23. documentary introduction

Today, we learned about documentaries, focusing on Michael Moore's style.
Documentaries are films/video clips of actual subjects, created to:

• educate/raise awareness of an issue
• entertain: direector uses music, editing, and has an interesting storyboard
• criticize
• celebrate: documentaries of the lives of great people
• portray different points of view

Ms. Wong reminded us that documentaries are almost always biased because it is always filmed from the director's point of view, and we have to apply the OPAL rule (from history: Origin, Purpose, Audience, Limitations) to decide whether a documentary is useful or reliable. Some questions to ask when analyzing a documentary include:

• What aspects of the real world are portrayed?
• How might this quote (Documentary films demonstrate the creative treatment of actuality - John Grierson, Founder of the National Film Board) explain the impact of the film?
• What style does the documentary have? (different documentaries have different styles or atmospheres to cater to different people)
• Does the film use a narrator? If so, what roles does he/she play? What attitudes does he/she have and how does it contribute to the storytelling?

We then focused on the sound aspect of documentary films. Sound for feature films and documentaries are very different in quality. Feature films have high-quality sounds where the dialogue is filtered to allow the viewer to hear it properly. It is layered with different sound effects and background music to enhance the mood and help the storytelling. Documentary films are not as clear and direct because the situation of the filming cannot be controlled. Background noise often competes with the dialogue because there is nothing to filter it out. However, because of the advanced technology these days, documentary films also have sound effects, background music and voiceovers. I learned about that the use of voiceovers is called the 'Voice of God' effect, and that it 'has long been one of the stylistic signatures of documentary sound'. I also learned that the sound effects in documentary films are not always, in fact, part of the film, but are actually sometimes recorded separately and then synchronized with the clip.

We then watched and discussed some of Michael Moore's documentaries. Ms. Wong commented on the characteristics of his films:

• Expository style of documentary film-making
• Interactive format (I noticed that in Roger and Me, when he talks directly to the viewer)
• Always features himself as the everyman in a quest for simple answers (he establishes a connection with us; he is just a normal person like us)
• Creative interpretation of actuality
• Ironic use of music (this came up very clearly in the documentaries we watched)

Themes of Michael Moore's documentaries:

• U.S. politics
• globalization
• gun ownership
  
• Bush administration
• Iraq war
• U.S. healthcare system

Criticism Michael Moore has received:

• accused of manipulating facts and interviews
• biased, shamless grandstanding.

What I liked about Michael Moore is that his documentaries are very extreme: he really takes a lot of effort to illustrate his points. For example, in Roger and Me, he really went to people to demand to know why he was laid off. He is also very funny and entertaining - I had never known documentaries to be fun to watch before I watched his films. Although I was very tired on Thursday (from having waken up very early to finish my history) his documentary films really captured my attention. For our next lesson, I am supposed to have prepared an oral presentation on one of Michael Moore's films/make a comparison between two of his films.