The Zen of Filmmaking: Balance of Heart and Mind
Chapter II: The Documentary: Past and Present
:: Setting the Stage: Art
vs. Function in the 1930s
:: The TV Revolution: The Issue of Audience
:: The Purpose of Truth
What makes
a film a documentary? Is it in the material presented? Is it in the presentation
itself? Is it documentation, representation, or truth? What makes a documentary
successful? The answers to these underlying questions remain ambiguous
even today, over a century after the birth of the documentary. The one
thing that can be certain is that documentaries are works of art that
belong to the nonfiction realm, distinguishing themselves from fiction
films. Aside from this defining characteristic, that its content seemingly
claims to lie within reality or factual information, documentaries have
no limit on the forms they can take, sometimes utilizing elements and
techniques from the fiction world. Robert Flaherty, most widely known
as the “father of the documentary”(1),
employed several elements of fiction in his films. Other filmmakers, notably
John Grierson and his General Post Office (GPO) cohorts, disagree with
such a method, clearly demarcating the line between fiction and nonfiction
by emphasizing the factual content over artistic form.
Over half a century later, the difference in these two approaches can
still be seen in films that are on the same topic yet seem to be worlds
apart in their general tone and effect. A major factor of consideration
in a filmmaker’s decision to choose one form over the other is the
target audience, which is usually determined by either the filmmaker or
the employer. Another factor lies in the filmmaker’s own ethical
considerations for presenting the material and the subjects. Variations
in the approaches that filmmakers take stem from their need to either
convey “truth” or to keep the integrity of the film, the topic,
or the subjects. In the end, however, documentaries will always be a product
of a compromise between the filmmaker’s personal vision and his/her
considerations of external influences, namely the target audience, the
employer, or the subjects.
Setting the Stage:
Art vs. Function in the 1930s
In the documentary tradition, there have been two kinds of films: the
unique, creative work of art that maintains integrity but is not widely
seen, and the more popular piece on common subjects that is seen by mass
audiences. The difference between these two lies within both the film’s
form and its purpose. The purpose of a film usually is the defining factor
as to the form that the film takes. For example, if a filmmaker’s
main concern is in presenting information and informing his/her audience,
the film might take the format of a didactic, educational lecture. If
a filmmaker’s aim is to portray a story, interesting characters,
or a poetic or artistic interpretation of a subject, the film may take
an entertaining or dramatic format. Depending on the purpose, a filmmaker
may adopt either a controlled, scripted style, or a more loosely organized,
unrehearsed approach. The point of contention, then, seems to be on what
to emphasize more: the aesthetic form or the factual content.
Robert Flaherty chose to place more emphasis on the form. In his Man
of Aran (1934)(2), a feature-length
documentary on the lifestyle of Aran islanders in their struggle to survive
the tumultuous, thrashing waves and basking sharks circling their island,
Flaherty employs narrative devices and cinematic techniques, such as textual
narration, music, montage and long action sequences, in order to capture
a fading culture.(3)
In giving particular attention to the film’s visual qualities and
artistic representation of his subjects’ lifestyle, Flaherty disregards
the role of spoken language in conveying information. The film begins
with Flaherty’s signature use of black-on-white intertitles to establish
the setting, and throughout the film the necessary facts are provided
in the form of explanatory textual narration, with no use of voiceover
commentary. In fact, the only words that are heard come from the subjects,
whose dialog was synced in postproduction. This use of non-sync sound,
according to Richard Barsam, undercuts “the immediacy and intimacy
of the photography that create a realistic context for our interest.”(4)
For example, in the scene at the beginning of the film when the family
is struggling to save their nets from the powerful surges slapping onto
the rocks of their shore, one can hear their murmuring voices as they
run from the waves, but the voices seem so obviously removed from the
setting that it calls attention to the fact that the “soundtrack
of dialogue and music…was an afterthought, not an integral part
of the production.”(5)
The majority of the film’s sound comes from the classical musical
score itself, which is used to convey emotion. The story of the Man
of Aran, then, essentially comes from the power of the images, and
not from the subjects’ accounts.
It is interesting to note that Man of Aran was a project that
John Grierson had recommended to Flaherty,(6)
considering the approach that Flaherty took in the filmmaking process
seems so counter to the style of the GPO Unit films, which center on the
content and ignore the aesthetic. Unlike Flaherty’s “close-up
portrait” of a family in Man of Aran, “the characteristic
Grierson documentary dealt with impersonal social processes.”(7)
In Housing Problems (Edgar Anstey and Arthur Elton, 1935),(8)
a public relations film for social reconstruction of the living conditions
of slum inhabitants in England, the directors foreshadowed the television
news documentary with its heavy reliance on direct testimony from the
slum-dwellers themselves, while supplying factual, explanatory information
in the form of carefully scripted voiceover commentary. According to Barsam,
this film “marks the first use of journalistic reporting in the
British documentary” as well as the interview device.(9)
Instead of conveying the desperate situation of the people through narration,
the filmmakers went straight to the source: One man tells us of how his
two children died due to the poor living conditions. Another woman talks
about her trouble with rats in her old apartment. These are formal standing
interviews given for the purpose of finding out information in the subjects’
own words.
In Housing Problems, the picture comes secondary to the words,
illustrating to the viewer what the narrator says and serving, in a sense,
as b-roll. In the first few shots when the narration establishes the context,
the camera pans over rooftops in a wide shot of the slum area. Soon after,
there is a tilt up the walls of a building, illustrating the “sheer
neglect” that the slum-dwellers have experienced. Later on there
is a sequence showing the layout of a model of the new buildings, which
the government was constructing to replace the old slums. The shots follow
in accordance with the narrator’s explanation and description of
the model. Therefore, in contrast to Flaherty, the GPO filmmakers’
main concern was to convey factual information about a social situation
rather than portray a lifestyle of a particular group of individuals.
Housing Problems was not without its problems. As Barsam points
out, “while the unpleasantness of slum life is real and there for
us to see…the British should have let us see the dirt rather than
hear about the slum dwellers’ misery.”(10)
The weakness of this film is in its dependence on the subjects’
words without providing the proper visuals for the viewer to determine
for him/herself the poverty-stricken conditions that the subjects were
enduring. Whereas Flaherty’s shortcoming was in his lack of emphasis
on sound, Anstey and Elton’s flaw was in their lack of emphasis
on picture. Produced in the 1930s, their films represent the problem of
balance between the audio and visual, or the content and form, that filmmakers
still struggle with today.
The TV Revolution: The Issue
of Audience
A major factor for the difference in emphasis in the two films was the
audience that the filmmakers were targeting: Flaherty’s film was
widely received by an international audience whereas Edgar and Anstey’s
film was meant to encourage British public reform. The advent of television
in 1935, added to the division between films that were meant for mass
audiences and those for more exclusive venues.(11)
With the arrival of TV, use of the all-newsreel theaters that had been
established since 1929 started to decline. These theaters had been popular
for their use of newsreels because they were the only kind of nonfiction
that could reach mass audiences. After World War II, the inner city ghettos
were cleared, and with them went the local neighborhood movie theaters.
Demographics also shifted as more people were moving into the suburbs
and were buying their own appliances. Their TVs provided them with the
news and entertainment they needed.
Since nonfiction on television was organized by the news divisions or
the journalist side of the industry, TV documentaries quickly took on
an information- and word-based formula, in the tradition of Griersonian
films. Though clearly having an interest in TV as an education and news
medium, such filmmakers employed by network stations found themselves
limited in their styles and approaches to filmmaking. Many films during
the period of the TV revolution followed a particular “tried-and-true”
formula. Later on, with the introduction of reality TV, documentaries
also adopted an entertainment-based approach. These films, having the
advantage of guaranteed funding and distribution, distinguished themselves
from the types of films found in theaters and drive-ins, schools and colleges,
churches, clubs and youth groups, and audiences with a narrower scope.
Such films usually were independently produced or made for particular
organizations or causes and were not readily funded or distributed.
Two films that deal with the subject of domestic abuse of women demonstrate
the disparity in the form and approach that a filmmaker may choose to
use based on the target audience. Defending Our Lives (Margaret
Lazarus and Renner Wunderlich, 1994)(12)
is an educational documentary that centers on oral accounts about abuse
experiences from members of “Battered Women Fighting Back.”
Supplementing their powerfully emotional interviews are black and white
photos of the women with bruises and cuts on their faces and bodies, showing
the extent of the abuse. According to Cambridge Documentary Films, the
film’s production company, Defending Our Lives is meant
for “people working on any aspect of this issue, including general
education, legal reform, police training, battered women advocacy, counseling,
prosecution and defense, human rights activism and community education.”(13)
In taking such a limited audience into consideration, the filmmakers approached
the documentary with the intention to raise awareness for this social
problem. In effect, they created a film that spoke to the concerns that
the audience in their respective affiliations might have. They provided
their audience with the appropriate information and set a powerful tone
for the severity of the issue.
A film that takes a different approach to the subject of domestic abuse
is The Framing of Eight.(14)
This documentary appeared on broadcast television, and therefore was meant
for a general audience. The filmmakers employed conventional TV documentary
and reality TV elements to convey the subjects’ stories. In the
beginning shots, the viewer is carried along a reenacted police call for
a reported domestic fight. A removed third-person narrative voice provides
the context for the scene. Shots from inside the car pulling up to the
house to the perspective of the policemen rushing towards the door of
the house to stop the boyfriend from escaping give the audience an immediate
sense of being in the midst of the action. This scene is followed by interview
footage of some victims of domestic abuse, who share their feelings and
experiences. In keeping what might appeal to a mass audience in mind,
the filmmakers employed several techniques, including narration, interview,
music, and staged scenes, to bring the subject to life and engage the
viewer. In their effort to satisfy a wide audience, the filmmakers created
a film that is engaging at best, but does not convey the seriousness of
the problem as does Defending Our Lives.
An example of a television documentary that is effective in conveying
the plight of its subjects is Streetwise (Martin Bell, Mary Ellen
Mark, Cheryl McCall, 1994).(15)
This film follows nine homeless American teenagers from Seattle. The beautiful
opening wide shot of a young boy standing atop a bridge immediately signals
to the viewer the professional quality of this production. Over the shot
of the boy on the bridge is his intimate voiceover, telling the audience
about his feelings and allowing the audience to closely relate to him.
The use of a tripod throughout the film for the on-the-street scenes,
though not necessarily matching with the subjects’ carefree attitude
and the filmmakers’ own seemingly light-hearted approach, is effective
in allowing the filmmaking process to disappear so that the viewer can
focus their attention solely on the subjects. In addition, the subjects’
intimate voiceovers provide the film with the appropriate level of gravity.
Seventeen (Joel DeMott and Jeff Kreines, 1982),(16)
a film on a similar subject, fails to convey this degree of significance.
Seventeen was originally made for the final episode of a six-part
television series, but PBS declined its broadcast “out of concerns
that the subjects had been exploited.”(17)
The documentary follows a group of high-school students through their
senior year. The filmmakers take a participant-observer approach in their
shooting style, employing a hand-held camera technique, which causes an
almost nauseating home-video effect in the viewer. There is complete disregard
for the quality of sound, resulting in an aurally dreadful cacophony of
dialog and background noise. One scene takes place at a carnival, in which
the camera is fixated on two girls, who are experiencing some drama with
their boyfriends. The camera is within such close proximity of the girls
that the viewer almost feels a bit suffocated at points and begs for a
wide shot that never comes. The girls’ voices are coming in and
out of the position of the microphone so that the sound is not consistent
and only results in the viewer’s sense of confusion for what is
going on. The filmmakers’ attempt to capture an honest representation
of the students’ experiences in this film are undermined by their
lack of attention to the aesthetic.
Clearly there have been films that are effective in conveying the filmmakers’
central message in both independent and broadcast industries. There have
also been films in both outlets that do not successfully portray the subject
in the way that the filmmakers intended. The reasons for such disparity
may lie in the expectations that the networks, employers or benefit organizations
impose upon the film. The difference may also be a result of the filmmaker’s
own sense of ethics.
The Purpose of Truth
The issue of ethics comes up in the filmmaker’s attempt to relate
to the image portrayed of the subjects. The filmmaker is faced with the
question: “Should I convey the truth of the matter? Or should I
respect my subject’s wishes and be careful of the way I portray
them?” Those in the cinéma vérité and direct
cinema tradition, which burgeoned in the 1960s, have tried to combine
both approaches. In this movement, the documentary shifted away from the
scripted technique of Grierson to what was known as “real life actuality.”
In the 1950s and 1960s, staged or reenacted scenes were considered taboo
for television networks. If they were used, it would have been made clear
that they were reenactments. At the same time, those concerned with the
aesthetic took to utilizing techniques from fiction filmmaking in order
to provide the sense that a film is just a document of a truth,
not the overall “Truth.”
Such filmmakers took their cue from Flaherty. In a famous quote for which
Flaherty is known, he sums up his view on the art of filmmaking: “Sometimes
one must distort reality in order to reveal the truth.”(18)
In its shooting and editing techniques, Man of Aran borrows a
number of elements from the art of fiction films, specifically his staging
of scenes, such as the shark hunts. The suspenseful nature of the shark
hunts comes through in the long takes in which the hunt plays out almost
in real time, with the shark encircling the men’s boat again and
again and the men struggling to pull it in with their line. These contrived
scenes, which were based on a lifestyle that the islanders had long relinquished
to the modern way of life imposed upon them, were the source of much of
the criticism he received from Grierson and other filmmakers.
This method of provoking or setting the stage for the subjects and then
observing how the situation plays out was taken up by cinéma vérité
artists, such as Frederick Wiseman, in High School (1968),(19)
which was broadcast on the P.O.V. program on PBS. Towards the middle of
the film, there are several long continuous takes during a scene in which
the principal scolds a student. Wiseman chooses to keep many of the zooms
and shaky pans between the two in order to keep the sense of real-time.
Shortly after is a scene with a hall monitor who seems to be performing
for the camera by hounding the loitering students. There are several walking
shots from the point-of-view of the hall monitor, and then the viewer
hears the sound of music coming from behind a door. The hall monitor peeks
through the window, and the next shot is from inside a gym where girls
are practicing in gym class. The shot is of the rear end of one of the
girls, in effect, implicating the old man of voyeurism.
Such a manipulation of images is a clear distortion of truth that may
have no bearing on reality and may be considered a disregard for the subject’s
reputation. This scene points to the larger issue of whether or not one
can “distort reality” or violate a subject’s privacy
for the sake of reaching an underlying truth. A prime example of such
a violation comes from Aileen: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer
(Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill, 2003).(20)
In this film, Broomfield employs self-reflexive narration as well as inclusion
of his own presence in the film (in the spirit of cinéma vérité
filmmaker, Jean Rouch(21))
to show his relationship with his subject, Aileen Wuornos. In a scene
in a jail booth towards the end of the film, Broomfield pretends to turn
the camera off in an effort to allow Wuornos to let her defenses down
so that he could get at the truth of whether or not she had murdered her
victims out of self-defense. The viewer gathers from this scene that Wuornos
has been lying about killing the men out of cold blood so that she could
end her miserable life in prison. Broomfield’s attempt to reveal
the truth in this way could have caused Wuornos’ case to be dismissed,
consequently keeping her in prison. Such an overt breach of the subject’s
wishes calls into question this method of getting at the truth.
An example of a film that employs another method of cinéma vérité
that is less intrusive is The Belovs (Viktor Kossakovsky, 1992)(22).
Shot in black and white, this film presents a portrait of a peasant family
living on a farm in Russia. The filmmakers employ the direct cinema technique
of keeping the camera as invisible as possible and not trying to impact
the subject in any way. Through this observational method emerges an honest
and intimate look into the lives of a brother and sister who have a rather
disturbing relationship. In respectful observation of their everyday activities,
the filmmakers show the clear contrast between the playful, laidback nature
of the woman and the serious, deep nature of the brother. In one scene,
there is a long take of a wide shot of the woman trying to save a hedgehog
from her dog, talking to and scolding the dog while continually dropping
the hedgehog on the ground. Another scene takes place inside the house
where the man is talking about the philosophical implications of some
social issue. In scenes between the man and woman in the house, there
is very open and honest interaction, to the point where, in one scene
with a wide shot of the kitchen table, they are sitting there fighting,
with the brother yelling threats of wanting to kill her. The filmmaker
was able to capture “the truth” of this family’s life
without imposing any stimulus or provocation upon the subjects. Such an
effect came about through the respectful nature of the filmmaker towards
the subjects and in his honest portrayal of them in the film.
The documentary has had a long history of different filmmakers, techniques,
and approaches. Flaherty and Grierson were one of the first filmmakers
to set the stage for the variety of films that endure to this day. The
degree to which a documentary is successful, according to some critics
of their films, is in the balance of the art form and the content. The
emphasis on one over the other depends upon the purpose of the film as
well as the target audience and the expectations of those for whom the
filmmaker is working. There is also a difference between cinéma
vérité and direct cinema films,(23)
which may stem from the filmmaker’s own sense of ethics. Whatever
the filmmaker’s intentions or stylistic approach, the success of
any documentary is largely a product of the filmmaker’s relationship
with his/her audience, subjects and/or employer.
(1) Such a status has been
a subject of debate among filmmakers and critics throughout the documentary
tradition. Suffice it to say that Flaherty was one of the first in the
tradition whose legacy has had a long-standing influence on filmmakers
since his time.
(2) Man of Aran. Robert
Flaherty. Home Vision Entertainment, 1934.
(3) Flaherty’s Romantic
approach in this film, as in his others films, such as Nanook of the North
(1922), has stirred much controversy over the issue of conveying truth
in a nonfiction piece. This issue will be explored in more detail later.
(4) Barsam, Richard M. Nonfiction
Film: A Critical History. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press,
1992. 141.
(5) Ibid.
(6) Ibid. 93.
(7) Barnouw, Erik. Documentary:
A History of the Nonfiction Film. New York, NY: Oxford University
Press, 1993. 99.
(8) Housing Problems.
Edgar Anstey and Arthur Elton. British Commercial Gas Association, 1935.
(9) Barnouw. 107, 301.
(10) Barsam. 107.
(11) For the remainder of
this paragraph and the next, I rely on information given in class lectures
by Jeremy Murray-Brown, Professor of Television at Boston University.
Murray-Brown, Jeremy. Lectures. College of Communications at Boston University.
Boston. 27 Sept. and 11 Nov. 2005.
(12) Defending Our Lives.
Margaret Lazarus and Renner Wunderlich. Cambridge Documentary Films, 1994.
(13) “Defending Our
Lives.” Cambridge Documentary Films, Inc. 1 Dec 2005 <http://www.cambridgedocumentaryfilms.org/defending.html>.
(14) This film was screened
in Professor Murray-Brown’s “The Documentary” class
(FT560 course). The information for the director, distribution company,
and release date were not given in class, and I was unable to find them
online.
(15) Streetwise.
Martin Bell, Mary Ellen Mark, Cheryl McCall. Bear Creek Television, 1984.
(16) Seventeen. Joel
DeMott and Jeff Kreines. Peter Davis, 1982.
(17) “Middletown (1982).”
Internet Movie Database. 20 Mar. 2006 <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0355106/>.
(18) This is a paraphrased
quote, as I have heard this line in many instances in my studies of Flaherty
but do not recall exactly where it can be found.
(19) High School.
Frederick Wiseman. P.O.V. 1968.
(20) Aileen: The Life
and Death of a Serial Killer. Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill.
HBO Cinemax Documentary Films, 2003.
(21) The legacy and work of
Jean Rouch will be discussed in Chapters V and VI.
(22) The Belovs.
Viktor Kossakovsky. Icarus Films, 1992.
(23) This topic will be explored
in more depth in Chapter VI.