Documentary notes

As this is the second week in my documentary project, I had to find out what the main features of a documentary are. Using examples like the Inside Job trailer (Academy Award for Best Documentary 2011)  and a small group discussion, me and the three others that are making a documentary came up with these features for each example

1.Sudan short documentary (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWY_HCysGNA)

·      Narration

·      Factual

·      Short clips relevant to narration

·      Slow narration, not much emotion

·      Background music fits with narration and seems to be traditional.

·      Sometimes atmospheric noise

·      Heartbeat, blackout

·      Who made it in the beginning

·      Start with basic knowledge, including geographical knowledge.

·      A lot of images of eyes and faces of people to add emotion and to make relating easier.

·      Cites sources and quotes sources (United Nations etc)

Sudan – The lost boys (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e2JfHdOhLk&feature=related)

·      Narration by a native for extra effect

·      Multiple clips at a time, relevant to the narration

·      Start with background info

·      Start with questions

Best documentary 2011 – inside Job trailer ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOptNrmOaJg)

·      Multiple voices talking and multiple languages, then switch to a single person, sets mood by this and shows relevant footage

·      Multiple interviews

·      Quotes

·      Shows two worlds, the rich and huge houses and stuff of the banks, then the new narrator ‘Lehman brothers forced to declare bankrupt’

·      Debates and other official things

·      Music

·      Fast paced, but not too fast.

As you can see, all these documentaries have differences, but also have a lot in common. To make things easier, I will list the similarities of all three.

Narration. All documentaries are narrated by an unseen narrator.

Factual. Of course a documentary does not express your opinion (at least it shouldn't). The documentary also cites the sources of their facts.

Short clips. The documentaries exist out of short clips, relevant to the subject.

Start at the beginning. The documentaries always give brief, basic knowledge and facts at the beginning to get the viewer interested and introduced to the topic.

Message. The documentary ALWAYS tries to convey some kind of message. Different ways are used to convey this message, like facts and symbolism

Emotion. The documentary makers always want the viewer to have a special emotion relevant to the message they are trying to bring across. For example, when your documentary is about the earthquake in Japan you want your viewers to feel sad and maybe guilty so they want to help. But if you are trying to convey a whole different message, like 'banks saw the economical crisis of 2008 coming, you might want your viewer to be angry.

Music. All documentaries have fitting background music. The music fills in nicely the gaps where there isn't any spoken language or just plays in the background to add emotion and depth into the documentary.

All these features that characterise a certain genre are called genre conventions. As these are the conventions of a good documentary I will try and use many, if not all, of these features.