BBC, Netflix, Al Jazeera.
These are only a few examples of where you can see Documentaries nowadays. In the last few years, thanks to a hyper growth of technology, the modern world has turned its face towards smartphones, computers and tablet screens. And the media, in order to counter act, has decided to invest in the power of videos. Witnessing what could possibly become the golden age of Documentary filmmaking, it’s important to know that Documentaries have been around from much longer than the 21st Century. As a matter of fact, what is generally known as the first Documentary, “Nanook of the North” by Robert j. Flaherty, dates back to the 1920s.
Back to Black
The Silent Era of the 1920s is what can be considered as the spring of filmmaking. Expanding from its foundations, the film industry started producing much costlier, longer and successful features. As movie cameras started to become mass produced and more affordable, new forms and ways to film started to emerge. The endless possibilities given by the movie camera, started to become exciting realities for the artists of the era.
The unforgettable example of Dziga Vertov’s experimental documentary, “Man with a Movie Camera” (1929), its narrative, cinematography and “sexiness”, showed that every story could become a tale.
Ever since, in the course of the 20th and 21st century, filmmakers have been able to explore the potential of documentaries producing them in different forms and styles and with different objectives. But then again, a question arose and is still arising as documentaries continue to change form and shape: what can we define as a documentary?
According to Bill Nichols (2001), in his book “Introduction to Documentary”, documentaries are nonfiction films that depict social representations of issues, aspects, qualities and problems found in the historical world. By representing reality from a specific point of view, documentaries give a tangible sense of the world we live in. Nichols stressed that documentaries are not only passive reproductions of the world, but persuasive photographic records, that attempt to convey impressions of authenticity. According to him:
“Documentary not only activates our aesthetic awareness, it also activates our social consciousness.” –Bill Nichols (2001)
In order to activate both these two elements, documentaries make use of another essential advantage they possess: the tangled magic of visuals, sound and narrative.
Canvas on lenses
As the human memory has a major capacity to remember visual images rather than written words through time, Documentaries are major mediums for the journalistic world. As the planet earth transforms into a canvas, documentarians pick up their painting brush, the camera, and start to sketch the outlines of the messages they want to present. Thanks to the aesthetic value of the material they will produce, filmmakers will be able to leave an imprinted message of the story in the eye of the viewer.
The Power of Sound
Another factor that majorly defines the documentary film, is the importance of sound. As we will explore later on, sound is quintessential for the success of a documentary. Thanks to the combination of music and words, documentary filmmakers have been able to deliver different voices, tones, styles, perspectives. The charm of a passionate character, the melody of an unforgettable soundtrack, the breeze of a background noise: in the making of a documentary, each of these little waves contributes to a tide of success.
The Importance of Narrative
The third most important quality of a documentary, it’s the power of the narrative. As human beings, we are wired for stories. Once we start to follow our heroes and/or antagonists through their journeys there are common storytelling rules that the documentarians have to follow. Firstly, and most importantly, the characters have to be interesting: we need to emphatise with them, love them, hate them even fear them; but what is important is that we must never be bored by them. Secondly, the narrative of the story doesn’t necessarily follow a normal, ordinary path, but it does need to flow with the film. One of the most common and successful narrative used in filmmaking is none other than the hero’s journey: as we follow our main character from the beginning of the story, we see how he/she/it will change, grow and overcome conflicts in order to achieve some sort of resolution.
In conclusion, I can say that the documentary is a particular form of journalism that is sometimes very hard to define due to its intersection with fiction films. Being the documentary itself a very fluid genre, its versatility works as an advantage for documentarians who can switch between different styles and forms of filmmaking.
But what are those different styles?
In the next post, we will focus on Nichols’ six different definitions of style in documentaries.
Lucrezia Vittori 