Capturing Reality

Thursday we watched a documentary on documentaries. It was basically a big interview of a bunch of different documenters(?) and the kind of work they do, what it means to them, how they do their films, ect... The thing that was the most interesting to me was all of the different views and opinions about the nature of this type of film and how different all of their style were.  I don't remember the names of these two exact people, but a part that stuck our to me was when one of them explained how you cannot just sit someone down in a room and ask them questions and script it all because then it isn't genuine and it isn't a good documentary. How a person needs to be filmed in their natural setting just doing and talking about whatever comes naturally. The next person then showed a clip from a film he made and talked about how the whole set was fabricated and how they just put random stuff on the wall and made a fake office type area for this guy to sit in and be interviewed. He then said that the man in the film used this area to his advantage and really came alive in it while being interviewed. These two very opposing ideas were interesting to me and also pointed out how documentaries can be made many different ways and still be quality.


(so many people were interviewed and film names were dropped, it was hard to keep track of how many there were and who made which film)

Another interesting thing to me, and a tad ironic, was also relating to the person who said that a good documentary doesn't just sit someone down and ask them questions in a falsified setting. This whole documentary was that exact thing. The setting was quite simplistic actually, but the questions were all just straight forward and being asked to everyone.