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Doc Research
A definition of documentary is not easy and can be the start of many arguments.
The Scottish documentarian John Grierson who first coined the term, 'documentary, in his review of Robert Flaherty's film Moana (1926), also described 'Documentary' as "The creative interpretation of actuality". The Soviet film-maker Dziga Vertov, set out to film "life as it is" (that is, life filmed surreptitiously) and "life caught unawares" (life provoked or surprised by the camera).
Grierson: "The creative interpretation of actuality"
Vertov: "life as it is", "life caught unawares"
Bill Nichol's identified these 6 modes of Documentary Representation.
Poetic
The poetic mode of documentary moves away from the "objective" reality of a given situation or people to grasp at an inner "truth" that can only be grasped by poetical manipulation Codes emphasizes visual associations, tonal or rhythmic qualities, descriptive passages, and formal organization favours mood, tone and texture.
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Types of doc are; Poetic, Expository, Participatory, Observational, Reflexive, and Performative.
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some documentaries I watched to gain a better understanding of them were,
Seaspiracy, have a good trip, fantastic fungi, 14 peaks to name a few I also enjoy a lot of Louis Theroux's work, and the investigative style that he adds to his docs.
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Pre-production
so research i did,
Documentary
A definition of documentary is not easy and can be the start of many arguments.
The Scottish documentarian John Grierson who first coined the term, 'documentary, in his review of Robert Flaherty's film Moana (1926), also described 'Documentary' as "The creative interpretation of actuality". The Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov, set out to film "life as it is" (that is, life filmed surreptitiously) and "life caught unawares" (life provoked or surprised by the camera).
A couple of documentary filmmakers I am fond of are Louis Theroux and David Attenborough. Both men are extremely successful at drawing a large audience and captivating the masses into an obsession with their Documentary films.
I love the style of Louis's documentary and how he pushes for answers where some might think it is too far and I would like to adopt that style of investigative and full frontal style.
Some ideas I had were. to interview people from Weston and ask them why they were here and what they liked about Weston, another idea I had was just to video people around Weston and find out facts about Weston super-mare and the surrounding area and talk about that over the top of my film.
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Something else I did before filming was ask my class about Weston as they all live in the surrounding area.
I got some inside into what it's like living here and as I have just moved here I had my own opinion of the place.
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Some things I would do differently next time make sure to give myself enough time to film as I had a few technical issues with equipment and wasn't able to produce the final product I was looking for, next time I will try to add a wider variety of shots and camera movements. I think I can improve on how the shots were taken and how well thought out my idea was, maybe try other things before jumping at one singular idea.