How to Evaluate a Documentary Film

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How to Evaluate a Documentary Film A type of rhetorical analysis

Transcript of How to Evaluate a Documentary Film

Page 1: How to Evaluate a Documentary Film

How to Evaluate a Documentary Film

A type of rhetorical analysis

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Terminology• Anthropomorphism • Authenticity • Cinema Verite • Commentary • Compilation Film • Demonstrative Proof • Editing • Ethnographic • Expository Documentary • Interrotron

• Infertile • Long Take • Masked Interview • Observational Mode • Participatory Mode • Performative Mode • Perspective • Voice of Authority • Voice Over • Additional Terminology

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Anthropomorphism

• Definition: Attributing to wild or domesticated animals specific human traits, characteristics and intentions, including heroic goals, generosity, social climbing, guilt, forgiveness and revenge, among others.

• Also Known As: anthropomorphic• Examples: Attributing motivations of friendship

to the behavior of an arctic fox in Arctic Tale is an example of anthropomorphism.

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Authenticity

• Definition: The belief that the world represented on screen is as it really is and has not been modified.

• Examples: The authenticity of archived footage used in The Fog of War is evident.

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Cinema Vérité

• Definition: French, meaning "film truth." A term applied to documentary films in which there is a truthful live encounter between the filmmaker who is shooting the film and the film's subject(s).

• Also Known As: Film Truth• Examples: In order to get their cinema vérité

footage of polar bears and walruses, the directors of Arctic Tale traveled to the North Pole.

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Commentary

• Definition: A narrative voice in the documentary film that articulates an explicit argument.

• Examples: As narrator in Arctic Ice, Queen Latifah provides an excellent commentary.

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Compilation Film

• Definition: A documentary film that is comprised entirely of authentic archival footage.

• Examples: The director produced a compilation film about the Iraq War by using only footage that was shot by news cameramen who were embedded with active troops.

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Demonstrative Proof

• Definition: Emphasis on making evidence persuasive, albeit not necessarily accurate.

• Examples: By opting to use historical documents without establishing their authenticity, the director's demonstrative proof of his supposition that fire was caused by arson lacked credibility.

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Editing

• Definition: The juxtaposition of two or more shots to create a meaningful relationship between them. Editing is extremely important in documentaries, establishing both the film’s credibility and aesthetic.

• Also Known As: Cutting the film• Examples: The filmmaker insisted upon editing

the documentary himself because he wanted to control the structuring of his story to produce the most dramatic impact possible.

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Ethnographic

• Definition: Actuality films featuring native peoples.

• Examples: Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North is an early example of an ethnographic film.

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Expository Documentary

• Definition: A nonfiction film that emphasizes verbal commentary and argumentative logic.

• Examples: An Inconvenient Truth is an example of an expository documentary because it relies on verbal commentary and argumentative logic to make its strong case for prevention of global warming.

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Interrotron• Definition: The Interrotron is a camera invented by filmmaker

Errol Morris and used in Standard Operating Procedure and many of his award-winning films. Essentially, it is a device that functions simultaneously as a camera and TelePrompTer-like projector, capturing an interview subject's close up responses during interviews. The camera's lens projects the image of the interviewer, while recording the subject. The name of the device was actually coined by Julia Sheehan, Errol Morris' wife.

• Also Known As: TelePrompTer/camera• Common Misspellings: interotron• Examples: Errol Morris uses the Interrotron in

Standard Operating Procedureto capture interview subjects' close up responses to his questions.

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Intertitle

• Definition: Text that appears periodically on screen to provide information such as the date, the time, the location or to identify a person shown on screen.

• Examples: Director Amy Berg uses an intertitle to identify Cardinal Roger Mahoney is the man shown on screen in Deliver Us From Evil.

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Masked Interview

• Definition: An interview in which the filmmaker as interviewer is both off-screen and unheard.

• Examples: By using the masked interview technique, the director kept himself from becoming a subject in his own film.

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Observational Mode

• Definition: Emphasizing the documentary filmmaker's engagement in observing the subject's daily life and circumstances and documentinf them with an unobtrusive camera.

• Examples: By maintaining the observational mode, the director allowed the subject to forget the presence of the camera and behave more naturally, thereby letting the audience get a better sense of how she really feels about having such an unusual abundance of facial hair.

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Participatory Mode

• Definition: Emphasis on the interaction between filmmaker and subject.

• Examples: Director Michael Moore's on camera antics are a good example of the participatory mode.

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Performative Mode

• Definition: The emphasis of the filmmaker’s subjective attitude or personal engagement with a subject to evoke audience reaction.

• Examples: Because it is evident that director Davis Guggenheim supports Al Gore's statements about global warming in An Inconvenient Truth, this film may be seen as an example of the performative mode.

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Perspective

• Definition: In documentary filmmaking, perspective is the selection and arrangement of sounds and images to tacitly convey or imply the filmmaker’s point of view about a subject.

• Also Known As: Point of View• Examples: When dealing with cases of child

abuse, it may be difficult for a director to hide her perspective on her subject matter.

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Voice of Authority

• Definition: Someone whom we see and/or hear whose purpose it is to represent the point of view of the film.

• Also Known As: Voice of God• Examples: As narrator, Queen Latifah is the

voice of authority for Arctic Tale.

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Voice Over

• Definition: An off-camera voice that comments about the images on film.

• Examples: Although Queen Latifah does not appear in [i[Arctic Tale, she provides the voice over narration for the film.

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Framing

• Definition: The organization of the shot’s contents with respect to its outer borders.

• Examples: In Jesus Camp, the close up framing of the faces of children talking in tongues is very dramatic.

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Auto-ethnicity

• Definition: An ethnographically informed work made by members of ethnic communities that are the subjects of Western ethnography.

• Examples: Documentary films made by the Navaho people about their silver work are examples of auto-ethnicity.

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Poetic Mode

• Definition: The formal structural organization of a film that emphasizes visual associations and impressionistic descriptive passages, tonal and rhythmic qualities and de-emphasizes strictly linear or logical sequencing.

• Examples: Films about painters, dancers and other nonverbal artists are often presented in the poetic mode.

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Realism

• Definition: Emphasis on the subject’s state of mind and psychological outlook.

• Also Known As: Psychological Realism• Examples: Errol Morris was going for realism--

and got it--when he interviewed Robert McNamara for The Fog of War.

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Shot

• Definition: A single uninterrupted moving image that's recorded with a static or mobile camera.

• Examples: The opening shot in Arctic Tale clearly establishes film's location.

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Styles

• Documentary style has constantly evolved and redefined itself.

• New technologies and storytelling solutions• Additional and more innovative possibilities to

younger filmmakers

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Early French Shorts

• Before 1900, films were extremely short--a minute or less--and really just captured moving images in a single event or scene. Moving pictures were seen as such a novelty, their mere existence was enough to enrapture viewers. The best examples of these black and white documentaries is the fascinating footage of the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière, shot at their studio in Lyons, France.

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Seminal Styles

• Seminal: highly original and influencing the development of future events

• In 1914, two seminal documentaries indicated the development of divergent styles in longer form: storytelling documentaries. Edward S. Curtis used reenactments to show “true”Native American life in In the Land of The Headhunters, while footage actually shot on location revealed the hardships endured by the cast of The Rescue of the Stephansson Arctic Expedition.

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Setting the Scene

• Reenactment and setting the scene was commonplace in early documentaries. In his famous Nanook of the North (1922), Robert J. Flaherty shot on location, but frequently censored the behavior of his subjects and even had them build an igloo without a roof so he could get sufficient light and space for his camera work.

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Newsreels• Early newsreels, too, featured reenactments. A cameraman would arrive

on the scene after the battle was won--or lost--and re-stage battle scenes so he could film them as news clips.

• The March of Time newsreel series produced by Time-Life from 1935 to 1951

• Universal Newsreel newsreel series produced by Universal Studios from 1929 to 1967

• Hearst Metrotone News newsreel series produced by Hearst Corporation from 1914 to 1967 (distributed by Fox Film Corporation 1929-1934 and by MGM 1934-1967)

• Fox Movietone News produced by Fox 1928 to 1963 • Paramount News newsreel series produced by Paramount Pictures from

1927 to 1957 • Pathé News newsreel series produced by Pathé Film from 1910 to 1956

(later distributed by RKO Radio Pictures 1931-1947 and then Warner Brothers 1947-1956)

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Propaganda• Films were used as outright propaganda during the

1930s and 40s war years, when Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, which stirred Nazis to their fevered adoration of Adolph Hitler, was countered by Frank Capra's Why We Fight newsreels, which were produced to sway Americans to go to war.

• The propaganda potential of documentary film is still a factor in contemporary nonfiction films, especially those dealing with political hot potatoes. For example, most films shown at the annual Human Rights Watch International Film Festival have strong social and political messages for viewers.

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Kino Pravda (cinema of truth)

• Kino Pravda (Cinema Truth) describes Dziga Vertov’s 1920s newsreel series. Vertov believed the camera could see and capture reality more accurately than the human eye, and used varied lenses, time lapse, shot and counter shot, slow, fast and stop motion to capture the cinematic reality of a moment in time.

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Cinema Vérité or Direct Cinema• Taking advantage of technological developments

in image and sound recording equipment, the French Cinéma vérité, similar in name to Kino Pravda, took documentary filmmaking to a new level of realism by using handheld cameras on location to capture events as they occurred. No more staged battle scenes. Cinema vérité shows you the real thing.

• The North American variation of Cinema vérité, known as the Direct Cinema style, was developed and preferred by trend-setting filmmakers Michel Brault, Pierre Perrault, Richard Leacock, Frederick Wiseman and Albert and David Maysles.

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More on Direct Cinema…• Following the Direct Cinema style, most filmmakers shoot for reality, but

contemporary directors are generally divided into two groups—• A. those who, like Michael Moore, enter the story and influence its

outcome, or • B. those who, like D.A. Pennebaker, remain objective observers who

watch and film as their story develops. • The Direct Cinema style, still in vogue, usually involves following a

person or group through an event--often a crisis--using handheld cameras to capture the subject's reactions as the situation unfolds.

• Voice over narration and sit down interviews are used very sparingly. • In making these films, directors often shoot many hour of film, which

must then be edited to concisely tell the story. • In contemporary documentary filmmaking, editing is often as important

as shooting, but great editors--like Nancy Baker, who shaped Harlan County USA--rarely get the credit they deserve.

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Budget

• Commercially successful documentaries such as Super Size Me, March of the Penguins and An Inconvenient Truth have given nonfiction features a much broader reach--and yielded bigger budgets for some documentary filmmakers.

• On the other hand, very affordable digital recording equipment now makes it possible for almost anyone to make a documentary, which guarantees a proliferation of nonfiction films--which will undoubtedly give rise to the development of new and highly individual styles of documentary filmmaking.

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Fair Use• Documentary filmmakers have created, through their

professional associations, a clear, easy to understand statement of fair and reasonable approaches to fair use.

• Fair Use is the right, in some circumstances, to quote copyrighted material without asking permission or paying for it.

• It is a crucial feature of copyright law. In fact, it is what keeps copyright from being censorship.

• Documentary filmmakers can invoke fair use when the value to the public of what is said outweighs the cost to the private owner of the copyright.

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Some Basic Elements/Considerations

• 1) Interviews • 2) Cutaways • 3) "Chill Footage" • 4) Process Footage • 5) Archive • 6) Score• 7) Visual Effects• 8) Bias and “Agenda”

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Interviews The director

should frame the person using negative space and have the subject fill roughly 1/3 of the screen, on the left or right side. The subject usually faces the center of the shot.

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Interviews…

• The director should leave room behind the subject (Filmmakers should never interview someone right in front of a wall.)

• He should leave 4-15 feet between the subject and the wall (This technique causes a person's shadow to disappear from the wall.)

• He should watch out for reflections in people's glasses or other accoutrements. (The filmmaker should turn them away from facing the window or light source to solve the problem. )

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Cutaways• Cutaways: These are "Stand-alone" shots, similar to still photography.

• Cutaways can make editing easier for the filmmaker.

• Cutaways can be store signs, close ups of ashtrays, a clock on the wall, people's faces, a candle, a shot of a highway, location exteriors, neighborhood shots.

Some filmmakers use them to create visual poetry out of documentary. They might include brief "shots" that evoke something about the truth of the situation being filmed in the documentary

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Kinds of cutaways• “Story Telling “Shots”- • images of "Welcome to " signs• exterior shots where interviews were filmed• images of character(s) entering and leaving a

building,• wide shots of Cities or towns from on top of a

hill or large building. • These can allow the filmmaker to tell the story

with out always having to use a narrator

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More…

• “Emotional” Cutaways- Shots that have built-in emotional content.

• A solitary man sitting on a park bench• two people walking hand in hand or engaged in

some sort of activity relevant to the film• A close up of a hand while people are

praying/working/writing, etc.• shot of a candle or related object• Participants interacting

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More…• “General” Coverage- Shots of people

watching the event...aspects integral to the event—related items and people—For example, at a race, the director might want shots of cars zooming around the track; fans cheering; tailgating; pit crews at work; the entrance (close-ups); close ups of flags, loudspeakers, and race track signage.

• General coverage shots may come in handy throughout a documentary.

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And more…• CLOSE UPS- The theory of film editing includes

the definition of what makes a good edit (Visual not content).

• According to theory, the director shouldn’t edit together two wide or medium shots filmed from the same angle

• Ideally, the filmmaker would insert a couple of close ups between such shots in order not to make the edit appear as a "Jump Cut“

• Of course, directors sometimes break this rule ( French filmmaker Goodard)

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“Chill” Footage• (otherwise known as Cinema verite or Live Action) • Diffitult to do• The director removes himself and films whatever is

going on with his subjects. He does NOT TALK or INTERACT with them

• Ideally, the character will reveal him/herself on film, and the director will be rolling when the revelation occurs.

• The challenge is to get the subjects to “pretend the film crews are not there.”

• Helps reveal character emotion and mode/need.

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The genre itself…• Documentary films are films, too. “They are among the

principal achievements in cinematic history, and involve a complex array of different potential styles and approaches” (Nowlan)

• Throughout the recorded history of world cinema, three principal aims drive forward production and reception:

• 1. entertainment, • 2. artistic expression, and • 3. social critique as contribution to, or instrument of,

social change.• Documentaries do not simply record "the truth" in a

purely neutral, objectively disinterested manner.• They argue for positions and critique others, often in

the interest of providing inspiration for social change.

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• Because documentary quite often works primarily toward end #3, students should approach documentary film as well as non-documentary film critically, and to ask probing questions about specific documentary films with some knowledge of how directors have and can put documentary films together, as well as why in specific ways.

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Analyzing a documentary• Identify the main argument and / or purpose of the film (this is

somewhat subject to interpretation). • Examine the ways in which the thesis and / or aim of the film’s

argument is supported through the particular style and manner of the composition’s construction, that is, through rhetorical strategies and film techniques. In order to focus your ideas, you’ll need to choose a selection of strategies and techniques to analyze; do not attempt to discuss everything about the film. You will also need to choose specific scenes or moments from the film that illustrate these techniques and analyze how the filmmaker uses them to present the film’s argument.

• Interpret / explain, in terms of your own thesis, why you think that the filmmakers made the particular compositional choices they did (i.e. #2) in an effort to forward their main argument (i.e. #1). You should ask the “so what?” question. These choices are not arbitrary; therefore, you should interpret why the filmmakers have made certain compositional / stylistic choices.

• Support all claims with specific examples from the film. • Cite your film according to MLA.

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What’s a scene, exactly?• In A Short Guide to Writing about Film, Timothy J. Corrigan defines

a scene this way: "A space within which a narrative action takes place; it is composed of one or more shots."

• Wikipedia defines a scene as "a part of the action in a single location."

• A scene is sometimes harder to identify in a documentary than in a feature (fictional) film because the structure is typically not a "story" in the way we are used to in feature films, but the idea is essentially the same.

• Sometimes it is clear when a film shifts from one scene to another, such as when a cut takes us to a totally different time and place in the film. At other times, however, what constitutes a scene is less clear and becomes a matter of judgment.

• In a documentary film, which is built around ideas, a shift from one idea or point to another might constitute a scene change.

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Questions to consider as you view scene by scene…

• Each scene of a documentary film is like a paragraph in a written paper: it presents one main idea that helps support the main idea or argument of the entire film. What is the main idea or purpose of your chosen scene? How do you know?

• What sights and sounds does the director present in the scene? How do they convey the main idea of the scene?

• What filmmaking techniques (camera movement, focus, narration, music and other sound, mise-en-scene, etc.?) do you notice, and how do they contribute (or fail to contribute) to the overall film?

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Questions to consider regarding the work as a whole…

• 1. What is the principal subject of this documentary? What is its principal purpose? Does it argue for a position? Does it critique a position? What kind of impact does it seek to achieve with - and upon - its intended audience?

• 2. Does this documentary film make use of material (e.g., live action, scene location, and/or interview) recorded as spontaneously as possible subject only to the effect introduced by the immediacy of observation from the camera operator/director?

• 3. Does this documentary film make specific choices about what material is to be recorded in relation to the direct observation by the camera operator/director? If so, what kinds of choices, of what should be included and what not, and what kinds of images should be emphasized and what de-emphasized? What, in short, does the documentary film maker look at, and encourage us to look at - and to see - as most important about the principal subject of his or her film?

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• 4. Does this documentary film combine recorded material with voice-over commentary in which the material directly illustrates what the commentary indicates? If so, how so and to what effect does the film make use of this kind of combination?

• 5. Does this documentary film use footage for symbolic or metaphorical purposes on top of, in addition to, or in preference versus the literal information available from the image? If so, how, and to what particular kind of (intended) effect?

• 6. Does this documentary film record seemingly spontaneous dialogue or interaction between two or more participants engaged in conversation/observed action? If so, how, and why?

• 7. Does this documentary film include directly solicited observation, information, reflection, or commentary by witnesses, experts, and other participants in relation to the documentary subject? What kinds of witnesses, experts, and/or other participants does the film maker find most useful, how does she or he use them to get the film's chief points across, and what kind of response does the film maker seek to evoke by using these subjects as she or he does?

• 8. Does the documentary film maker use any other kinds of illustrative or suggestive material (such as animated or still photographic images, and dramatic reconstructions or reenactments) to get her or his points across? If so, what, and to what effect?

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• 9. Does this documentary film include voiceover or direct-to-camera address by a figure who is essentially directing the viewer in the reception of information or argument? If so, how, and to what particular kind of (intended) effect? Does the documentary film maker self-reflexively identify and account for his or her position - and stance - versus the subject of her or his film? How so, and to what effect?

• 10. Does the documentary film maker stage or compose the scene she or he records? How so? Why - to what end and for what effect?

• 11. Does the documentary film maker edit live footage, archival footage, direct interviews, retrospective interviews, and other illustrative or suggestive scenes and images to take a stance and argue for a position? Does the documentary film maker arrange the edited film according to a particular kind of logical pattern, and, if so, what is this pattern? What, in other words, is the organizing principle that the film maker follows in deciding what shots to place where and in what sequence? What kinds of proportions among these various types of images does the film maker choose in what she or he puts together to show us (his or her audience)? Why does he or she give priority to one versus another kind of (non-fictional) image as she or he does? What principal overall aims appear to guide the choices the film maker makes in editing the film as she or he does?

• 12. Does the documentary film maker accompany the image with sound that does not have its ostensible source in anything that we see within the frame (such as music)? How does he or she use this sound - to what effect?

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And finally…• 13. Does the documentary film maker position the camera, and

shift the position of the camera, in terms of angle and distance, to express and communicate a particular take or point of view on what the camera records - and, more generally, on the principal subject of his or her film? Does the documentary film maker change the lens from shot to shot or within the shot to express and communicate a particular take or point of view on what the camera records - and, more generally, on the principal subject of her or his film? Does the documentary film maker move with the recorded image in ways that express and communicate a particular take or point of view on what the camera records - and, more generally, on the principal subject of her or his film? Does the documentary film maker use particular degrees and variations of focus, exposure, sharpness, brightness, contrast, color and/or hue, to express and communicate a take or point of view on what the camera records - and, more generally, on the principal subject of her or his film? What kinds of main overall effects does the documentary film maker seem to aim to achieve by these cinematographic means?

• 14. How would you evaluate the effectiveness of this documentary film? Why?

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Well-known documentary filmmakers• Michael Apted - Profile • Ken Burns - Profile • Laurent Cantet - Interview (Exclusive) • Alex Gibney - Interview (Exclusive) • Chris Hegedus - Profile • Scott Hicks - Interview (Exclusive)• Ted Leonsis - Interview (Exclusive) • Michael Moore - Profile • Errol Morris - Profile • Kimberley Pierce - Interview (Exclusive) • Terry Sanders - Interview (Exclusive)• These interviews and profiles are available on

about.com

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Sources• http://documentaries.about.com/od/

stylesofdocumentaries/a/docstyle.htm• http://www.oscars.org • http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/

resources/publications/statement_of_best_practices_in_fair_use/

• http://faculty.washington.edu/davidgs/BIS347Scene.html

• http://www.digitalparlor.org/icap/node/212• http://www.uwec.edu/ranowlan/

questions_crit_documentary.htm