Documentaries

The Devil Made Me Do It

The documentary "the devil made me do it" is an investigative and a reflective documentary meaning the documentary goes in depth about the subject. It is also a circular narrative as it starts at the end, then goes to the beginning and then goes through to the end. This is done in order to get the audience's attention at the beginning and then when they want to watch more they explain why the end result happened.

Hand-held cameras are used in order to show a point of view shot, this is to reenact the situation which is being spoken about and also to add some urgency when it comes to talking about the court scenes. Talking head shots and cutaways are also used, which is typical of a documentary. Talking head shots are used when interviewing a person, this is to put the focus on the person speaking. Cutaways are used in order to keep the audiences attention by showing images that are related to the topics the person is talking about, in this case; concerts and crime scenes. The archive material used is that of the trial and the concerts.

Throughout the documentary there are two main people that are being spoken about: the nun and Marilyn Manson. When talking about Marilyn Manson the editing is fast paced to show his fast lifestyle. Whereas when they are speaking about the nun the editing is slow paced to create sympathy.

Throughout the documentary the mise-en-scene is more or less the same, with religious affects and concerts commonly scene throughout. There is also an emphasis on costumes in order to show the extremities of the people they are talking about, e.g, Marilyn Manson.

As the documentary is about Marilyn Manson his music can be heard in the background when he is on the screen and when the girls are being spoken about, but in contrast to this when the nun is being spoken about the music is religious, operatic music. sound effects like heartbeats are also used.




Themes

• Culture
• Religion
• Music
• Power
• Rebellion
• Satan
• Influence
• Youth
• Crime

The Meth Epidemic

The documentary "The Meth Epidemic" is an investigative police documentary which is narrated in a linear style, meaning it goes from beginning of the story to the end of the story and thus reaches a conclusion.

Like all documentaries, talking head shots are used in order to put the attention on the interviewee. Images of drug traffickers and extreme close ups of meth addicts adds to the emphasis on drugs. Hand held cameras and aerial shots are used on order to show the urgency that the police have in catching the traffickers. The archive footage used are images of people affected by the drug, websites and pictures of victims. cutaways are also used in order to keep the audiences attention.

The mise-en-scene throughout the whole documentary is dark and night vision is used as it is such as dark subject. Sudafed props are used commonly in the documentary to show how easy it is to get your hands on drugs. The setting is in Portland's police station and therefore actors are used for policemen.

Serious music is used when there is images of the raid or explaining about the sudafed, whereas emotive music is used in order create sympathy when the victims are shown. A voice over is used in order to explain to the audience the problems with meth.

In editing, cutaways of the props, sudafed, are used in order to aid the interviewee's words. Also, the name and job title of the interviewee is seen underneath the person.

Archive material such as; websites, pictures of users and pictures of victims are used to put emphasis on the affects the drug has.



Themes:

• Crime
• Drugs
• Sociological
• Victims

Loose Change

The documentary "loose change" is an; informative, historical and reflective documentary. It is told in a linear narrative meaning it goes from beginning to end.

The documentary is completely archive material like; websites, news reports, other documentaries, newspapers, government reports and recordings. This is because the documentary is an historical one meaning the makers would not have necessarily have been there meaning they would not have the resources or the budget to gain primary research. The camera work is either hand held or off a news report as it is all archive. Computer generated images are also used in order to strengthen the narrators arguments.

A voice over is used throughout as it is all narrated and a repetitive non diegetic drum loop is heard behind the narrator in order to create tension and momentum. Also, the foley sound of an aeroplane engine is used in order to create atmosphere.

In editing, cross fades and fades in and outs are used in order for the documentary to run smoothly. this also makes it easier to watch.

Themes

• Government corruption
• Terrorism

Comparative Documentary Analysis

Every documentary has been written with a different purpose, audience and genre.These can be determined by the key themes seen, the channel it was shown on and the different technical aspects that are used. "The most hated family in America" was aired on BBC2 meaning this documentary was aimed for an older audience. Whereas "Super botox me" was aired on channel 4, thus aiming for a younger audience.

"The most hated family in America" starts with a slow montage of clips with slow paced music and a voice over that tells the audience what he is going to do in the documentary. This is to show that the documentary is less of an entertaining one but more informative. "Super botox me" is different from this as it starts with fast, contemporary music and a montage of archive images in the form of covers of fashion magazines. This relates to the intended audience as it is fast paced and easy to watch which gets the audiences attention. There is also a voice over stating statistics, again, to catch their attention.

The Documentary "The most hated family in America" is an informative and investigative documentary with a linear narrative.

There is a lot of tracking shots and point of view shots as the documentary is following one man who is trying to find out about the family. not much archive footage is needed as the audience can see what the family is like from the footage. Religious objects are used throughout to show the religious influence the family has, also, posters are seen showing the family's hatred.

A voice over is used throughout to narrate the man's feelings. Also, contemporary music is used to keep an audiences attention. Fades are used to show the transition of one day to another.

The documentary "super botox me" is an investigative documentary with a linear narrative as it shows her journey from London to the USA.

Typical of a documentary talking head shots are used in order for interviews to be shown and in editing the words "before" and "after" have been inserted. Close ups and tracking shots are used to show the progression of different pictures that have been changed. Also, as the documentary is set in two different countries so establishing shots are used. Studios, cameras and photographs are seen to show the fashion scene. Adding to this, archive footage of magazine covers have been used.

A voice over is used throughout to narrate what is happening and fast modern music is heard behind to keep the audience's attention. Slow music is heard when decisions are being made

Even though you can tell that both texts are in fact documentaries because of their narration, they many differences in the presentation of information.

In all documentaries certain codes and conventions are used in order for the documenatry to fit its genre. talking heads are normally used with the rule of thirds when interviewing a person. vox pops are used in order to give different ideas and opinions. Interviews with experts are used in order to add facts and opinions.

Types of documentaries

Poetic documentaries

Which first appeared in the 1920’s, were a sort of reaction against both the content and the rapidly crystallizing grammar of the early fiction film. The poetic mode moved away from continuity editing and instead organized images of the material world by means of associations and patterns, both in terms of time and space. Well-rounded characters—’life-like people’—were absent; instead, people appeared in these films as entities, just like any other, that are found in the material world. The films were fragmentary, impressionistic, lyrical. Their disruption of the coherence of time and space—a coherence favored by the fiction films of the day—can also be seen as an element of the modernist counter-model of cinematic narrative. The ‘real world’—Nichols calls it the “historical world”—was broken up into fragments and aesthetically reconstituted using film form.

Expositary documentaries

Speak directly to the viewer, often in the form of an authoritative commentary employing voiceover or titles, proposing a strong argument and point of view. These films are rhetorical, and try to persuade the viewer. (They may use a rich and sonorous male voice.) The (voice-of-God) commentary often sounds ‘objective’ and omniscient. Images are often not paramount; they exist to advance the argument. The rhetoric insistently presses upon us to read the images in a certain fashion. Historical documentaries in this mode deliver an unproblematic and ‘objective’ account and interpretation of past events.

Observational documentaries

Attempt to simply and spontaneously observe lived life with a minimum of intervention. Filmmakers who worked in this sub-genre often saw the poetic mode as too abstract and the expository mode as too didactic. The first observational docs date back to the 1960’s; the technological developments which made them possible include mobile lighweight cameras and portable sound recording equipment for synchronized sound. Often, this mode of film eschewed voice-over commentary, post-synchronized dialogue and music, or re-enactments. The films aimed for immediacy, intimacy, and revelation of individual human character in ordinary life situations.

Participatory documentaries

Believe that it is impossible for the act of filmmaking to not influence or alter the events being filmed. What these films do is emulate the approach of the anthropologist: participant-observation. Not only is the filmmaker part of the film, we also get a sense of how situations in the film are affected or altered by her presence. Nichols: “The filmmaker steps out from behind the cloak of voice-over commentary, steps away from poetic meditation, steps down from a fly-on-the-wall perch, and becomes a social actor (almost) like any other. (Almost like any other because the filmmaker retains the camera, and with it, a certain degree of potential power and control over events.)” The encounter between filmmaker and subject becomes a critical element of the film. Rouch and Morin named the approach cinéma vérité, translating Dziga Vertov’s kinopravda into French; the “truth” refers to the truth of the encounter rather than some absolute truth.

Reflexive documentaries

Don’t see themselves as a transparent window on the world; instead they draw attention to their own constructedness, and the fact that they are representations. How does the world get represented by documentary films? This question is central to this sub-genre of films. They prompt us to “question the authenticity of documentary in general.” It is the most self-conscious of all the modes, and is highly skeptical of ‘realism.’ It may use Brechtian alienation strategies to jar us, in order to ‘defamiliarize’ what we are seeing and how we are seeing it.

Performative documentaries

Stress subjective experience and emotional response to the world. They are strongly personal, unconventional, perhaps poetic and/or experimental, and might include hypothetical enactments of events designed to make us experience what it might be like for us to possess a certain specific perspective on the world that is not our own, e.g. that of black, gay men in Marlon Riggs’s Tongues Untied (1989) or Jenny Livingston’s Paris Is Burning (1991). This sub-genre might also lend itself to certain groups (e.g. women, ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians, etc) to ‘speak about themselves.’ Often, a battery of techniques, many borrowed from fiction or avant-garde films, are used. Performative docs often link up personal accounts or experiences with larger political or historical realities.