Part 2
Do
you think camera angles are important in documentaries?
Yes, I do. Camera angles – like all film
techniques – are as important in documentary films as in all films. A camera
angle can help orient audiences and if they don't know where they are or which
direction they are supposed to be looking in, they can feel confused. And once
audiences feel confused they tend to stop being interested in the story (or
narrative).
There's also an artistic aspect to this. If all
films – doco or drama – used just one angle, it would probably be quite boring
to look at. This is, in fact, a technique that has been used by some artistic
filmmakers (we call them 'art-house films') – the New York artist/filmmaker Andy
Warhol is one example - but they
are doing to this make a point about point of view, perspective and art rather
than tell a story as most docos and drama films
do.
A
documentary involves the use of narrators, music, speech & special Effects
etc in order to captivate the viewer & expand their knowledge. Does that
make a Documentary a form of drama simply extended by fact. What do you think of
this?
Or maybe dramas are forms of documentary simply
extended by fiction? After all, the very first films that were made in France in
1895 were all early types of the documentary.
Not all documentaries, by the way, use narrators,
special effects, and music (I assume you mean non-diegetic music? – if you
haven't come across this term, ask you teacher!) I am not sure what you mean by
'speech' – can you explain? In the 1960s and 1970s there was a trend for a
documentary genre called 'observational' or 'fly on the wall' that didn't use
any of these additional film techniques. I was believed that if it didn't, the
documentary would get closer to 'reality'. But doco filmmakers now realise that
a documentary can only ever represent (ie "re-present") reality and it is just
as much an art form as a drama so this genre is no longer very
fashionable.
In the mid 1990s, a group of Danish filmmakers
thought that drama films shouldn't have narration, music, special effects, etc
(They called themselves DOGMA). Lars von Trier is the best known. Their films are very arty and quite
interesting although never hugely popular.
[End of
Part 2 – see next email for Part
3]
