Exam

Documentary Films strictly speaking, are non-fictional, "slice of life" factual works of art - and sometimes known as cinema verite. For many years, as films became more narrative-based, documentaries branched out and took many forms since their early beginnings - some of which have been termed propagandistic or non-objective.

Documentary films have comprised a very broad and diverse category of films. Examples of documentary forms include the following:

• 'biographical' films about a living or dead person (Madonna, John Lennon, Muhammad Ali - When We Were Kings (1996), Robert Crumb, Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time (1992), or Glenn Gould)

• a well-known event (Waco, Texas incident, the Holocaust, the Shackleton expedition to the Antarctic)

• a concert or rock festival (Woodstock or Altamont rock concerts (Woodstock (1970) and Gimme Shelter (1970)), The Song Remains the Same (1976),Stop Making Sense (1984), Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991))

• a comedy show (Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy shows)

• a live performance (Cuban musicians as in Buena Vista Social Club (1998), or the stage show Cirque du Soleil-Journey of Man (2000))

• a sociological or ethnographic examination following the lives of individuals over a period of time (e.g., Michael Apted's series of films: 28 Up (1984), 35 Up (1992) and 42 Up (1999), or Steve James' Hoop Dreams (1994))

• an expose including interviews (e.g., Michael Moore's social concerns films)

• a sports documentary (extreme sports, such as Extreme (1999) or To the Limit (1989), or surfing, such as in The Endless Summer (1966))

• a compilation film of collected footage from government sources

• a 'making of' film (such as the one regarding the filming of Apocalypse Now (1979), or Fitzcarraldo (1982))

• an examination of a specific subject area (e.g., nature- or science-related themes, or historical surveys, such as The Civil War, Jazz, Baseball, or World War II, etc.)

• spoof documentaries, termed 'mockumentaries' (such as This is Spinal Tap (1984), Zelig (1983), and Best in Show (2000))

History Lecture 2

The Earliest Documentaries:

Originally, the earliest documentaries in the US and France were either short newsreels, instructional pictures, records of current events, or travelogues (termedactualities) without any creative story-telling, narrative, or staging. The first attempts at film-making, by the Lumiere Brothers and others, were literal documentaries, e.g., a train entering a station, factory workers leaving a plant, etc.

The first documentary re-creation, Sigmund Lubin's one-reel The Unwritten Law (1907) (subtitled "A Thrilling Drama Based on the Thaw-White Tragedy") dramatized the true-life murder -- on June 25, 1906 -- of prominent architect Stanford White by mentally unstable and jealous millionaire husband Harry Kendall Thaw over the affections of showgirl Evelyn Nesbit (who appeared as herself). [Alluring chorine Nesbit would become a brief sensation, and the basis for Richard Fleischer's biopic film The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955), portrayed by Joan Collins, and E.L. Doctorow's musical and film Ragtime (1981), portrayed by an Oscar-nominated Elizabeth McGovern.]

The first official documentary or non-fiction narrative film was Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North (1922), an ethnographic look at the harsh life of Canadian Inuit Eskimos living in the Arctic, although some of the film's scenes of obsolete customs were staged. Flaherty, often regarded as the "Father of the Documentary Film," also made the landmark film Moana (1926) about Samoan Pacific islanders, although it was less successful. [The term 'documentary' was first used in a review of Flaherty's 1926 film.] His first sound documentary feature film was Man of Aran (1934), regarding the rugged Aran islanders/fishermen located west of Ireland's Galway Bay. Flaherty's fourth (and last) major feature documentary was his most controversial, Louisiana Story (1948), filmed on location in Louisiana's wild bayou country.

Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, better known for King Kong (1933), directed the landmark documentary Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life (1925), the first documentary epic, which traced the travels of the Bakhtyari tribe in Persia during their migrational wanderings to find fresh grazing lands. The filmmakers' next film was the part-adventure, travel documentary filmed on location in the Siamese (Thailand) jungle,Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness (1927), about a native tribal family.

Other European documentary film-makers made a series of so-called non-fictional city symphonies. Alberto Cavalcanti and Walter Ruttman directed Berlin - Symphony of a Big City (1927, Ger.) about the German city in the late 1920s. Similarly, the Soviet Union's (and Dziga Vertov's) avante-garde, experimental documentary The Man with a Movie Camera (1929, USSR) presented typical daily life within several Soviet cities (Moscow, Kiev, Odessa) through an exhilarating montage technique. And French director Jean Vigo made On the Subject of Nice (1930). Sergei Eisenstein's October (Oktyabr)/10 Days That Shook the World (1928, USSR) re-enacted in documentary-style, the days surrounding the Bolshevik Revolution, to commemorate the event's 10th anniversary.

Depression-Related Documentaries:

Pare Lorentz' The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936) documented the deprivations and suffering of the Depression-Era Dust Bowl farmers. The film was subsidized by one of President Roosevelt's New Deal organizations. Lorentz' follow-up film was The River (1937), arguing that the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) aided ecological efforts in the area. Years later, Philippe Mora's Brother Can You Spare a Dime? (1975)compiled newsreel footage, film clips and music from the 1930s to capture the cultural and historical forces that existed during the decade. Michael Uys' and Lexy Lovell's Riding the Rails (1997) presented stories of train-hopping by Depression-era hobos, accompanied by Woody Guthrie's folk songs.

Personification, Anthropomorphism, Anthropocentrism or not: Nature Lecture

Ethics Lecture

Disney's first feature-length "True Life Adventures" entry was The Living Desert (1953) - with incredible nature footage from the desert. Oceanographer Jacques Costeau's underwater explorations in the Calypso were captured on film in the Academy Award-winning The Silent World (1956) by filmmaker Louis Malle. Bruce Brown's thrilling The Endless Summer (1966) with a great score by the Sandals, was a popularly-received film about an around-the-world search for the 'perfect wave' by two surfers. The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971), with spectacular close-up photography, was a pseudo-documentary about the world of predatory insects, including a warning about an impending showdown between humans and insects.

Other nature-related documentaries included the following: South African film-maker Jamie Uys' Animals Are Beautiful People (1974), with the tagline "The Secret Life of Wildlife", provided an entertaining view of the intriguing wildlife of the Namid Desert and how the animals often mirrored the behavior of humans. (Six years after completing this project, Uys went on to create The Gods Must Be Crazy (1981).) The groundbreaking French documentaryMicroCosmos (1996) (advertised as "It's Jurassic Park in Your Own Backyard!") chronicled the world of insects - in close-up, with revolutionary macroscopic cameras and film techniques (similar to Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi (1982)). The BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs (2000) (with narration by Kenneth Branagh) was a documentary series of films by Jasper James with incredibly-realistic CGI dinosaurs. The nature documentary Deep Blue (2003), derived from the BBC's Blue Planet TV series surveys how creatures from dolphins to penguins live and battle for survival against predators in the ocean.

Errol Morris' unique contributions to the documentary film category were significant with many examples of weird or investigative films with offbeat and unusual subject matter:

• the looney Gates of Heaven (1978), Morris' first film, a tragi-comedy about the closing of a bankrupt N. California pet cemetery and the reactions of its devoted pet-owners

• Vernon, Florida (1981) about the quirky inhabitants of a backwater Floridian town

• the controversial thriller The Thin Blue Line (1988) that helped free accused and convicted murderer Randall Dale Adams on Texas' death row for a 1976 murder that he didn't commit

• the biographical A Brief History of Time (1992) with ALS-afflicted and wheelchair-bound cosmologist Stephen Hawking discussing quantum physics

• the fascinating Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997) composed of clips from oddball B-films, about four eccentric individuals with unusual jobs (a topiary gardener/sculptor, a lion tamer, a mole-rat expert, and a robotics scientist/inventor)

• Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (2000), about a caffeine-addicted specialist who designed execution equipment

• The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003), composed of interviews with 85 year-old former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara who served during the Vietnam War (the film won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature)

• Standard Operating Procedure (2008), including the staging of reenactments of scandalous prisoner torture and abuse at Iran's Abu Ghraib conducted by US military police

• the bizarre yet gripping Tabloid (2010), the story of crazed and obsessed Southern belle Joyce McKinney, who stalked Mormon lover Kirk Anderson in the late 1970s, abducted and chained him to a bed in an English cottage where she had sex with him for three days, to de-program him and save him (aka "The Mormon Sex in Chains Case")

Barbara Kopple -

Director Barbara Kopple's Harlan County, USA (1976), another Academy Award winner for Best Documentary, documented a Kentucky coal miners' strike in the early 1970s against the Eastover Mining Company. She also directed a second Oscar-winning documentary film on labor struggles, American Dream (1990), about striking employees at a Hormel meat-packing plant in Austin, Minnesota. In addition, she filmed an in-depth documentary on comedian/musician/director Woody Allen and his 1996 jazz band tour of Europe, titled Wild Man Blues (1997).

Michael Moore -

Iconoclastic, sardonic, independent film-maker/journalist Michael Moore has had varied success with his personally-made films about the excesses and abuses of corporate America, social issues and politics, including The Big One (1997) filmed during a 1996 promo tour for his own first book Downsize This!, and the darkly humorous Roger & Me (1989) - Moore's first documentary, and the most successful documentary film up to its time in film history (Moore broke his own record 15 years later). With scathing commentary, it examined the devastating effects of the 1986 closing of auto factory plants in Flint, Michigan (Moore's hometown) by GM's unavailable former CEO Roger Smith.

The main focal point of a shot should lie on the intersections of a grid of thirds.

Don’t Cross the Line of Action

Always shoot from one side of the subject. Crossing this line will disorient and confuse the audience.

How to Shoot An Interview

• Keep the camera next to your shoulder. Tell the subject to look at you and not the lens.

Frame shot with talk-space. • Ask the subject to state their full name & spell it.

• Ask questions that lead to longer answers such as “Why is this important? Describe how you felt.” Don’t ask Yes/No questions like “Do you like it?”

• Nod and smile to encourage interviewee, but don’t say “uhuhs” and “hmms” since they will be recorded on the audio track.

• Monitor audio with headphones, use a lavaliere mic when possible, sets levels on your mic.

• Listen and make mental notes of interesting points in the interview you can shoot later for b-roll.

Beware

• Outside noises will mar the audio track. Listen for Lawn mowers, airplanes, Musak, air conditioning and much more. Always wear headphones when recording audio so you can stop the interview if outside noise is too loud.

• Bright backgrounds like windows and white walls will be overexposed or “blown out” if you properly expose for the person. Move the subject or move the camera so the background is not overexposed.

• Automatic focus can cause lots of focus errors. Keep it in manual mode and only hit spot focus for a quick moment so auto-focus doesn’t start “hunting.”- See more at: http://www.videouniversity.com/articles/how-to-shoot-a-documentary-scene/#sthash.0VJBsjz2.dpuf

How To Shoot a Documentary Scene

Shoot These Five Shots

Among video journalists and documentary producers one tried and true approach to covering a scene is the “five shot” method developed by

Michael Rosenblum. Most experienced shooters know the method

without thinking about it.

Make these shots in order:

A closeup on the hands of a subject shows WHAT is happening

A closeup on the face shows WHO is doing it

A wide shot shows WHERE it’s happening

An over the shoulder shot links the previous three shots

An unusual, or side/low shot provides a context.

Basic rules for subtitling:

★主語と述語が離れすぎないように

★原文の複雑さを訳文にまで持ち込まないこと！シンプルな文章におさめる

★話の流れ、ロジックが伝わるように、接続詞を活用

★書いていて複雑になっていることに気づいたら、2文に分ける

★主語が不明な場合で、かつ受動態にしたくないときは、文脈からWeが使える場合もある

★形容詞＋形容詞＋名詞 となることを避けるために、長い名詞は他の形にひらく

★文章のメインアイデアは何か？付属情報は何か？を考える

★代名詞を効果的に使用して、文章をより簡潔にまとめる

★タイトルが長くなる場合は、「：」（コロン）を効果的に使用する