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ESSAY

There are many different styles of documentaries out there; fly-on-the-wall, video diary, comedic, but the one I'm going to talk about is reconstruction.

Reconstruction is used in a documentary in order to help the viewer visualise what the documentary is about or what the interviewees are talking about. For example: Touching the Void is a documentary about 2 mountain climbers and along with interviews with them, the director decided to include reconstruction (also known as re-enactment) in order to help the viewer understand what happened and also for those who don't understand mountain climbing. They would find it useful to watch along and see how things went wrong.

Another example would be The Imposter. The Imposter uses re-enactment in a more cinematic way than Touching The Void because they use the real star of documentary in the re-enactment which makes it that much more real and in a way, confusing because they see this bad guy (Bourdin) throughout the documentary not only in the archive footage but also in the reconstructed footage.

Reconstruction is particularly useful in factual documentaries if the directors (and crew) are having difficulty putting the situation into words or if it's too difficult for them to describe using only words. Using reconstruction is very effective in helping to create a visual guide or even making the documentary look better. The use of reconstruction also makes the viewer believe that they are actually experiencing what the people in the documentary experienced, it helps to draw the viewer in.

Often, reconstruction is used with a voice over. The voice over helps the viewer to follow along, especially if there's no dialogue or if it's in a different language. By adding a voice over, the reconstruction will make more sense for the viewer.

Another technique used in reconstruction is text. Often before the reconstructed scene begins, text will appear stating that the next scene is reconstructed. Or text could be used throughout the scene explaining where the people are or what they're saying (subtitles).

Reconstruction is useful in many ways, however there are certain problems that come along with the use of reconstruction. There is the fact that much of it may not even be what actually happened. For example: in The Imposter, the re-enactment is a lot more dramatic than the reality was purely because of the fact that the director wanted to entice the viewer and keep them on the edge of their seats. The use of darker colouring in the reconstructed footage helps to set the tone of the documentary as ominous and dark. You can see the difference from the archive footage especially when 'Nicholas' arrives at the airport. In the archive footage, the airport is well lit and it's simple videography. But in the reconstructed footage, the shots used are a lot more cinematic (e.g. zooms, pull focuses etc.) to create more suspense and drama. 

Directors of factual documentaries always face the problem of: sticking to the story while doing reconstruction because while they want to stay true in telling the story, they also want their documentary to sell and they want it to do well. So by adding more dramatic flair into the reconstruction, it means that the viewers won't be bored watching a simple film but they will be riveted and on the edge of their seats by the drama and the suspense and the action happening on the screen.

After a documentary airs, there are always going to be reviews. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. Many people will comment on the use on reconstruction and whether or not it was faked.

Let's go into Touching the Void in more detail.

Touching the Void includes the re-enactment of the disastrous mountain climbing accident that happened to Simon Yates and Joe Simpson in the 1980s. The film is made up of interview from Yates and Simpson themselves, along with their friend Richard Hawking. It also includes reconstructed scenes of the mountain climb.

The viewers are kept on the edge of their seats as things start to go wrong on the descent back to basecamp. Simpson manages to break his leg, and Yates tries to lower him down the mountain using their rope but seeing as the snow is gathering speed and strength, Yates can't see properly so he accidentally lowers Simpson into a crevice. The rope isn't long enough and though Yates tries to hold on, he eventually cuts the rope leaving his friend to fall to what he thinks is his death.

But.

Simpson survives the fall and manages to crawl down the rest of the mountain to their basecamp just before Hawking and Yates planned to leave for home.

Through the reconstruction we can see the hardships that both of the climbers had to go through on that perilous journey up and down the mountain. Even though we know Simpson doesn't die, his interview is in the film, we still can't help but gasp as we watch him fall. Without the reconstruction, we the viewers wouldn't have had that reaction. We would've just been listening to them talk about it. But with the reconstruction we can see exactly how Simpson survives and how Yates makes it down the mountain.

Two professional mountain climbers are used during the re-enactment but we can't tell that they're not Simpson and Yates as their faces are so covered by snow, they are unrecognisable. This is very clever on the directors part. By doing this, it makes it a lot more real for the viewer as they don't know it's not Simpson and Yates.

The Imposter takes a different approach in using re-enactment.

The Imposter is a documentary about a man called Frederik Bourdin (23 at the time) who takes on the identity of a missing teenage boy called Nicholas Barclay. Bourdin has the nickname of 'The Chameleon' in many countries. The documentary is about Bourdin's transformation into Barclay and the police trying to find out what really happened to Nicholas.

Bourdin finds out about the missing teenager from Texas and decides that he's going to become him. The film starts with a re-enactment scene: Bourdin in a phone box, calling the police and pretending he has found Nicholas Barclay. It's interesting that the director decided to use Bourdin in the re-enactment scenes instead of another actor, because by using Bourdin we can really see what goes through his mind and how far he took the transformation. In the phone box, Bourdin is already in his Nicholas disguise.

Throughout the film, home videos of the Barclay family are shown along with interviews with a few select members of the family. The home videos are crucial to the development of the documentary because we get to see what the real Nicholas is like and we see how Bourdin differs from him, in the way he acts.

However, Bourdin has made up a story about how Nicholas suffered abuse while he was gone and so Bourdin acts subdued and doesn't talk at all. This helps him be further welcomed back into the family as some of them believe he is so traumatised that his memory is gone however, some of the family members are suspicious of him.

Through the use of the re-enactment, we get to see Bourdin transform which is very interesting to watch because you forget that you're watching a re-enactment, seeing as Bourdin is the same in both interviews and re-enactment.

Overall I think that reconstruction is a very important part of factual documentaries as it helps to portray emotions better and it helps to create a visual for the viewer. Also reconstruction allows the director more room to be creative, and add bits to the story or take bits away as they please. If all they had in a documentary was interviews and archive footage, that documentary wouldn't attract much from attention from festivals or critics. It would be very repetitive with people telling the same story over and over.

I personally don't think it matters if the reconstruction is faked as long as it's believable and doesn't stray too far away from the original story.

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#10 THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES

THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES is an American documentary about the Siegel family. David Siegel, the husband & father, is a business man who owns Westgate Resorts in America and he marries a woman called Jackie who is 30 years younger than him. They have 8 children together. The documentary is about their life as they build one of the biggest and most expensive residence in America, but Siegel’s company is affected by the recession and so they have to put the house on the market.   This documentary was filmed in the style of ‘fly on the wall’ which means that a crew films the family going about their daily lives without interrupting them. The problem with this method of filming is that since they film over a long period of time, in the end product they can’t include every single shot as that would make the movie very long so the audience wouldn’t get to see everything that happens in the family’s lives.

This documentary portrays the Siegel family in a bad way, it makes the viewer dislike them from the get-go because of how spoiled and arrogant they are. At one point in the documentary, a pet lizard dies and one of the children says "I didn't even know we had a lizard." This just proves that the children are overindulged and get everything they want.

By using the fly on the wall style it means that there is a lot of footage that didn't make it into the final cut which makes the viewer curious to see if the Siegels are like that all the time or if they were just portrayed that way for the sakes of the documentary. Throughout the documentary there were also interviews with the Siegel family members in various places. These interviews were necessary to the documentary because it shows how the family feels about the new house and how they feel about the recession that happens during the filming of the documentary. The recession is the reason the Siegels had to put the Versailles house up for sale. The house was worth 65 million dollars and no one could afford to buy it especially during the recession so it stayed unused and incomplete.

Also in the documentary we saw one of Jackie Siegel's old friends who was going through money troubles so Jackie loaned her some money but it wasn't enough. Jackie could've loaned her friend a lot more money but she didn't. By showing the viewer this, it paints Jackie in a bad light and makes you dislike her even more. It also shows how different the rich live from the rest of the world. It shows how horrible people with a lot of money can be.

I think that this documentary is a good documentary, I like the fly-on-the-wall style of filmmaking because it showed what the family was actually like instead of the version that the public sees. It gave us a look into how the other half live.

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#9 SUPERSIZE ME

SUPERSIZE ME is a documentary that follows Morgan Spurlock (director and star) as he takes on the task of eating only McDonald’s for 30 days to see how it affects his body and his health. Throughout the documentary he interviews members of the public about their eating habits, and he also talks about different statistics and facts about obesity in the US. Spurlock decided to make this documentary because of two girls who sued McDonalds because 'it made them obese'.

This documentary uses the video diary technique of filming and I think this was necessary for this topic because it let you see things from Spurlock's point of view and also it makes it seem more real.

One of the things Spurlock records is his visits to his doctors. When he tells them of his plan to eat only McDonalds, they all immediately discourage it and say that it could cause serious problems for his health but Spurlock advances with the project anyway. Throughout the documentary we see that Spurlock is gaining weight too quickly and that it could cause heart problems. Around three quarters of the way through, he visits one of his doctors and he immediately tells Spurlock that he should stop but Spurlock doesn't listen. The editing of this part is well done because it shows Spurlock meeting with his doctor then it cuts to him at home, feeling fatigued and sick. They use this technique throughout the documentary, showing how he can go from one extreme to another.

One important scene is at the first doctors appointment when Spurlock is getting his stats checked so that the viewers can see that he is indeed very healthy at the beginning. Then the viewers see that his health is slowly but surely deteriorating because of all the McDonald's meals.

The problem with the video diary format is that the viewer doesn't know what happened when the cameras were off. For example, Spurlock could've been taking vitamins or eating healthy foods in between scenes which would help to counteract the effects of all the fat he was consuming. This causes some dispute over whether the documentary is only showing the 'bad bits' in order to further prove their view on obesity in America.

Spurlock says in the documentary that “I was a big fan of personal responsibility - you know, no one is forcing you to eat. We’re not geese being stuffed with corn. ” which means he believes that McDonalds are not at fault, and that people need to take responsibility for their actions.

In my opinion I think this documentary is very effective in showing the facts in a way that is not biased. They also use comedy to make the documentary more watchable. I think that Spurlock was very clever in the way he got his point across by using comedy instead of putting the blame on someone.

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#8 THE BRIDGE

THE BRIDGE is a 2006 documentary by Eric Steel documenting suicides at the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco. He filmed the bridge for exactly a year, the footage was nearly 10,000 hours long. This film was inspired by an article in The New Yorker magazine called ‘Jumpers’ by Tad Friend. 

I think that from the get go Steel knew the film was going to get a lot of feedback both good and bad because of the nature of the film. However, whenever they could, the crew tried to intercede and they succeeded in preventing 6 people from jumping. Each member of the crew was trained in suicide prevention before they started filming and they all had their phones programmed to call the bridge officials if they suspected anything but in most cases, there was either no warning or no time to prevent the jump. 

"All of us came to the same conclusion that we were human beings first and filmmakers second." - Steel. 

There was a lot of controversy surrounding this movie when it hit film festivals, and began to gain a lot of publicity because Steel told the bridge officials that he was filming "to capture the powerful, spectacular intersection of monument and nature that takes place every day at the Golden Gate Bridge." Some people thought that the documentary was an invasion of privacy to the people who had jumped and also to their friends and families. 

In the documentary, Steel used lots of wide scenic shots of the bridge. Especially when someone jumped off. For example, at the very start of the documentary, the camera is panning the bridge and then all of a sudden you see someone jump off. It’s unexpected but it sets the tone for the rest of the documentary right away. He also uses music to portray the mood of the film, using it quietly in the background until someone jumps. That’s when the music will build to create suspense and drama.

I think that even though Steel said that he and the crew tried to prevent as many suicides as possible, I don’t think he was entirely truthful. They filmed at the bridge for a year and they only prevented 6 out of 24. Steel knew that he was filming a documentary on the suicides at this particular bridge so if they prevented every single jump then they wouldn’t have anything for the film. 

They also filmed interviews with friends and families of the jumpers and without these interviews, Steel wouldn’t have had much footage to work with.

I think that the Bridge is always going to cause controversy because of the sensitivity of the topic it covers, I personally don’t think that the movie should’ve been made because it seems disrespectful to the families and to the jumpers themselves. However in saying that, the people who were interviewed had known what they were being interviewed for so they agreed to that. Maybe they wanted to tell their stories in order to help people in the future, to let people know what signs to look out for. 

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#7 CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS

CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS is a documentary drama movie about the 1980s investigation into Arnold and Jesse Friedman, who were accused of and proven guilty of child molestation. The documentary features interviews with members of the Friedman family and the police detectives who investigated Arnold and Jesse. The film starts with a detective telling us how they interceded a package meant for Arnold from Norway that had a child pornography magazine in it and from there it shows how the Friedman's acted, and what evidence surfaced.

It features interviews from the time and from years after with members of the family and detectives from the case.

One problem the filmmakers would encounter with this type of story is whether what they're being told is the truth or not.

For example, the Friedmans could be biased towards Arnold and Jesse and therefore they would say that they were innocent without considering their guilt. Then on the other side you'd have the detectives being adamant that Arnold and Jesse were both guilty of what they'd been charged with.

However the documentary portrayed the police as leading a 'witch hunt' against the Friedmans. They were convinced that the Friedmans' were guilty and they had the evidence to prove it. Arnold's own wife, Elaine, believed that he was guilty. When Arnold was in prison, he admitted to secually assaulting his 8 year old brother when he was 13. This proved to the police that he was definitely 100% guilty and that he was rightfully imprisoned.

Like in The Imposter, the truth of what really happened will be hard to uncover. In The Imposter, no one really knows what happened to Nicholas Barclay and there is little to no evidence to aid the police. In Capturing the Friedmans, there is a lot more proof for the police to work off. They found child pornography magazines in the Friemans' house which led to the arrest of Arnold, what also helped was the fact that Arnold taught computer classes to children and a couple of those children reported abuse. Jesse sometimes helped Arnold in teaching the class and therefore he was arrested as well for assisting his father.

I think that if Elaine, Arnold's wife, believed he was guilty then he must've been because if he was found guilty then he would've gone to prison which Elaine knew and testified anyway.

However, it's hard to know what actually happened because the documentary won't talk about every thing that happened during the case. There could've been crucial evidence that the director, Andrew Jarecki, decided to keep out because he wanted to show a certain opinion or there could've been evidence that the police didn't want to disclose to the public. This is a problem with all documentaries, you have to wonder how much of it is truth and how much of it is fabricated to gain more viewers.

My personal opinion is that both Arnold and Jesse Friedman were guilty and should've been in prison for a long time. I believe that the documentary was as truthful as it could've been.

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#6 GRIZZLY MAN

GRIZZLY MAN is a 2005 American documentary movie directed by Werner Herzog. The movie is about a man called Timothy Treadwell who was a bear enthusiast and every summer for 13 years he went to live with bears until 2003 when he and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, were killed by a bear. 

In the documentary, Herzog included footage from Treadwell’s own camera from when he filmed the bears. Treadwell only started filming his adventures 5 years before his death but there was still over 100 hours of footage for Herzog to use when putting together the documentary. However there was one bit of footage that Herzog had but didn’t put into the documentary. 

Treadwell’s death. 

Treadwell had started recording when he was unfortunately attacked by a bear and killed, he didn’t get the visual of what happened but he managed to get the audio, all by accident. Also on the audio recording was his girlfriend, Amie’s death. 

One topic of discussion that followed the documentary’s release, even years after, was whether Herzog should have included the audio and the pictures of Treadwell’s remains or whether he was right to keep them from the documentary. It was a very sensitive topic. 

At one point in documentary, Herzog is seen listening to the audio and he tells Jewel Palovak (Treadwell’s ex girlfriend, also owner of all of Treadwell’s footage) that she should destroy the tape however later he says “Stupid... silly advice born out of the immediate shock of hearing—I mean, it’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever heard in my life...” He also says that since then, Jewel decided not to destroy the audio and she put it in a bank vault. Furthermore in the documentary we see Herzog looking at the photos of Treadwell’s remains but we, the viewers, don’t see them. 

Throughout the documentary Herzog portrays Treadwell in a good way, making sure to mention the good things he’s done. One example of this are interviews with people saying how much they respected Treadwell and appreciated what he was trying to do to save the bears. 

Through these interviews we can see the Herzog was trying to shine Treadwell in a good light, with positivity instead of a lot of negativity so maybe the reason Herzog didn’t put in the audio or the photographs is because he was trying to be sensitive and give Treadwell the respect he deserved. 

Another reason could be purely because the audio and pictures were so graphic that they wouldn’t be able to keep the documentary at a PG rating.

At one point Herzog did say that Treadwell ‘had a sentimental view of nature, thinking he could tame the wild bears...’ and he also said that ‘nature is cold and harsh...’ Treadwell had an image of bears in his head that clouded his judgement, and Herzog feels that he underestimated the bears therefore causing the death of him and his girlfriend.

In my opinion I think Herzog was right not to put the audio and the pictures in because it wasn’t respectful to both Treadwell and Huguenard, also to their friends and families who would probably watch the documentary when it came out. 

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#5 TOUCHING THE VOID

TOUCHING THE VOID is a docudrama (documentary drama) movie based on the real life events that were recorded in a book called Touching the Void (1988). 

This movie is about two men, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, who want to be the first to reach the summit of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes, they make the ascent but on the descent things start to go wrong. 

The director of this movie, Kevin MacDonald, decided that to make his documentary more interesting and easy to watch he would add the use of reconstruction. So for the scenes in the movie where Simpson and Yates are on the mountain, it’s actually two professional mountain climbers called  Brendan Mackey and Nicholas Aaron. 

Another reason the director used reconstruction is because a lot of people who watch the documentary may not be familiar with mountain climbing so by using the reconstruction footage it means that the viewers can see how it happens, and what the terminology means. If people watched this without the reconstruction then no one would’ve realised the severity of Simpson’s fall or how hard Yates’ decision was. 

This made the use of reconstruction necessary, unlike The Imposter where the movie could’ve been easily explained without the reconstruction footage. 

One problem with the use of reconstruction is that many people will wonder if what is shown is what actually happened, the director could choose to make the footage much more dramatic and tense than it really was for cinematic purposes. 

However in Touching The Void, the reconstruction footage is accompanied by interviews with the people who were involved in the real life events from 1985 so what they say will have to add up with what the footage is showing. Throughout the documentary, the interviews are used to provide a narrative which adds suspense and drama because you know they are telling the truth of what happened and then you see it happening on screen through the use of reconstruction which adds a sense of drama and expectation, because you want to know what happens next. 

They also had Simpson, Yates and Richard Hawking (a man who accompanied the two climbers but he didn’t climb himself) in separate interviews so that the audience would see if what they were saying added up with what the other’s were saying. 

Kevin MacDonald himself has said "That was my biggest fear: that people would watch Touching the Void and say: ‘My God, it's a big-screen version of 999 with Michael Buerk.’....  The answer we came up with was simple: no half measures. Keep the documentary element (the interviews) straightforward and make the dramatic elements feel as real as possible, filming in a naturalistic style with good actors and no apologies.”

The way MacDonald handled the film was extremely well done and it received good responses from the public and from critics. It also received a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. 

In my opinion, the interviews along with the reconstruction made the documentary what it was and it made it exciting to watch. 

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#4 THE IMPOSTER

THE IMPOSTER is a 2012 documentary film about a man, Frederic Bourdin (23 at the time), who took on the identification of a boy, Nicholas Barclay, who went missing in 1998 at the age of 13. The documentary includes interviews with members of Nicholas’ family and police detectives who were involved in the case. 

In France Bourdin is known as the Chameleon. He scans the news for missing persons and then he alters his appearance to become that person.

Throughout this documentary, reconstruction is used in a way that helps the people watching to visualize the extents that Bourdin went to in order to ‘become’ Nicholas Barclay. Without the use of reconstruction, the movie would’ve had a lot of talking and that would’ve been boring to watch. For example without the reconstruction, they would’ve only had the interviews with members of the family and the police which are interesting but they aren’t enough to fill a whole movie. A lot of filmmakers use reconstruction in documentaries but there comes a point when you wonder how much of the reconstruction is what actually happened and what has been made up for shock value. 

You can tell when the footage being shown is archive footage and when it’s the reconstructed footage by the quality of it. Usually, when filmmakers are making a documentary, the subject they will be doing it on will more than likely be something that happened a while ago so therefore the footage quality won’t be as good as the reconstructed footage. For example, in this documentary, you can tell when the footage they’re showing is really Nicholas instead of Bourdin because Nicholas’ footage will be home videos from the late 80s/early 90s so the quality wouldn't be as good as the reconstructed footage. From the home videos, the viewers would be able to see Nicholas' most identifying traits such as his blonde hair. This is important for when Bourdin 'becomes' Nicholas.

The reconstruction footage in this movie is particularly effective because it lets you get a glimpse into Bourdin's mind and what he was thinking during the process, also how he managed to worm his way into the Barclay family.

The documentary is edited in such a way that throughout Bourdin's transformation process, you begin to wonder how on earth the Barclay's willingly took in this man who clearly wasn't a teenage boy. This leads to the question of what if Nicholas' family weren't entirely truthful about what happened.

At the start of the documentary the viewer will start to wonder how the Barclay mistook this man for Nicholas but throughout the documentary we see that simply by wearing a lot of clothing, it's easy for Bourdin to disguise himself. For example when the policemen go to collect 'Nicholas' he is wearing a cap with lots of clothing, this effectively covers him up and because he won't remove any of this clothing the police let him because they believe he is traumatised.

However throughout the documentary there is a lot of, in my opinion, unnecessary reconstruction. It takes away from the storyline, and it means that there is less time for the interviews but in saying that, it is still a very compelling documentary.

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#3 CATFISH

CATFISH is a 2010 American documentary, directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, about a man called Nev (Ariel’s brother) who meets a woman called Megan through Facebook. The documentary is about the two brothers and Joost trying to find out if Megan is really who she says she is. 

The film starts off with Nev talking to the camera about how the documentary won't be good because he doesn't want to talk about what's happening but as the documentary progresses, we see that he talks more openly. This leads to the question; are parts of it faked?

I think that in order to create a documentary that will capture the viewer's intentions, some of it has to be faked to create suspense or drama. I think that the filmmakers want their documentary to do well so they'll add scenes that have been doctored or edited to be more exciting. However, there is the question of whether there should be faked scenes in a factual documentary.

If the documentary was on a topic that was very sensitive, e.g. war or racism, then faked scenes wouldn't be appropriate because those are serious subjects that have lots of information but in a documentary like CATFISH I think it's okay to fake scenes. 

"People are surprised we started filming as early as we did, but truth is, we've been filming each other for years, and we're always prepared. ... I've got this brother who is just very charismatic and gets into a lot of trouble and gets himself into situations, and if I'm not filming him, I usually regret it." This is a quote from Ariel Schulman when asked about whether CATISH is real or faked. Whether or not people believe this is up to them but I believe it. It's very hard to know what is real and what's not, especially on social media and the internet.

Ariel also said "...It was his life in front of the lens, and it gets pretty hairy. We have a couple arguments, and that's in the movie." when asked if there were any points when Nev didn't want to be filmed. As he says, there are moments when Nev asks Ariel to turn the camera off and he doesn't. This adds to the authenticity of the movie.

As the movie progresses, we see that 'Megan' is not who she says she is. We find out that it's a woman called Angela who is pretending to be Megan. Nev is obviously hurt by this but by the end of the movie, Angela and Nev have a long conversation and they become friends of sorts. Schulman and Joost could've decided to end the movie when they found out about Angela but they kept in the bit where Angela explains herself and tells her side of the story. At the end of the movie we feel a bit sorry for Angela and I think that's what they were aiming for.

Overall I think that Catfish is a very good documentary and whether or not bits are faked, it's still compelling and interesting to watch.

[choughfactual-blog]

#2 BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE

BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE is an American documentary made by Michael Moore, about the Columbine High School massacre. Michael Moore is famous for making controversial documentaries that cover a range of topics. This documentary in particular won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature.

Bowling for Columbine explores the reasons behind the shooting and it also investigates the cause of gun crime in America compared to other countries like Canada. 

Is Bowling for Columbine objective or subjective? I think that seeing as the documentary was directed, produced, written and narrated by Michael Moore, it will tend to lean more towards subjective because of the fact that Moore will want to portray his point with little to no views from the other side of the argument.

David T Hardy reviewed Bowling For Columbine and he brought to light the fact that Bowling For Columbine is deceptive and a lot of what Moore says is not the truth. An example of this would be; Moore made it out that Charlton Heston (leader of the NRA, a group that promotes the right to bear arms) held a NRA meeting in Denver right after the events of Columbine, which many saw as insensitive however Hardy made it clear that that meeting had been planned many years in advance.

Hardy continues to expose Moore by stating that Moore used unrelated footage and left out information that was critical.

Moore continues to make the NRA and Heston seem insensitive throughout the whole documentary and while their views aren't always right, they don't harm anyone. It is later shown that Moore himself is a member of the NRA which is seen as hypocritical.

At the time of watching the documentary, the viewers aren't aware that Moore is using fabricated footage so therefore they believe in Moore wholeheartedly and they support his (biased) explanations and opinions.

However.

Moore does include a lot of factual information which further helps to get his point across. He also talks about an incident in Michigan where a 6 year old boy shot his 6 year old classmate. The boy, Daniel, got the gun from his uncle's drawers. This helps proves Moore's point that the problem is not the guns, it's the people who own them. For example, the Columbine shooting was the result of two mentally unstable boys who had access to guns.

Bowling For Columbine is a very subjective documentary because Moore interviews victims from the Columbine shootings and he pushes his opinion throughout the entire film.

At the end of the day, Moore is a renowned filmmaker and he makes very compelling arguments which makes for interesting documentaries that sell. He makes documentaries on subjects that other people believe are too hard hitting to touch.

My opinion is that Bowling For Columbine is in fact a very good documentary as it uses a hint of comedy without being crude or disrespectful. It also helps to outline the main problem in America: gun control. It highlights the problem so that people who aren't from America can see the horrors that happen because of bad gun control.

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#1 WORLD AT WAR - EPISODE: ‘GENOCIDE’

GENOCIDE is episode 20 of 26 of a TV series called World at War (1973-74). Each episode of the TV series focuses on a different topic of World War 2. This particular episode focuses on the Holocaust, and it includes interviews with people who survived. GENOCIDE is presented by Sir Laurence Oliver and it includes both archive footage and harrowing pictures from the time.

This documentary takes on both objective and subjective views.

It's objective because GENOCIDE talks about the Holocaust which happened to Jews from countries like Germany, Poland, France etc. whereas GENOCIDE was produced and presented by British people, 30 years after the second world war was over.

As I mentioned before, World At War is a British TV show and the episode GENOCIDE is not about an event that happened in Britain. The Holocaust happened overseas in Germany and Poland, and because this TV show is made in Britain, it is very biased to the British army during the war and paints the Germans in a bad light.

Obviously the Nazis were German but not all Germans were on the other side during the war, but this is not expressed in GENOCIDE. Sir Laurence Oliver tells the viewers how the Germans were to blame, when it was only an elitist group that caused all the horror.

GENOCIDE didn't use reconstruction because the Holocaust is so horrifying that it wouldn't be morally right to reconstruct it for the sake of a documentary. Instead they used archive footage from the time. The footage they used in the documentary was harrowing and hard to watch, but it helped to get their point across and show that this horrible event actually happened and that the Holocaust victims were real people.

Weaved into the documentary were interviews with varied people for example: one of Himmler's associates, Wilhelm Höttl was interviewed.

Wilhelm Höttl told the interviewer that Himmler decided shooting the Jews wasn't enough and so gas chambers were brought in. This is a very sinister interview as Höttl was a member of the elite group of Germans who murdered the Jews and therefore, the viewers immediately took a dislike to him. This was purposeful in order to keep the viewers biased towards the British.

I didn't like this documentary much because of how aged it was, and the topics it covered. It's hard to watch and nearly brought me to tears because of what the Jews had to go through. In a way, by using the harrowing images it makes the documentary more memorable and this is probably what they were aiming for. Also the producers probably felt that more people needed to be educated on the World War and therefore created World At War.

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MY DOCUMENTARY

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SHOOTING SCHEDULE

ORDER OF FILMING:

SCENE 1 – Katie walking into school, carrying bag and books.

SCENE 3 & 4 & 5 – Katie drawing

SCENE 2 – Katie doing paper mache

SCENE 6 - Short clip of Katie and her classmates

FADE OUT

PLAY MUSIC OVER THE WHOLE THING, FADE THE MUSIC OUT AT THE END. 

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I decided to do my documentary based around an art student because I think that art is often discarded as a ‘filler subject’ and not a serious one. So I decided to film an art student going about her day in college. 

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This is where I’ll film my documentary (Limavady NWRC).

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SECONDARY RESEARCH

This is an 18 minute long documentary on YouTube by a YouTuber called Tania the Pirate. 

‘A Day In The Life Of An Art Student’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfd45Dob0j8

SUBJECT RESEARCH

Art is a very diverse subject, it includes: drawing, sculpting, photography, dance etc. 

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PRIMARY RESEARCH

Here’s a survey I did to find out what kind of documentary people would like:

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/C6NJXSD