Documentary means different things to different people. A documentary aims to be concerned with truthful reporting. Documentaries have a reputation for being serious, reliable and objective in their reporting, with a commitment to truthfulness. There are documentary programmes with elements of comedy, or drama, and the modern documentary uses elements from entertainment programming to attract an audience and be entertaining.

The British...

Introduction

All three A Level Media Studies exam specifications emphasise the study of the representation of difference.

AQA suggests:

A case study of refugees in British newspapers for example, would involve research into, and documentation of, the treatment of refugees in a variety of British newspapers (or possibly just one) to pinpoint the political and social reasons for the construction of such media representations and the possible...

By Tina Dixon & Jeremy Orlebar

Week 1 Overview

Video of various extracts of documentaries shown in class using a glossary of documentary definitions and a worksheet identifying codes and conventions of documentary.

OHP used on various hybrids of documentary that students copy.

World at War Episode 15 looked at and a worksheet filled in to highlight key codes and conventions. This series was made on film.

Homework

Students are to watch a...

An Introduction to Documentary

Documentary on MediaEdu

Ideas for Teaching Documentary

Documentary Quiz 1

Documentary Quiz 2

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These quizzes are best viewed in Firefox.

Firefox is an excellent alternative to Internet Explorer which is available free for both PCs and Macs.

Documentaries | Analysing Being Terri.doc

Documentaries | Analysing Wife Swap.doc

Documentaries | Big Brother Reality TV.ppt

Documentaries | Comparative Essay Frame.doc

Documentaries | Discussion.doc

Documentaries | Friedmans Exam.doc

Documentaries | History Quiz.doc

Documentaries | Michael Moore Essay Frame.doc

Documentaries | Past Questions.doc

Documentaries | Reality TV.ppt

Documentaries | Understanding.ppt

1. Where does the word documentary come from?

2. When and by whom was it brought to England?

3. What does the word documentary mean in French?

4. How did John Grierson later define the term documentary?

5. Who are the two people supposed to have made the first non-fiction films?

6. What were these types of films called?

7. How many reels of film did the Life of Villa use?

8. How did the documentary film begin to be used during the...

1. I watch documentaries to widen my horizons. I feel I’m learning more about the world in which I live.

2. Documentaries are a welcome relief from the endless round of games and quiz shows which seem to dominate the schedules nowadays.

3. What I expect from a documentary is that it will tackle issues in greater depth than a news or current affairs programme ever could.

4. Some of these programmes are really quite exciting. You can get very...

With reference to both the Versace and the Spice Girls Documentaries, how do these texts offer the audience a sense of ‘true documentary’?

This essay will involve a comparison of the two post 1990 texts that we have studied. You must write in full sentences, comparing the two, and offering an argument towards the initial question .

Follow each step to write the perfect essay. It is up to you to add in the detail.

1. Introduce the essay. Say...

Evaluating “Bowling for Columbine”

Intervention

• Does Moore mostly act in observational or proactive mode?
• Why does he do this? To what effect?

Representation

• How careful is Moore in avoiding stereotypes?
• Is he careful or deliberate in his use of visual conventions and imagery?
• In whose interests is he operating? How do we know?

Inflection

• How does Moore use: a) Editing, b) Filmic style, to create meaning?

Narrative

• Does the narrative...

Century Films

Century Films create innovative, hard-hitting documentaries and dramas for all the major UK broadcasters, with sales to many international channels. Their work is distinctive, challenging and inventive - and above all, compelling.

They are renowned for producing award-winning work that gives a fresh angle on difficult subjects.

By applying an innovative approach to our films, they push the boundaries of documentary and drama...

Michael Moore Essay Frame on ‘Bowling for Columbine’

Comparative Documentary Essay Frame

Documentary Discussion Points

History of Documentary Quiz

Also available from Mediaedu’s download page

Barthes, Rolands,“Camera Lucida”, Vintage, London, 1980

Bazin, Andre, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image”, in Hugh Gray (ed) What is Cinema?, vol.1, University of California Press, 1967

Blandford, Steve, Barry Keith-Grant and Jim Hillier, “The Film Studies Dictionary”, Arnold, London, 2001

Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson, “Film History: An Introduction”, Mc Graw Hill, 2003

Gibson, Pamela Church and John Hill, “The Oxford Guide to...

The Spin Off: Mockumentary

As every form of art took a sense of post-modernism upon itself so parodies appeared. The Mockumentary is a clever fictional genre which shows the audience how easy it is to make people believe something that is not true really is.

The first and most famous Mockumentary, that wasn’t intended to be a Mockumentary at all in the first place, but had the effect of one, was Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast...

Why is Contemporary Documentary so popular?

To think about what makes it so popular I think it is important to look at the “news values” that journalists deem “newsworthy” articles to have. In 1965 In 1965, Galtung and Ruge came up with a list of “values” that they felt were necessary for an article or story to be worthy of reportage space.

Impact

Threshold: A big story is one that has an extreme effect on a large number of people. Where...

Werner Herzog

Grizzly Man (2005)

A devastating and heartrending take on grizzly bear activists Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard, who were killed in October of 2003 while living among grizzlies in Alaska.

Große Ekstase des Bildschnitzers Steiner, Die (1974)

The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner is a study of the psychology of a champion ski-jumper, whose full-time occupation is carpentry.

Mein liebster Feind - Klaus Kinski (1999)

In...

After the Second World War, most documentary filmmaking remained in the control of large institutions and corporate funding, fewer documentaries appeared in theatre programmes as the rise of television and television journalism took over. Most older documentarists become less active, Dziga Vertov supervised newsreels until his death, Robert Flaherty died in 1951 and failed to make a feature for many years before his death and John Grierson left...

Film Under Nazi Regime

Early German Cinema was renown for “German Expressionism”, a style which much influenced the Universal reign of horror in the USA. The early period between world war I and world war II was the era of the Weimar Republic, the other popular style of this time was films about the city… “City Symphonys”, similar to travelogues but in most cases exploring the worries of industrialisation and the loneliness of the City, rather...

Film and The Social Union

Nicholas II succeeded his father Alexander III as the Tsar of Russia, reigning from 1st November 1984 until his forced abdication on 15th March 1917. Renowned for his doubtfulness in receiving the crown, Nicholas said upon his father’s death “what is going to happen to me and of Russia?”, what would happen in fact would be a total revolution and turn around of the country.

Nicholas’ doubts and concerns grew as he felt...

Scottish, John Grierson had been educated in America during the 1920s, where he became fascinated by the power of cinema and how it controlled the masses’ responses and reactions. However he found himself disappointed that Hollywood pushed entertainment, entertainment, entertainment, over juxtapositions of entertainment and education.

Grierson’s Influences…

In America he helped prepare...

In Andre Bazin’s “Ontology of the Photographic Image” from What is Cinema? He announces his belief in Cinema as True Realism:

“The quarrel over realism in art stems from a misunderstanding, from a confusion between the aesthetic and psychological; between true realism, the need that is given significant expression to the world both concretely and its essence, and the pseudorealism of a deception aimed a fooling the eye (or the mind for that...

Early documentary consisted of actualites, first produced by the Luminere Brothers at the beginning of cinema, they were visual attractions which showed small fragments of life. After this came the Travelogues and Newsreels during the early days of the studio system. Travelogues were often commissioned by governments or tourist boards and showed exotic places moving past the audience.

Nanook of...

There are two important things you must consider before producing a documentary: the audience and the subject.

The Subject

Representation basically means re-presenting something, you can not present something in the real. Cinema as a medium always represents what was happening in front of the camera when it was filming. Media representation is the depiction or manner of depiction of people, places and events through the media.

There are many...

Poetic Mode

Reassembling fragments of the world, a transformation of historical material into a more abstract, lyrical form, usually associated with Grierson, 1920s and Modernists.

Humphrey Jennings - Fires Were Started

This video has been removed from YouTube.

There are many definitions for what Documentary is, but it is an incredibly ambiguous subject as you will discover. Documentary is NOT a GENRE. The best definition can be found in the Film Studies Dictionary

(Blandford, Keith-Grant & Hiller, 2001; 73)

Documentary is…

‘ANY film practice that has its subject persons, events or situations that exist outside the film in the real world, also referred to as NON-FICTION FILM. ‘

Examples of Factual...

Documentary is about creating drama from the real, rather than constructing drama. However, do not be fooled - documentaries are often far more constructed than they appear to the audience.