Documentary presentation week 1

1. HNC Unit 61: Moving Image Documentary Production

2. Lesson Objectives
• To understand the course requirements and assignments
• To begin to understand the development of the moving image
documentary format

3. Course schedule & aims
• Credit value: 15
• Dates: W/C 2nd Oct – last day of term 19th Dec
• Course runs through half term (W/C 23rd Oct)
Aim
• The aim of this unit is to develop your understanding of
the moving image documentary format and provide you
with the skills needed to produce documentaries to
broadcast standard.

4. Learning outcomes
• On successful completion of this unit a learner will:
1 Understand the development of the moving image
documentary format
2 Be able to complete pre-production for moving image
documentary proposals
3 Be able to produce moving image documentaries
4 Be able to review own moving image documentary production
work.

6. Course Content
The beginnings of factual filmmaking
Lumiere Bros, John Grierson, Robert Flaherty
Documentary theory and approaches
1920s & 30s Soviet Cinema and Vertov. Leni Reifenstahl and the Third Reich
British Free Cinema
The rise of Documentary at the cinema
Nick Broomfield, Michael Moore
Documentary from pre-production to broadcast
Developing a pitch; Narrative approach and visual techniques; Research skills,
interviewing and scripting
Current & future Documentary practice
Emerging and merging platforms -Transmedia

7. Assignments
Assignment 1
Hand out date: 16/10/17
1000 word illustrated essay on a documentary format relevant to your proposed
project
Hand in date: 03/11/17
Assignment 2
Hand out date: 9/10/17
Presentation of your pre-production materials for your individual Documentary
film
Hand in date: 8/11/17
Assignment 3 & 4
Hand out date: 9/10/17
Individual Documentary film
1000 word written evaluation
Hand in date: 15/12/17

8. The development of
Documentary Film

9. The problem with
Documentary
'The contradictory or paradoxical thing is that in a
documentary the real things depicted are liable to lose their
reality by being photographed and presented in that
documentary way, and there's no poetry in that. In poetry,
something else happens. Hard to say what it is. Presence
let's say, soul or spirit, an empathy with whatever it is that's
dwelt upon, feeling for it - to the point of identification.' -
Margaret Tait

10. ‘Many of my
documentaries are feature
films in disguise’
Werner Herzog

11. The Photographic Truth
• Since the very earliest photography there has been a
sense that an image can reveal the truth of the world.
• Photographic images as soon as they could be
reproduced were thought to be able to say more about
what was actual than words ever could.

12. The First Photograph and the
Daguerrotype
• Daguerre took the first ever photo of a person in 1839
when, while taking a daguerreotype of a Paris street, a
pedestrian stopped for a shoe shine, long enough to be
captured by the long exposure (several minutes).

13. Louis Daguerre

14. Edison kinetoscope films 1894 -1896

15. Lumiere Bros - Actualities
• The Lumiere Bros patented a dual camera and projector in 1895.
• They were the first to present projected, moving photographic pictures
to a paying audience in the same year
• At first, films were very short, sometimes only a few minutes. They
were shown at fairgrounds, music halls or anywhere a screen could be
set up and a room darkened.
• Subjects included views of foreign lands, short comedies and events
considered newsworthy. The films were accompanied by lecturers,
music and a lot of audience participation - although they did not have
synchronized dialogue they were not 'silent' as they are sometimes
described.

16. The Lumiere Brothers' - First films (1895)

17. International
development.
• By the end of 1896 the Lumiere’s cinematographie
was being used across Europe, Russia and India. In
the next two years its use had spread across the
world.
• The reason for this was financial at the time film was
cheap to make and increasingly popular as
audiences would watch films more than once.

18. Boleslaw Matuszewski
• A polish writer and filmmaker identified the concept of a
Documentary film as early as 1898
• Wrote two of the earliest texts on cinema Une nouvelle
source de l’histoire & La photographie animee
• They both considered the historical and documentary value of
film
• He also proposed the creation of the Film Archive to collect &
preserve film

19. Robert Flaherty & John
Grierson
Moana (1926) Dir Robert Flaherty

20. ‘from the raw’
• The Scottish filmmaker and writer John Grierson is often
associated with the word documentary due to his review
of Robert Flaherty’s film Moana
• Grierson suggested that the principles of documentary,
to observe life, was a new art form in itself and that the
original actor and scene were better guides than their
fiction counterparts to interpreting the modern world
• He spoke of taking materials ‘from the raw’ as they were
more real (and therefore better) than if it were acted
• He saw it as a ‘creative treatment of actuality’

21. Dziga Vertov ‘Life as it is’
• Vertov was an important early documentary film and
newsreel director and theorist
• His style and theories are highly influential to this day
• Vertov began as an editor on newsreel footage after the
Bolshevik revolution of 1917
• He worked with his wife a fellow editor to produce Man
with a Movie Camera
• Kino-Pravda (Film truth) series of films
• He wanted to capture fragments of actuality that when
edited together create a deeper truth that cannot be seen
with the naked eye

22. Kino Pravda
• He focused on everyay experiences, eschewing bourgois
concerns
• Locations included bars, markets and schools
Kino Pravda 1

23. Man with a Movie
Camera
Perhaps his most famous work is Man with a Movie Camera
An experimental documentary from 1929
It presents images of life in the Soviet cities of Kiev, Kharkov,
Moscow and Odessa
It shows ordinary citizens from dawn to dusk at work and play
What cinematic techniques do you find featured in the sequence?
Criticized upon release it is now thought of as one of the greatest
and most influential documentaries of all time.

24. Task: Short Doc edit
• Complete your edit of your short documentary from the
previous week
• Once completed export your file adding your name and
put it on the media store

25. TASK: DEFINING
DOCUMENTARY
• First research and then write your own definition of
Documentary.
• Write two paragraphs about what Documentary means
for you.
• Write up a short evaluation of your short doc task
(maximum 500 words) Describe
1. Your pre-production process
2. Production process
3. Post-production process
The techniques and equipment you used(Vox pops, direct
to camera, B roll footage lighting, microphone, locati