The television documentary is an adaptable form of nonfictions programming

has served various functions like - an important point for national attention on complex issues, a record of the human experience and the natural world, and an instrument of artistic and social expression.

Unlike other programming on television, documentaries have typically been sustained for reasons other than high ratings and ad sales.

Consequently, the health of the documentary form serves as an indicator of a network's commitment to news and as an indicator of social, political, and economic dynamics.

TV DOCUMENTARY

Firstly, they concentrate upon actual evidence relating to real events in history

and the world around us rather than fictional stories.

Secondly, the way documentaries are made, that is the devices/techniques used to film

real people, real events or explain historical events and scientific discoveries

for example, tend to be different from fiction films.

Thirdly, documentaries speak about or allow others to speak for themselves. The

documentary filmmaker often acts as a representative of the public.

Fourthly, documentaries provide a particular view, interpretation or understanding of the

evidence put before us.

PURPOSE OF TV DOCUMENTARY

TYPES OF DOCUMENTARIES

TYPES OF TV DOCUMENTARIESFly on the wall documentary:

In which the camera becomes invisible whilst following people in the course of their daily lives e.g., No going back, Airport

Video diaries:Only one highly portable camera is used

in this very personal & individual form. The camera is used as a ‘confident’ . This is gradually

replacing fly on the wall.

Docusoap or reality TVUsually part of a series of programmes which feature a look at an institution

through a set of ‘characters’ who appear each week e.g., Big Brother, America’s Next Top model, Wife swap,

Shipwrecked.

Drama documentaryWhere the events are re-created using

actors but actual facts and real events form the story. E.g.,

Hillsborough,

Direct CinemaStyle of documentary produced in 1960s.Came about as result of widespread availability of cheap, portable lightweight audio-visual equipmentAimed at objectivity: no narrator, simply fly-on-the-wall filming of events and people, leaving it up to the audience to draw conclusions. Approach is in direct contrast to the tradition of the ‘Authored Documentary’, which is clearly the opinion of an individual.

Rules of Direct cinema:Documentaries were not to include interviewsThere were to be no rehearsals prior to filmingNo staged events or commentaryNo film lightsNo dissolve edits to be used

STYLES AND INFLUENCES

Examples: D A Pennebaker‘Don’t Look Back’(1968)

Albert and David Myles ‘GimmeShelter’(1970)

Direct cinema lead to observational (‘Fly on the wall’) documentary style which has

remained a popular genre. Has had a massive influence on contemporary TV: Reality TV, docu-soaps, video diaries

Take ordinary, common experience and look at it

through the eyes of the public. Are called docu-soaps because they are similar to soap operas

in terms of:a.Fast editingb.Multi-strand narrativesc.Part of a series and often end on a cliffhanger ‘next week on…..’

DOCUSOAPS

Are very popular: Ex: ‘The Cruise’ averaged 11 million viewers, ‘Driving School’ peaked at 12.45 million viewers. Common characteristics are:a.Emphasis on entertainment

rather than instructionb.Based around personalities who

often ‘play up’ to the camera, and talk directly to camera. They often become celebrities themselves Eg Jeremy Spake in ‘Airport’

c.Prominent, guiding voice-over often by an established actor

d.Focus on everyday lives and problems rather than underlying social issues

e.Selective editing: some scenes are known to have been ‘set-up’

Probably the most traditional of documentary formats –‘Panorama’, ‘Dispatches’ Usually shown by Public Service Broadcasting channels, Eg BBC, Channel 4, and normally investigate/explore current affairs issues. Can often be polemical –drawing attention to a perceived wrong -and can have significant impact, for example ‘World In Action’ investigation leading to release of The Birmingham Six.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS DOCUMENTARIES

VIDEO DIARIES Again, descended from Direct Cinema –seen by audiences as reliable and truthful as the subject is filming

themselves.

An off-shoot of this are the documentaries which use surveillance

technology as entertainment (infotainment), with audiences

enjoying their voyeuristic nature Eg ‘Police, Camera, Action’, ‘Cops With

Cameras’

DRAMA DOCUMENTARIES

These are documentaries exploring a social issue or drawing

attention to a miscarriage of justice but they are scripted and acted dramas. EG ‘Hillsborough’, ‘Roots’(1977). Filmed equivalents would be a big-picture such as

‘Gandhi’

MOCKUMENTARIESUse the documentary format for comic effect, either:

Parodying the genreParodying an area of life

Parodying both

RADIO DOCUMENTARY A radio documentary or feature is a purely acoustic performance devoted to covering a

particular topic in some depth. usually with a mixture of commentary and sound

pictures. It is broadcast on radio or published on audio

media, such as tape or CD. Some radio features, especially those including

specially composed music or other pieces of audio art, resemble radio drama in many ways,

though non-fictional in subject matter. others consist principally of more

straightforward, journalistic-type reporting – but at much greater length than found in an

ordinary news report.

At its best, radio combines the power and immediacy of great documentary films with the intimacy and poetry of

a New Yorker-style magazine piece.—Columbia Graduate School of Journalism

Staring red-eyed at the mirror in front of me, having spent another day and half of the night with my

computer, I ask myself fundamental questions: Why radio? Why documentary? Answer: No other medium can

provide me with more freedom of creation and investigation. It meets my urgent interest in reality

and the desire for a 'musical' expression. The material (Der Werkstoff) is sound. And sound always surrounds us. And: I'm not so much interested in the description of stable situations, but in processes. Our medium is not

space, but time; our stories are not glued to the ground, but have motion, life ... That's why!

—Helmut Kopetzky, German author

DOCUMENTARIES IN THIRD WORLD

Tremendous interest in this field particularly in third world countries like

India, Iran, South Korea and Malaysia

In Indian context this format has been revived due to its flexibility, cost cutting capacity, messaging potential and creative

satisfaction. Indian Producers like Chitra

Narain and Danish Iqbal have been accredited with its revival and popularity.

 "Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai' is considered a Classic for the use of effective narrative

and ambient sounds.

NEW MEDIA DOCUMENTARIES

advent of digital technologies has created marvelous opportunities for the world of documentary making.

Digital recording and archiving, the internet, and increasingly instantaneous global communication is changing the way media can be created and viewed.

augment old forms and create completely new ones.

During the 1990’s there was an explosion of experimentation in documentary making utilizing New Media, coinciding with the boom in the internet and other explorations of computer capabilities.

The Voyager company of the early 90’s released a wide variety of works on CD-ROM.

The efforts were offshoots of research that had been undertaken at universities for quite some time. These efforts ranged from presentations of Mozart’s Music (pictured below) to stories pulled from the pages of National Geographic Magazine. These media works incorporated an enormous variety of media sources: sound, graphics, and interactive games and tests. Unfortunately, the limitations of graphics, playback, distribution, and cost meant that the company went of business by the mid 90’s.

The internet has, however, proven to be an incredibly rich place for

documentary.The ongoing convergence of text, video, and audio provided media makers with a

wide array of compositional tools. An excellent example of the convergence

of programming and interface and interaction design can be found in A

Random Walk through the 20th Century, a tribute to Professor Jerome B. Wiesner.

The notion of audience interaction and participation is a driving force when creating New Media documentaries.

AkaKURDISTAN uses the internet and new media to build awareness of the state of the Kurdish people, an ethnic group that stretches across the nations of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.

User submitted stories and images are an integral part of the very creation of the project’s content.

AkaKurdistan also includes a book and a museumexhibition, rendering it a truly multi-media work.This issue of multi-form development is an important one in New Media documentary making.

The ability to communicate instantaneously over great distances is another is another aspect of New Media

documentary making.

The New Americans website includes dispatches and updates to the activities of a film crew as they spend two years tracking the following the lives of people planning to immigrate to the United States from countries like Nigeria and the Dominican Republic.

BecomingHuman.org is a fascinating website documentary that brings the expository form into the new media

realm. Users can watch video streams, explore 3D models, and access the latest

news on evolutionary discoveries.

Many of the barriers between the performer and audience have started to collapse. One outcome of

this trend is the “cam” phenomena.Perhaps the best-known and earliest of the “cam”

form of self-mediation is JennyCam.The television show “Big Brother” brought the cam notion to a mass notion in a multi form variant.These programs range from MTV’s long running “The

Real World” which was certainly one of the precursors to both Big Brother and JennyCam, to

“Lost” in which show participants are dropped off in an unknown location and are expected to find their way back to a specified location, to “Cops” wherein a camera crew follows police officers on

their rounds. Few would argue that these programs, with the possible exception of “Cops,” constitute “real”

documentary. They are strong examples of the notion of self-mediation, in that those portrayed are “real

people.”

TECHNOLOGY AND ITS IMPACT

it has become an assessable medium for many filmmakers, and thus, documentary films can be shot, edited, and produced by aspiring filmmakers without a budget at all. Now, with the improvements, cameras have become as commonplace as a pair of shoes. We have cell phones that will shoot in better than the technology used in the earlier films. Technology improvements have made noise disturbances easier to handle as well. Eg. Parametric equalization Technology has also improved documentary films in the availability of a medium on which to show your work. DVD’s have made it so easy to burn and distribute your work.

the operating system you produce your work on, can immediately transfer that work to an acceptable medium for viewing.

The new lighting system available in markets at cheap costs have made the documentaries look more colorful, lively and energetic unlike the previous dull effects.

Use of graphics, music, animation have all made documentaries more interesting, which appeal to the audiences, in a way increasing demand and populartity.

The acclaimed 2009 documentary Tehran Without Permission was made surreptitiously on a Nokia N95 camera phone by Sepideh Farsi and played at festivals worldwide .

NEW TRENDS IN DOCUMENTARY1. Today’s documentary filmmakers are making

bold stylistic choices more often associated with narrative storytelling than documentary filmmaking and finding savvy new ways to engage audiences.

2. Another trend is one of self-sufficiency, filmmakers embarking on and sometimes finishing projects entirely on their own. Alison Klayman, whose Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,  Sparrow Songs, Everything is a remix etc.

3. Filmmakers pursuing hybrid strategies, in which documentaries are inflected with elements more commonly found in fiction films. Alma Harrell's documentary, Bombay Beach, is a great example.

4. According to John Corner we live in a "post-documentary culture" by which he means that the traditional documentary practice no longer exists.

4. Taking up international topics- Eddie Schmidt, an Oscar nominated filmmaker says,

“A lot of US filmmakers are taking on

international topics and I think this is in contrast to the overall myopia and

narcissism of American culture, which tends to take very little substantive interest in anything outside of itself. So documentary

filmmakers are motivated to fill these gaps in our understanding, thankfully. This is

the new journalism.”

5. Animation is the new form in documentaries. Eg.  Waltz with Bashir would have been unheard of in the 60s or 70s.

THE BLURRING LINES BETWEEN DOCUMENTARY AND FEATURE FILM

1. With new experiments and forms coming in, the filmmakers are pushing the

genre of documentary

2. From “Exit Through the Gift Shop” and “Catfish” to “I’m Still Here,” more documentary films are blurring the line between fiction and nonfiction and being charged with deliberately

playing loose with the facts.

3. “If you start to question the truth, it all becomes a presumed fiction. And that is a nail in the coffin of the form,” says Nina Gilden Seavey, an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker 

4.  Morgan Spurlock, whose spry 2004 film “Super Size Me” about

his McDonald's-only diet helped documentary films gain wider exposure, said debates over what is permitted in documentary filmmaking aren’t new and have been broached by some of the

genre’s masters.

5. “When Errol Morris made ‘The Thin Blue Line,’ they called it heresy that he had some re-creations in the movie. ‘How could you do that? That’s not what

a documentary is,’” he said of the reactions to Mr. Morris‘ film in the

late-1980s.

6. Thom Powers, artistic director of the DOC NYC Festival, points to films like 1967’s “David Holzman’s Diary” and 1972’s “The Hellstrom Chronicle” as earlier examples of films fusing fact

and fiction.

7. And the fusion of fact and fiction is occurring on the other side of the divide as some of the documentary

genre’s stylistic tropes are showing up in — of all places — horror films. Such films as “The Blair Witch Project,” “Paranormal Activity” and “The Last Exorcism” all employ documentary elements to heighten their scares