News and Documentary

The Similarities and Differences Between News and Documentaries.

The aim of news reports and documentaries are the same and are to give facts about a specific person or event. There are many ways in which they do this however they are not always the same. The news is mainly a present time thing that reports on what is happening at the time. Sometimes they would go into small detail about events or refer back to something in the past to give the audience some background information on what has happened/is happening at the time of the news report. A documentary on the other hand would go into great detail about what has happened in the past. A way to show this is by using the Columbine High School shootings on 20th April 1999. To show this I will look through a news report from NBC News and the Michael Moore documentary Bowling for Columbine.

The news report from the NBC have limited facts about the shooting itself and is repetitive with the facts that they do know. A fact that they keep reporting is that it was "two young men apparently dressed in long black trench coats". One of the reasons for the large use of repetition on this is that it is reporting on the present day event, it is a way of making members of the public remember and be aware of what the people look like which put's a certain amount of fear into the publics eye. Where the News is concerned on the details about the image and the state of, the event the documentary is more into why it happened. The TV report mentions about "a pipe bomb might have been used" but does not mention how this could have happened. Bowling for Columbine on the other hand goes into detail about how the possibilities of this could have come around and how they could have got hold of these explosives. Director Michael Moore got information that the news report didn't show as interviewed a student from the school who was placed 2nd on the bomb list. The reasoning why was due to the student having a book called "The Anarchist Cookbook" which teaches how to make TNT and other explosives.

Another thing that the news briefly mentioned was about the suspects being "disenfranchised kids that have threatened revenge in the past for kids making fun of them". Within the documentary Moore interviews an ex-student of the high school and now animator of the hit TV show South Park, Matt Stone. this interview goes into more detail about being an unpopular student and what it was like. The interviews from the NBC report are from deputies, sheriffs and members of other news companies like KMGH. All of these interviews are from people who are reporting from a second hand source. Bowling for Columbine differs with it's interviews as they are all from people who are in a way victims of the attack. Not necessarily direct victims but people who's lives the shootings have impacted on. An example of this is the "experts" list of reasons which included "Angry heavy metal subculture, violent movies, South Park, video games, television, entertainment, Satan, cartoons, society, toy guns, drugs, Marilyn Manson, Marilyn Manson, Marilyn Manson, Marilyn Manson, Marilyn Manson" and the final reasoning "Marilyn Manson". The self-proclaimed God of F**k, Marilyn Manson appeared on an interview with Moore as he was blamed for the shootings as people believed it was the music that the two students listened to which influenced them to carry out the act.

Conclusion
From looking at both news report and documentary I have found out that they both do the same thing with the basics by giving facts about what was used and why some reasoning on the motivation for the attacks. However, the documentary takes it into more depth by looking at the subject from different views and questioning it more rather than saying, this happened, this happened and that happened.

Conventions Glossary

Conventions Glossary 

Voiceovers: A voiceover/narrative is used to help tell the audience what is happening and is also used sometimes to help persuade the audience to think of a specific opinion and to think "what is right".

Real Footage of Events: Real footage in a documentary is essential as a documentary is known as a factual representation of an event or being. However, through the use of editing and soundtrack the prospective on the reality of what the audience is seeing is altered.

Technicality of Realism: This is when natural sound and lighting has been incorporated into the documentary to give it more of the reality feel.

Archive Footage and Stills: Archive footage is used when the film maker wants to back up a point and give more information to the audience or if the director is unable to gather this footage.

Interview with Experts: The main reason on why a director would have an interview with an expert is to help support their point and give the audience more information. Sometimes the director would interview an expert to challenge and try to disprove them and there "expertise".

Use of Text and Titles: This would include labels, dates, and names. Mainly at the start of interviews as a way of introducing the interviewee and also used in archive footage that gives the audience more indication on what the footage is and most of the time, when the footage was filmed.

Sound: Sound is important within a documentary and changes a lot on how the audience feels towards the subject matter. By adding music during editing the film maker can change the views of the audience by grabbing their attention, making them look highly on something or even making them look down on something like an event or even a person.

Visual Coding: Mise-en-scene props and cinematography are all elements of Visual Coding. This comes in handy when filming a documentary as when a person is being interviewed the background and props surrounding would be related to their title and why they are being interviewed.

Documentary Genres

Interactive

An interactive documentary is a documentary in which the 

majority of the time the filmmaker is involved and on screen. 

Interactive documentaries are often a personal to the 

filmmaker/director themselves, which explains the reasoning of 

why they are on screen in the majority of interactive 

documentaries. A perfect example of this is the film 

‘Religulous’ which involves the director himself Bill Maher 

traveling to find out about and take on the current state of world 

religion. 

Expository

The genre of an expository documentary is a very factual style and 

mainly used for history or nature documentaries. These 

documentaries are uses evidence and information to prove 

something or educate and inform the viewer on the subject matter 

with help from a narrator giving details to explain and teach as 

such. The documentary TV series ‘Planet Earth’ does this very well 

as, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, it gives information and 

hard evident facts about the global overview of different habitats on 

earth. 

Observational 

An observational documentary where the film 

will follow and observe a person, event, or 

even a group of people and what they do. 

With no narration the story of the 

documentary is told through the visuals that 

the audience is observing. ‘Anywhere But 

Home’ is a documentary that follows the 

band Evanescence as they show their life 

whilst on tour.

Performative 

This is a documentary that is meant to make the viewers 

feel tension. By using recreations and some archive 

footage of events the majority of performative 

documentaries are structured as a drama. Having 

interviews with people from the event and experts helps to 

give the sense of drama through out as the audience is 

hearing it from the people who have experienced it first 

hand. A great example of this is the documentary 

‘Touching The Void’. A film about mountain climbers 

conquering the west face of Siula Grande with interviews of the climbers talking 

about the events that have happened and deadly risks they had to face. 

Essayistic

With a very simple structure, the essayistic genre is a documentary that is set out like an essay as if someone is explaining rather than showing the audience. Formed from personal events and opinions on a chosen subject the documentary, however still including the facts f the matter, is there more to educate rather for the sake of filming. An example of this style of genre is the Channel4 TV series ‘The Story Of Film: An Odyssey ’. This shows director Mark Cousins going through the history of film with facts, and his own opinions on the matter and personal events that have happened to him. 

Experimental

What is a Documentary