“Documentary filmmakers
shape the spectators reality" - My Analysis in 500 words
Documentary film is an approach to the ‘real’ as opposed to the
fictional. Dealing with issue of fact, of real events, of actuality. John
Grierson stated that documentaries are not just the approach to actuality, but
as the ‘creative treatment’ of actuality. It is this that can make or break
trust between the spectator and the text and suspend their disbelief. It
clearly implicates the filmmaker as being behind the structured representation
of the subject and brings out the question of whose real is shown on screen.
Many documentaries have the form of the ‘expository mode’, using a
‘voice of God’ narration to shape the message of the documentary and position
the audience in relation to it. The narrator has a power over the spectator by
the fact that you very rarely, if not ever see them. Their words can take on an
authority that is usually strengthened by a specific style and tone of
delivery. Werner Herzog’s biographic documentary film, Grizzly Man has a split narration between its subject who is Timothy
Treadwell and Herzog himself. Herzog has a lot more power and authority in his
narration from his fearful German accent, his emotive language and his minimal
amount of screen time in comparison to Treadwell. Even the times where we see
Herzog on screen, the spectator never see’s his face.
Similarly, in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit
9/11 his narration is a crucial element of manipulating the spectators
wariness of the truth. The film consists of Moore’s voiceover images and
‘newsreels’ the spectator sees have all been carefully chosen and collated to
present a single argument and there is no sense of ambiguity about what Moore
is saying. The spectators is not given a chance to think for themselves but are
being almost hypnotized to have specific response to what is being shown.
Michael Moore has a colloquial and conversational tone in which opposes the
serious nature of his revelations. A key example of this is the sequence where
George Bush sits in a classroom at a Florida primary school and is delivered
the news of the Twin Towers tragedy. Moore’s narration is particularly scornful
at this point, he makes fun of Bush’s impotency in the situation and apparent
lack of action. 
Directors hide the fact of non-realism to make the footage seem ‘real’
and unaltered such as in Robert Flaherty’s Nanook
of the North. Owing to the limitations of the hand-cranked cameras, film-stock
requiring artificial light, appalling weather conditions and whilst editing
everything was burnt and has to be re-shot, there’s no doubt the real created
in this documentary is a ‘creative treatment’ of the real. Flaherty had to ask
his subjects to do their normal activities in special ways at certain times of
the day, thus this film became a kind of acted film. The spectator is unaware
of all of this although they are being depicted re-enacted events, consequently
re-shaping reality. “Sometimes, you have to lie to distort a thing to catch its
true spirit”, Flaherty’s quote amplifies he’s disguised reality in order to generate
a certain response from the spectator.George Whale
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