Bill Nichols Introduction to Documentary Chapter 2.

Bill Nichols’ Introduction to Documentary offers many helpful insights into the world of documentary, the second chapter titled, How Do Documentaries Differ from Other Types of Film, describes the similarities and differences between Documentary and fictional cinema. This chapter is broken down into three categories of differences, institutional frameworks, communities of practitioners and audience reception. Nichols also talks briefly about the ways in which movements developed throughout documentary history, from this section I have noted some of the most important defining qualities and points Nichols makes however this chapters recounting of documentary history is rather sparse.

“ ‘Documentary” can be no more easily defined than “love” or “culture”.” This whole chapter attempts however to describe the differences between doc’ and fiction as well a working towards a definition of the “fuzzy” genre of documentary. Many people have attempted to define documentary and one thing most descriptions agree upon is that doc’ is a representation of reality or as Nichols says “it is a representation of the world we already occupy.” One of the interesting things Nichols points out about doc being a representation is that “We judge a representation more by the nature of the pleasure it offers, the value of the insight or knowledge it provides” this means that as an audience “We ask more of a representation than we do of a reproduction”, documentary strives to be more than a reproduction by using the rhetoric to make a specific argument or show a specific point of view.

In the sections in which Nichols talks about the institutional frameworks there isn’t much of importance said, his logic is admittedly “circular” but does still ring true that those films produced by documentary institutions, such as the Discovery Chanel, will be documentaries. He does again address the definition of documentary and its relationship with the “real”. The Documentary film maker John Grierson famously said that documentary is "the creative treatment of actuality" however Nichols states documentary must "also achieve a clarity or simplicity that implies that documentaries achieve direct, truthful access to the real" as it is "one of the prime attractions of the form".  I believe this is one of the many key conflicts for documentary film makers and one of the reasons it is such an interesting genre to work in.

During the section on documentary film makers themselves Nichols re asserts the same circular logic, Documentary film makers make documentary films, however he takes this one step further by highlighting the world in which documentary film makers inhabit. Professional doc makers have a language and common goal, they share distributors and meet at festivals and have a certain shared identity.

The next section is “A corpus of texts” in which Nichols describes documentary through different defining films, whilst doing this he makes some interesting points about doc’ on the whole. Firstly Nichols brings up the fact that documentary need not worry about continuity editing, rather the editing within documentary is a kind of “evidentiary editing” which he describes as shots cut and arranged “less by a narrative organized around a central character than by a rhetoric organized around a controlling logic or argument.” This seems to be one of the most defining qualities of documentary as it ties into the idea of using rhetoric language to make an argument, Nichols says it “not only furthers our involvement in the unfolding of the film but supports the kinds of claims or assertions the film makes about our world.” Also highlighted in this section, and by the description of evidentiary editing, is the importance of the spoken word within documentary, if the images are almost always used as evidence the point they make and the actual historical or contextual argument is to be made up of speech, Nichols puts it as “Speech fleshes out our sense of the world. An event recounted becomes history reclaimed.” This is a somewhat victorious sounding statement that shows the need for a strong spoken narrative within documentary. Again however Nichols has again neglected to point out that the poetic documentary often moves away from this convention, clearly as Nichols states none of the defining factors of documentary can cover all documentaries hence the “fuzziness” of the genre.

Nichols finishes this section by talking about periods, movements and modes. Periods are specific times in which documentaries changed or had specific identities, periods are simply the 30’s or 60’s in which documentaries had particular flourishes. Movements arise from “a group of films made by individual who share a common outlook or approach”, these also tend to be placed in specific times or places. Finally Nichols’ own creation, modes, are similar to movements but are more like genres within documentary. Nichols states that modes are created "partly as a response to perceived limitation in previous modes, partly as a response to technological possibilities, and partly as a response to a changing social context."

Finally Nichols’ discussion turns to the way audience see and react to documentary an important relationship as Nichols rightly believes “the sense that a film is a documentary lies in the mind of the beholder as much as it lies in the films context or structure.”  The indexical relationship between film and reality is what Nichols talks about next however his over use of examples outside of film and his general lack of explanation makes this section a little muddled and over complicated, the final conclusion alone makes enough sense, “Documentary re-presents the historical world by making an indexical record of it; it represents the historical world by shaping this record from a distinct perspective or point of view." Again Nichols touches upon the separation between documents and documentaries, he states that audiences expect to see the truth but that “the film as a whole will stand back from being a pure document or transcription.” This is a basic re iteration of what was said in the start of the chapter only this time it is from the perspective of the audience not the film maker. Nichols then extends this idea of representation and reality in what I think is one of his most important statements “we anticipate the oscillation between recognition of historical reality and the recognition of a representation about it. This expectation distinguishes our involvement with documentary from our involvement with other film genres.” It is a fairly simple statement but it is one of the best ways to define documentary or to at least separate it from fiction.

The importance and the popularity of documentary is reinforced in the final few paragraphs of this second chapter as Nichols talks about the “desire to know” or “epistephilia” that documentaries evoke in their audiences and the sobriety documentary carries with it. No matter how they are separated or how they are defined Nichols sums up the importance of documentary by saying “They are the vehicles of action and intervention, power and knowledge, desire and will, directed toward the world we physically inhabit and share.”

Bibliography

Nichols B. (2001). How do documentaries differ from other types of film. In: Introduction to documentary. usa: Indiana University Press. p20-41.

Bill Nichols' Introduction to Documentary Chapter 1

To improve my understanding of the documentary genre I have been reading Bill Nichols' "Introduction to Documentary" I have read the first chapter so far which gives a basic understanding of documentary principles and tackles some of the burning questions of documentary.

Nichols' book begins with an unusual statement, "Every film is a documentary". An odd thing to say at first but when you think of fictions as "documentaries of wish fulfilment", and normal documentaries as "social representation" it is a simple and beautiful idea that goes a long way to normalising the process of documentary structure, characters and storytelling. Documentary is difficult to define and Nichols doesn't particularly attempt to solve this with a simple definitions however he does say all things that are safe such as they represent what reality is, was or will be. One thing he does say that the aim of most doc's is to "convince us one view point is preferable to the others", as well as outlining the importance of this as it puts documentary over fiction when he says "We take not only pleasure from doc but direction as well." I think these statements definitely explain some of the popularity of doc's however poetic documentary seems to be outside of these aims.

The next large section is on the three ways Nichols believes Documentary engages with the world. The first of these is as with a "likeness or depiction of the world that bears a recognizable familiarity", this is pleasing because it helps the audience believe in the cinema, Nichols states "we see what was there before the camera; it must be true". He also acknowledges this is more of a cultural thing than a factual thing as images can clearly be altered during or after filming. Secondly "Documentaries stand for or represent the interests of others" and the others that it stands for or represents itself splits into three. Those that are the subject, those that sponsor the film and the directors own beliefs are all represented through one film. Thirdly and finally Documentary represents the world "in the same way a lawyer may represent his clients interests" as facts to make an argument for or against a specific point or a specific "view point ... preferable to the others".

The difficulties posed by representing others are next called into question by Nichols as he examines the ethics of documentary. Much of what he says is basic common sense and I think the mast interesting question posed isnt how should I represent people but how much about how I represent people should I tell them about? This is neatly confined to the issue of "informed consent" which allows film makers to have different levels of secrecy depending on the contract. Another of the interesting subjects Nichols touches upon in this section is the way filming people changes their actions in some way, the idea that this could ruin doc's is well battled with the idea that one of the points of doc's is to show how people act in front of camera and I believe this would be a fun idea to play with. The tension between film makers and subjects will always be high as Nichols explains subjects want to be shown in a flattering light however this isn't always the best for the film maker who has a career and reputation to make a living from, these arguments are clearly important to consider and the balance between a film makers wishes and keeping the subjects of the film or "social actors" happy appears to be one of the key aspects of obtaining a good documentary or at least an ethical one.

The rest of this first chapter is devoted to describing the "alliance" between the film maker, the audience and the subjects or social actors. He begins with a sentence that describes a common relation "I speak about them to you" he describes that an I is either a documentary film maker, usually with some kind of persona, or a voice of god type of narrator who from one perspective tells the audience a specific story or subject. The Them refers to a subject which can be expressed at both "What story shall I tell" or "What shall I talk about" two specific phrases which offer very different structures for different types of documentary. The you refers not only to the audience as a whole but to each single audience member as the specific person the film maker is addressing thus "activating" the audience. This is often done through rhetoric language which combines knowledge, poetry and narrative to construct a coherent argument. The sentences are thus "I speak about them to you" "It speaks about them or it to us" "I or We speak about us to you". I speak to them about you is pretty simple, it speaks about them or it to us however is much more about an unknown entity telling all audiences of something, to me these seem to be less documentaries and more info-mercials and adverts. We speak about us is again simple and deals with a group of people who express themselves and explore their own culture though documentary, this is also called "auto-ethnography".

The first chapter of Nichols' "Introduction to documentary" serves as a good introduction to some of the issues of documentary film making and offers some simplistic solutions to how to view documentary. From this introduction I have developed a list of questions to help me when I'm analysing documentary;

1. Which of Nichols' modes is it and does it fit well?

2. does it represent the world as a likeness or depiction of the world that bears a recognizable familiarity, or does it clearly take liberties and move away from a likeness we recognise.

3. Whose interests are represented (ie. the inquisitive public's)

4. What "case" is it Presenting. (ie. a mans struggle in harsh climate + a families strength((Rhetoric))

5. How does it use logic, narrative and poetic to for a cohesive rhetoric and what is this rhetoric?

6. How do representations of the subjects views relate to that of the film maker. Are they the same or different?

7. Is the doc fair and morale towards its subjects, was it ethical?

8. How does it treat the "three way" relationship?

9. Does is focus more on a story or more on talking about something?

10. How well rounded are "Them"? or are they just basic simple examples

11. Does the film activate us as audience members, making us want to pass on the news or make a change?

Hopefully these questions will help me implement some of the things I have learned from reading Nichols' first chapter of "Introduction to Documentary"

Bibliography
1. Nichols. (2001). Why are ethical issues central to documentary film making . In: Introduction to documentary. usa: Indiana University Press. p1-19.

1st day shooting

The first day of shooting went quite well, it was a hard day, light conditions were pretty poor but we got to work at about 11 and spent the first 30mins getting settled. Me and our director, Steve went off with the camera to get working, we noted down which shots would work for each section of our poetic. Unfortunately our Urbexers were not available until 1500 ish so by then the light conditions had gone drastically down hill but we were there so we tried to get everything we could. I also had a lot of opportunities to use the dolly which was great fun and looked brilliant.

This clip shows brief bits of the kind of footage we got:

Here are a few of my own personal comments on the work that will effect our next shoot and inform our future shot lists.
The first (practice shot) is good enough by itself. So get it without people in it
Graffiti would be good to get in the context of the room, not just abstract.
Expose for outside and inside on most shots.
Get peacock lighter
More 1 point perspective.
tracking shots work really well!
Chair reflections in better light.
Bathroom with more light
More of the urbexers doing their recording, it looks really nice.

Although that isnt all of the footage that gives a good idea of what we got, a lot of it is a little dark unfortunately but we are hoping to film more soon! I will be thinking of more shots and things over the next few days.

Research for shooting Stanley tools!

I have been looking at our location for the Urbexing documentary. The Stanley Tools building is an excellent location to start with and even though it would be great to get some more locations I have been looking into the location and the layout on some Urbexing sites. There are some amazing photographs around that highlight some beautifully desolate parts of the building that we will definitely search for on our reccie and when shooting.

After looking through photographs on multiple sites I found some interesting motifs and visuals to take advantage of in our poetic and final piece.

Firstly the amount of square imagery is staggering, here are a few photographs to show my point.

The floor panels, wall tiles and roofing are all square or rectangles and often have grid like appearances, I plan to use these squares as a visual motif throughout the Doc to make it visually interesting and use them to frame more important subjects.

As far as interesting things to frame are concerned the building is full of interesting bits of old office materials and things used by the company years ago. These items are awesome to look at but for us the most interesting things to shoot will be the Urbexers interactions with the items. Here are some of the things I mean

 Another inspiring photograph I found was this:

To me this rabbit hole kind of perspective is really cool, it would be great to get a shot of our urbexers coming down this staircase as though the audience watching are following them down the rabbit hole into another world filled with abandonment and decay.

It is also nice to take a look at the outside of the building, this image shows that even on the outside the square imagery is inescapable, it would be silly not to use it.

There are also a lot of images of the city of Sheffield from the roof of the stanley tools building and its easy to see why, it looks amazing

I talked to Steve (our director) about the views from ontop of the building and we decided it would be best to capture it in a time lapse so that we see all the lights in the city come on. Although its a little bit irrelevant to our urbexing theme it is one of the most common pictures on the urbexing sites and is therefore important. 

This final photograph is not of or related to Urbexing however it is an illustration of an idea I have for solving one of our shooting problems. Our contributors  the urbexers, would rather not be fully on camera, we can get around this mainly by using selective focus, shadowing and quick cuts however I had another idea....

To shoot the Urbexers with their cameras in front of their faces, this solves the issue of identity but also adds meaning to the urbexers, it shows that they are seeing things through their cameras eye. They are here to photograph and that is how they see the locations and therefore to us they are photographers  the cameras in 

front of their faces is a nice visual representation of this. 

These are the majority of the ideas I will be talking about in my pitch, I will have a section to myself in which I talk specifically about the imagery and camerawork I'm planning!

Photograph sources:

http://1000fights.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/man-taking-photo-.jpg

http://projectsheffield.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/stanley-tools-sheffield-the-roof/

http://www.urbexforums.com/showthread.php/17053-Stanley-Tools-Sheffield-June-2012

http://talkurbex.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3375

http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php/70906-Stanley-Tools-Sheffield-May-2012

Documentary Idea Conception

We had a lot of ideas for our doc based on our personal interests and friends. We aimed to think of 2 ideas each so that we would have a lot to chose from and discuss. My contributions were a doc based around comic books and to do something reflective about documentary.

In the end we chose the Urban Exploring idea with the Gaveyard idea for a backup. This is because we think they are the most interesting and would provoke some nice visuals. We think the Urbexing doc will be more unique so that is our first choice. Not only that but we already have a location for the Urbexing as well as contributors! Time to start researching the pastime and looking for some photographs of the location.

Poetic Documentary

This week in the lesson we looked at a lot of clips of poetic documentary, we were trying to get a feel of what makes a doc poetic and the differences between poetic and non poetic doc's. First poetry itself has a specific feeling, different to prose, so when analysing we found the following things important; Rhythm, Feeling, Tone, Metaphor, Lyricism, Punctuation. We then applied these to films, punctuation strongly links to editing, metaphor can be visual metaphor, tone and mood obviously links to the tone and mood of docs and finally lyricism can be strongly represented in docs with emotional content and style.

We started looking at specific films beginning with Regen (1929 Joris Ivans) a heavily visual doc about... Rain? maybe, or a storm. The music that plays along moves the piece really well and helps to alter the pace of the piece. Much of the visuals are reflections, shadows and have basically no subjects, the subject of the piece is the weather going on during each abstract image, this gives the doc its abstract and poetic feel. Inspired by Dali, Ivans' abstract visual montage is an avant garde doc that well illustrates the idea of a poetic documentary through, pacing and its starkly beautiful and interesting visuals.

Next we looked at Night Mail (1936 Harry Watt, Basil Wright) it seemed much more conventional however it concentrated heavily on pacing to match visual and audio cue's of the mail delivering trains the doc is based on. The mainly poetic part of Night Mail is the actual use of poetry read in a voice over to narrate and illustrate the metaphorical points of the film.

Chris Marker's Sans Soleil (1983) was the next film we watched, classed as an Essay doc, a documentary that makes a point for or against a cause, Sans Soleil is a series of relatively random looking shots with a female voice over that makes reflective comments about society and about film making. Marker brings the themes of memory and thinking into this piece as well as he often does in his other work such as La Jetee. The poetic element of this doc is the voice over, which isnt poetry but is largely philosophical and therefore poetic when coupled with the often emotional visuals.

Night in Fog (1955 Alan Resnais) was the most hard hitting film we watched, a reflective doc about the concentration camps of world war 2. The contrast of past and present is evident throughout and this is emphasised by contrasting black and white with colour as well as manipulating the sound. The movie was hard hitting and the brutal images of death were narrated fairly simply by a monotone emotionless voice, the film uses the poetic doc form to question why this happened and who is responsible. The poetic imagery of death camp stock footage and the overgrown broken down death camps of the present have been fittingly described as having a terrible gentleness.

One of the most conventional or at least most normal docs we watched was Wisconsin Death Trip (1999 James Marsh) a recreation of the mental illness and harsh winters in a desolate part of Wisconsin. The recreation was based on photographs of the time, the stories and images are news reports and psychiatric notes written at the time. These make up a general picture of what the town was like at that time in history. The poetic part about this documentary can be seen in the others, it uses many fragmented narratives to build a specific emotion, mood and story rather than using a single story to dictate the whole film.

Finally we saw Tarnation (2003 Jonathan Caouette) which was made up of home video, photographs and text which told a harrowing personal story of the film makers life growing up with a schizophrenic mother. The pacing of the photographs in this piece was incredibly important along with the emotional audio and factual text that contrasted in a brilliant way both scaring and exciting the audience. Poetically the basic narrative contrasts most of the other docs we looked at but the form is surely poetic, the flashing images and emotional music really evoked an emotional response and perfectly set the tone and mood of the doc.

In conclusion lots of things make up poetic doc, it is almost as hard to define as traditional doc. However it is common for them to use multiple fragmented narratives, to be more focused on emotion than fact, are often not to inform and nearly never have classic interviews! I am looking forward to developing our own poetic ideas and seeing where the freedom of poetic doc takes us.

The beginning of Documentary Level 5

Level 5 Documentary has begun we have received our briefs and are beginning work already! In this weeks lesson we began by trying to define documentary, a task which we learned is not as easy as it sounds. It may have something to do with content, contributors or theme among other things.

Documentary is most easily defined as "a representation of the world we already occupy"(1) which is extremely broad but works for almost all documentaries. It definitely covered the Doc's we watched in class, the first was Touching the Void (2003 Kevin Macdonald) a film about two climbers who get lost. The thing that stands out about this doc, or this kind of doc, is that it is representing something from the past, it therefore uses recreations to show what it was like. Although voice over is provided by the climber, the recreation uses a large amount of drama techniques such as lighting, sets, actors and music. These elements are used to dramatise and represent what happened to the climber but are obviously an extreme representation of what happened. This dramatisation brings the status of documentary into question, the technique is often used and widely accepted despite its dramatic elements, it shows that doc doesn't have to be fact or actual footage.

We then watched Grizzly Man (2005 Werner Herzog) a film about Timothy Treadwell, this is a very personal documentary about Timothy who lived with grizzly bears in the wild, protecting and loving them. He used his camera as a tool to document his life and to be his friend, his diary and his companion. The clip we watched showed Timothy at a deeper level, it showed how he bared his soul to the camera on some occasions and on others he took repeated takes of introductions to insure he had the appropriate stock footage and had good takes of every shot. This shows both the truthfulness of doc's through Timothy's raw emotion as well as the lies and retakes used in the editing process of docs.

The Alcohol Years (2000 Carol Morley) was another of the conventional docs we watched, however we only saw the intro. This consisted of peoples opinions of the director Carol Morley's life in the 80's of which Carol was so drunk she knows little of herself. This was clearly another different style of doc, it showed opinion, a completely subjective look at the subject through the eyes of people that both liked and disliked her. It was an interesting way of looking at someone however a whole hour long doc would have gotten a little boring as each persons statement was intercut with others and the pace of the film was tiring.

Finally we watched a clip from Man with a Movie Camera (1929 Dziga Vertov) which is almost as clear a documentary as one can be. It uses absolutely no elements of drama or ant retakes, it is simply shots of the Russian public. Its not particularly interesting but it is a fairly accurate representation. However some would argue, Bazin particularly that as soon as we cut and edit we are no longer telling the truth or being real, every cut is a lie.

We also looked briefly at the history of documentary, of Nanook of the North (1922 Robert Flaherty) and Greerson's "post office" movement in the 30's in Britain, of Humphrey Jennings and the mass observation group. However the biggest leap in doc's came during the 60's, with the development of 16mil cameras and portable sound systems four different types of doc's developed, Direct Cinema (USA), the UK Free movement, Candid eye (Canada) and France's Cinema Verite.

Finally we looked briefly at types of doc, Poetic, Expository, Observational, Particapatory, Reflexive and Performative. After forming groups to do our poetic 2 min and final 5-10 min docs our lesson ended. I don't yet have any ideas but am meeting with the group soon to talk over anything we come up with in the next few days. I believe it may be best to address an issue rather than look specifically at a person or type of person, I feel this way because I have previously done Doc's about specific people and would like to do something new, we would also be less restricted if doing a doc about am issue than we would if we were doing it on a specific group, person or place.

Over the next week I will be finishing the section of "Introduction to Documentary" by Bill Nichols which has some interesting theories and basics about understanding the documentary form.

Bibliography
1. Nichols Bill, Introduction to Documentary, (Indiana University Press, 2001) p20