As our project is about rock climbing I have included on the list a couple of sport documentaries, one about sailing and one about boxing, as well as a visually snappy, very contemporary documentary about the staging of Danny Boyle's theatre production of Frankenstein and a character based documentary which follows people preparing for a project that is completely new to them.
Frankenstein: A Modern Myth, Channel 4
As well as an example of documentary work that maybe useful to analyse for my course project, I was interested in this documentary as I saw one of the filmed versions of the Danny Boyle, National Theatre play when it was screened at the cinema. The adaptation was very well constructed and debunked a lot of the James Whale and Hammer Horror imagery that has grown up through the movie versions of the book. The play reintroduced the voice of the monster and it's questioning of it's creator. This was discussed in the documentary.
The structure of the documentary was quite traditional in giving the background of the book and it's author Mary Shelley, the evolution of the image of Frankenstein's monster and the environment that surrounded the release of the book and the fascination that the story holds for readers and viewers with each new generation.
The documentary included on screen interviews with contributors and cut aways to archive footage, stills and footage from the filmed performance. I did notice, in light of what we had discussed in class, that the documentary did linger too long on the contributors and then rushed imagery to accompany what was being said. I liked the seemingly random use of imagery early on before it was explained as to why it was being used, for example in the opening montage there was images of previous styles of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley and Mick Jagger! It was explained why later on! The actual pace of the film was quick and they producers used lots of imagery in quick succession to illustrate points. The titles for each section of the film were quirky and the choice of footage was imaginative, including footage of rock stars and punk rockers to illustrate rebellion and stardom, which corresponded with the contributor's talking about Shelley and Byron.
As further research I have also been reading New Documentary: A Critical Introduction by Stella Bruzzi which provides a 'contemporary look at documentary' and examines 'critical issues of performance, gender, authorship and spectatorship and suggests how these are important to an understanding of documentary cinema'.
The book looks at several viewpoints regarding whether documentary film is an unbiased truthful recording of actual events (as Cinema Verite, or direct cinema claimed itself to be) or whether all footage is filmed with at least a little input from the film maker, for example focusing on particular subject, camera angles used and deciding what to include in the screen, therefore the film not being truly impersonal and not contain at least some of the film makers own personal emotion and preferences.
It also discusses how historical footage is used in contemporary documentary and again how the film maker uses the chosen clips not only to show an actual event but to show it under a pre-considered written narrative therefore manipulating the viewer into processing what they are being shown for the film maker's own purpose.
There is a phrase in the introduction to the book that I really like: 'John Grierson's early definition of documentary in light of Flaherty's work as 'the creative treatment of actuality' (Rotha 1952: 70) has been viewed as contradictory. As Winston (1995:11) suggests: 'The supposition that any "actuality" is left after "creative treatment" can now be seen as being at best naive and at worst a mark of duplicity'.
I have always been naive with regard to documentary. I really enjoy watching old newsreel such as the Pathe news films, information films and commercial works such as the films of the GPO Film Unit and the National Coal Board Film Unit.
A lot of documentary that I like is what I had previously considered to be Cinema Verite, Unmolested, undirected recordings of actual events. I become suspicious of documentaries with an agenda and have to be extra conscious of what I am actually being shown and decipher whether or not the image has been chosen, or worse, manipulated to fit in with the film maker's agenda. But I guess now that I have looked into it further, I feel that there is no such thing as a wholly truthful documentary film. Although it is considered the mechanical eye, all film has by it's very nature been set up to record something, therefore the film maker has had a decisive input from the very start. An exception to this, which is discussed at length in the book, is that of film as accidental record. This is where something is recorded that wasn't the intended record that the film maker was seeking to create when they set up the camera. The prime example of this is 'Abraham Zaprunder's 22 seconds of 8mm film showing the assassination of President Kennedy, 22 November 1963, Dallas, Texas'. Zaprunder didn't intend to film the shooting of the president but the footage caught the pivotal moment of that event.
Also of interest was the chapter in the book which discusses the use of voice over and narration. It looks at the opposing views of whether the voice over is a necessary evil of the documentary which gives insight or a device that could be leading the film to work on 'filmic-dramatic principles' which is in essence the opposite to 'true' Direct Cinema'.
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