--even if it is as famously fictional as Gollum and Mordor in Lord of The Rings.
Straddling fact and fiction
Many filmmakers feel just as comfortable and function equally well in documentary and narrative feature mode. Michael Apted, for example, helms truth-based features like Amazing Grace, during off years on his lifelong documentary project, The UP Series. Davis Guggenheim, who won an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth, recently released Gracie, a fictionalized account of a high school girl's determination to play soccer on the boys' team.
Although based on true events that had historic impact and imparted insight into social values, neither Amazing Grace nor Gracie would have been nearly as engaging as documentaries as they were as narrative features.
Why? For one thing, their events were already over before the filmmakers arrived on the scene. So, as documentaries, they'd be missing archival and newly recorded footage, compelling eyewitness accounts and other dynamic elements that vitalize and add dramatic impact to nonfiction features.
Narrative uses of Documentary Elements
It can be as simple as superimposition of the date and place name on the screen--as is commonly seen in breaking news stories--but, using this and other techniques, narrative feature directors can be very clever in adopting documentary elements to give their true-events-based stories greater impact.
To this end, mixing staged and archival or current footage is extremely effective. Philip Noyce's Rabbit Proof Fence, for example, is based on the real story of aboriginal girls removed from their families and taken to schools where they're supposed to unlearn and forget their culture. After we have seen the young actresses finding their characters' way back home through blazing deserts and other seemingly insurmountable obstacles, it's extraordinarily moving to be introduced, as the film ends, to the real women who survived this ordeal. Steven Spielberg accomplished the same emotional effect by showing holocaust survivors at the end Schindler's List.
In effect, these films aren't real--but they are!
In the purely fiction feature, Forrest Gump, Robert Zemeckis places Forrest (Tom Hanks) in the middle of archival footage of government officials, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and other historic events to enhance the real-but-larger-than-life quality of this made up mythic Everyman story.
On the other hand, some documentary directors discover that the real life stories they're presenting in nonfiction films are so compelling, they decide to remake them as narrative features so they can pump up the drama or explore semi-truths or speculations that might not play out in the documentary format. Werner Herzog's recently released Rescue Dawn, about the only American pilot to escape from a prisoner of war camp in Laos, is based on his documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997), which Herzog, himself, narrates.
Because documentaries can be made for comparatively little money, filmmakers sometimes produce them as trailblazers on their challenging path to funding for bigger budget truth-based narrative features they wish to make.
The Blur Between Reality and Satire
Another narrative genre blurs the borders between documentary and satire. Best exemplifying this crossover comedy style are director Christopher Guest's 'mockumentaries.' Best in Show, in which Guest and his ensemble of actors improvise--which certainly gives events a sense of immediacy and life--reenact a competitive dog show, and in doing so, make it and its participants the butt of every imaginable joke and applicable cliché. You laugh until you cry, but only because Guest so cleverly captures the absurdity within the reality of that which he chooses to mock.
The very successful Blair Witch Project, which pretends to be a documentary about the demise of a documentary film crew researching mysterious phenomena, turns out to be a mockumentary send up of documentary film, the horror genre and student filmmaking.
Survivor? Great Race? Runway?
Where, you might wonder, does reality TV fit in?
On TV. And in the tabloids.
Sure, reality TV shows present real people with real goals--but only after the participants have been meticulously groomed and their quests quite carefully staged.
Although reality TV can be highly entertaining--perhaps even addictive--it has little to do with documentary filmmaking. In fact, for the most part, reality TV shows bear less resemblance to documentary film's reality and truth than many true-event-based narrative features do.