Documentary Film free essay sample

The fact is, every cut is a lie. The cutaway of someone intently listening to someone speak is shot after – or before – the actual conversation. Even with multiple camera shoots, the editor uses the ideal reaction shot rather than the exact, matching moment. And when one cuts back to the speaker, likely as not, a long chunk of the actual conversation is dropped in order to get to the point. So, the truth is adjusted. The irony is that, in editing, one has to like to tell the truth, otherwise the audience would die of boredom or the truth would be smothered under a mountain of chaff† Three moments in documentary film history: 1. government sponsored education/propaganda in the 1930’s: The River 2. Made-for television direct cinema in the 1960s: Lonely Boy 3. â€Å"expressive† independent cinema in the late 1980/1990: a. Gap Toothed Women (Les Blank, 1987) b. The thin blue line (Errol Morris, 1989) c. We will write a custom essay sample on Documentary Film or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Roger and me (Michael Moore, 1987) Wolf Koenig The editing of a documentary is like creating something out of thin air, the shots are often unrelated in time and space and yet, by bringing them together correctly, they begin to attract each other and cohere, like mollecules. † Types of non-narrative form in documentary films: â€Å"A film might be intended to convey information in a simple fashion and hence draw on what we can term categorical form. Or the filmmaker may want to make an argument that will convince the spectator of something. In this case the film draws upon rhetorical form. Four attributes of rhetorical form: 1. pen address to the viewer 2. concern with a matter of opinion, open to multiple possible interpretations 3. an appeal to not only factual evidence but to emotions 4. an attempt to persuade the viewer to make a choice affecting the viewer’s everyday life Pare Lorentz: â€Å"Virgil made piano sketches of each section of the movie, each large sequence, and then the crew and I tried to edit it down to a preconceived time, at which point Virgil would get some ideas, genius ideas, and we would work back and forth so that you didn’t have a completed score put on top of a completed movie or visa versa. Bordwell and Thompson (pg 340) Wolf Koenig: â€Å"One camera was all we needed. We became quite adept at shooting with a mind to the editing process – get lots of cutaway material; get wide shots as well as close-ups; get reaction shots; get materal to establish the location, etc. †About women trying to find inner beauty Starts on a closeup of the gap in the teeth, and talking about the negatives. Throughout the documentary it disintegrates into just talking about women and inner beauty in general, meaning that the gap in the teeth isn’t important, and it’s whats on the inside that counts. Exam Study: -graphic match: the visuals look the same -rhythmic match: cuts and editing is timed -spatial match: continuity editing -temporal match: chronological order -non-diegetic insert: interruption of a narrative where the scene or shot is not seen within the world of the story