DOCUMENTARY: 'Dreams of a Life' Screening

ALL films - fictional and factual - are constructed to some degree. i.e. whether it is in the pre, production of post production stages - human intervention is unavoidable. 

Truth and controversy
- In 2007 the BBCs reputation was seriously damaged by revelations of 'fakery'
- Competition winners in particular had been faked (e.g. Blue Peter and Radio 1)
- The BBC were eventually fined £400,000 by Ofcom
- Fakery appeared again in 2016 with the BBCs natural history programme, Human Planet.

A sliding scale of intervention in factual programming
- Notionally, the degree of 'accepted' intervention is as follows:

Least >   >   >   >   >   > > >>>>>>>>>>>  Most

Verity            Reality TV        Fact-Ent        Drama-Doc
Obs-Doc      Science           Wildlife          Rockumentary
News            Docu-soap      History

Factual genres
- Current affaires
- News
- Docs
- Reality TV

Current affaires
- Investigative
- Consumer
- Political
e.g. Panorama, Dispatches etc

- Current affaires programmes are often 'reporter led' and deal with weighty subjects with a harder news edge.
- They have less observational feel to them and are more obviously constructed
- The journalism and the story is at the heart of these films, relying less on character and actuality. 

Documentaries defined
- The term has evolved over the many years since cinema began and cover many sub genres.
- Loosely can be described as 'artistic representation of actuality'.

Purpose of documentaries
Why?
- Documentaries speak about or allow others to speak for themselves. The documentary filmmaker often acts as a representative of the public.
- Voyeurism - inevitably documentaries have elements of voyeurism. A question often posed is whether a piece of film is 'in the public interest' in justifying the intrusion documentaries make into peoples lives.
- Documentaries provide a particular view, interpretation or understanding of the evidence which they put before us. 

Documentary genres and hybrids
- Poetic
- Expository
- Educational
- Observational
- Reflexive docs
- Participatory
- Performative

Hybrid forms & evolving new forms
- Drama-doc
- Docu-soap
- Reality TV
- Fact-ent 
- Structured/scripted reality (TOWIE)
- Multi camera observational (Educating Essex)

Factual formats
- Multi camera observational (Big Brother)
- Presenter/reporter led (Panorama)
- Magazine
- Authored
- Discussion

Conventions 
- Style - shooting and editing
- Structure
- Format e.g. studio discussion panel show i.e. Question Time
- Shots - handheld - quicker and more realistic
- Commentary
- Narrator/presenter/reporter - dignified male 'voice of authority' - voice of God
- Music
- Experts - used to add 'intellectual weight'
- Conventions are often subject of satire - exposing the established methods by which stories are told but possibly also limited. 

Factual devices
- Particular types of factual programme rely on particular storytelling devices
- These various formats become established methods available to makers of factual programmes
- E.g. engineering 'TENSION' is a common technique. By bringing together, through careful casting, opposites a films gains tension. Allows LIGHT and SHADE to come through the film e.g. 'Wife Swap'

Funding and truth
- How and by whom factual films are funded has an important impact upon their style, content and their viewpoint
- Truth, just like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Who pays the bills will have an important impact upon who a film casts as villain or hero.
- Documentaries have been used for purposes of propaganda e.g. 'Triumph of the Will' (1935) - Nazi Germany.
- Consider - the impact of sponsorship and advertising; pay per view channels.
- Is a public service model essential to the preservation of impartial factual programming?
- Consider the Michael Moore film 'Bowling for Columbine' and consider how TRUTHFUL

Subject/content of documentary
- Wildlife
- Science
- History
- Health

Purpose of factual programmes
- Revelation - revealing to us something new
- Entertainment - need to make us engage someway
- Storytelling - portrayal of REAL life - portray and convey this as accurately as possible
- Style and content - varied styles used but style should never be relied on over content - always CONTENT OVER STYLE


'Dreams of a Life'  (2011)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1819513/

A documentary about an investigation into a woman who was found dead after 3 years. 

Narrative/structure

•  Interviews - testimony
•  Timeline - starts at the end where she's already died and they try and piece it together.
• Dramatised - police and also her life. They dramatised the investigation by showing the post-it notes.
• CHARACTER - real person was dead, they brought her to life by character dramatising it. 
• Motives - her singing/music of the time set the scene.
• Visual motive - had the 'dead' girl watching the documentary about herself and sitting in a taxi with the advert for her death on the side of it. 



http://www.theartsdesk.com/film/dreams-life-0

•  Tone - upbeat music for back in the day but dull music when she died (isolation)

Challenges

• Investigation
• Permission
• Sub judice - when a case is live we cannot report on it to prevent being prejudice in the case - public domain