Documentaries employ many of the same devices as fiction films to hold the audience’s attention. Story, point of view, structure, cinematography, editing, music and style all have an important place in documentaries, just as they do in fiction films.

All documentaries require a strong story, one with a beginning, middle and end, compelling characters, and emotional impact. A documentary filmmaker must determine the subject of the film, its theme, how the story or stories in the film will convey that theme, the characters, their goals, the conflict and the resolution. These decisions are usually made and revised throughout the filmmaking process.

In Barbara Kopple’s 1976 film Harlan County, U.S.A. tension comes naturally from the subject matter—striking coal miners fighting to win the right to unionize. Super Size Me is the 2004 film about what happens to director Morgan Spurlock when he eats nothing but McDonalds’ food for a month. Suspense builds as his health deteriorates over the course of the film. Spurlock also uses humor to make a serious point about the epidemic of obesity in the U.S.

Strong characters can be found in many places. Recent documentaries have featured such intriguing characters as kids from different backgrounds and cities competing in a spelling bee (Spellbound, 2002); the former Harlem Globetrotter father of filmmaker Hubert Davis (Hardwood, 2004); dolphins (Dolphins, 2000), or former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (The Fog of War, 2003).

Narration—off-camera commentary—is used to voice letters and other written material; to join together visual images, interviews and archival material; to provide transitions between scenes, or to set the stage for a scene. It is also used to indicate re-enactments. Narration is generally written after the film is completed to ensure that the words and pictures work together.

Sound may be recorded on location during filming or added after filming is completed. Location sound adds credibility and immediacy to the film, but the sound track may also be re-recorded, or re-created and edited in later. Narration, music and sound effects may also be added during post-production. Contrast between sound and image or between sound and silence is an effective way to build tension. Silence can also underscore an emotional moment or allow the audience to focus closely on what the person or people on camera are saying or doing.

PART A
Documentaries can approach their subjects objectively, in a seemingly unbiased way, or subjectively, with a distinct point of view. Some documentaries use a combination of both.

Direct cinema, sometimes called cinéma vérité (sin-uh-muh vare-it-TAY), is a method of documentary filmmaking that attempts to record events objectively, without manipulation or direction. In direct cinema, the camera records life as it unfolds in real time. Usually the audience is not aware of the filmmakers’ presence. Questions are not posed on screen, and generally, the film does not have narration.

While researching their documentary LaLee’s Kin: The Legacy of Cotton, direct cinema filmmakers Susan Froemke, Deborah Dickson and Albert Maysles met the main subjects of their film: LaLee Wallace and her family and Mississippi educator Reggie Barnes. The filmmakers did not know in advance exactly what the film would be about, but allowed LaLee’s story to unfold as they observed her and her family. Froemke reports that often what the filmmakers intended to film on a given day would be put aside when other, more interesting, events took place while they watched.

Other objective documentaries involve more planning. Ken Burns has made many documentaries about American history, including Brooklyn Bridge and The Civil War. Burns’ team works on several parallel tracks at the same time, producing a working script, performing extensive research into each subject, choosing historical pictures and written material and interviewing experts. This process continues during the two to three years it takes Burns to finish the film.

Objective documentaries are usually expected to show both sides of a controversial story in a balanced manner. A multi-sided or non-judgmental approach helps build tension and adds depth to a film. By including opposing points of view and contrasting opinions, filmmakers try to provoke people to question their own beliefs about or understanding of a subject.

Viewers may find a film’s argument more convincing if the filmmaker’s bias is not evident. Pierre Schoendorffer, the director of The Anderson Platoon (1967), spent six weeks with a 33-man American platoon during the Vietnam War. Schoendorffer does not make any outright political statements, but lets the audience draw its own conclusions about the war by listening to and watching the experiences of the soldiers.

Documentaries do not always try to be objective, however. Filmmakers such as Michael Moore and Barbara Trent make personal, opinionated documentaries. In these films, the director is usually a participant, either as a voice from behind the camera, or appearing as a character in front of the camera. Often the filmmaker narrates the film as well. Although representing an individual opinion, subjective films try to be truthful from the filmmaker’s point of view.

My Architect, director Nathanial Kahn’s film about his father, architect Louis Kahn, is a highly personal documentary. During the film, Kahn attempts to come to terms with his complex feelings toward his father.

Show your students a documentary or sequence from a documentary. Some suggestions are Bowling for Columbine, Bright Leaves, Brooklyn Bridge, Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers, He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin’, LaLee’s Kin, The Panama Deception and The Thin Blue Line. Ask them whether the film is told from an objective or subjective point of view. Discuss with them why they think the filmmaker chose to tell the story that way. Have the students identify the subject, theme and characters of the film. If there is a conflict in the film, have them determine if it is resolved by the end. Ask them to think about how the film might have been different if it had been a fiction film.

Then have the students discuss how the different sound elements, such as narration, music and ambient sound are used in the film, and to consider how the sound and image work together.

Supplemental Activity
Divide your students into groups and have each group write a 5-page script on the same topic, perhaps a topic your class has been studying. Using some of the criteria above, compare and discuss the different approaches to the subject taken by each group.

PART B
Some documentaries, like Nanook of the North, Genghis Blues (1999), Step into Liquid (2003) and The Children of Leningradsky (2004), observe, describe or evoke different situations, cultures and people. Others, like The Living Sea (1995), explain an aspect of the natural world. Still others try to mobilize support for a position. The Thin Blue Line, for example, led to the release of a man wrongly convicted of murder.

A documentary can be arranged chronologically or it can move back and forth in time, if that is the best way to make a point or illustrate the theme. In his 1989 film Roger & Me, Michael Moore wants the audience to share his outrage about the closing of General Motors’ plants in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. The film does not follow a timeline because Moore is less interested in the history of the plant closings than in their effect on the community.

Although documentaries are called subjective or objective, in fact there is no such thing as totally objective filmmaking. Every choice that a documentary filmmaker makes about what to include in the film and how to structure the story not only reflects his or her attitude toward the subject, but also influences the audience’s reaction.

To illustrate this, have your students divide into two groups. Ask one group to choose a series of pictures from magazines or other sources and arrange them to illustrate a story in a straightforward, realistic way. Then ask the second group to take these same pictures and rearrange them to illustrate the story in a different way. For example, one group may tell the story in chronological order, while the second group arranges the pictures for a humorous effect. Have your students discuss how the same material can have different meanings.

A documentary’s story is filtered through the sensibility of the filmmaker. To demonstrate the way one person’s understanding can alter a story, have your students play the “telephone” game. Have a group of students sit in a line. Give a prepared sentence to the first student and ask that student to whisper the sentence to the next student. The second student then whispers what he or she remembers to the third student, and so on until the last student is reached. Ask the last student to repeat the sentence and compare it to the written sentence that the first student began with.

Supplemental Activity
Have your students watch a short film or sequence from a documentary and then ask them to describe the exact sequence of events, the characters and the setting. Have them focus on what they are actually seeing and hearing, not what they think the filmmaker is trying to say. Ask them to read back their accounts and see what differences emerge. Then play the film again and let them compare their description to the film. Have them discuss what this exercise tells them about the difficulty of separating what is really going on in a film from what the viewer thinks is happening.