Genuiness in Documentaries

Someone else had written about documentaries having to be genuine, and I couldn’t agree more. From watching many documentaries, I have developed the ability to pick out documentaries that are genuine and the ones that are not. In actuality, it’s not difficult to pick out documentaries that are genuine. Documentaries are meant to convey a story of a certain topic. Topics can very from level of emotion, but one thing that all documentaries have in common is how they are told. Ones that are genuine will capture the reality of the word the filmmaker is filming in. Settings cannot be made up, scripts cannot be written, and interviewees cannot be actors. Documentaries require genuine rawness from everyone involved. The best documentaries are the ones where a thirty second bit in the finished product, took tens of hours of footage to get. Projects like those take so long because there are layers and layers of a story that have to be unraveled for the true emotion to come from a topic. Being genuine allows this process to happen and develops patience to understand complexity of a topic at hand. As filmmakers, we must allow the people who deal with the topic at hand to express themselves to the camera. We cannot force or put thoughts and ideas into their heads about what we want to be said in an interview. People see right through these tactics and it makes for a cheap looking finished piece. As documentarians, we have the power to change and influence the world through our work, but it’s not our job to create these stories. What is our job is to tell the stories of the people that have these

interesting topics and situations everyday, in the most aw-inspiring and genuine way possible.