Summary of Documentary Shooting Experience about Fiction Documentary Stories

A friend who made a documentary described one of his topics: my friend's father worked as a driver in a county hospital in his hometown. The obstetrics and gynecology department of this hospital is very famous, and it is always the first choice for a neighbor to have a baby. My friend's father's daily job is to send pregnant women and babies home after giving birth. My friend's documentary wants to record the people and things that happened on this "car delivery". Intuitively, I think this is a good topic. It should be interesting to imagine the little life in that car and the young mothers who have just experienced the pain of pregnancy and childbirth in October. Soon, however, a friend came back and said that his topic was "shot" by his column group because it lacked enough story.

Keywords: novel; Documentary; story

China Library Classification Number: J952 Document Identification Number: Part A Number:1005-5312 (2012) 24-0132-02.

It is human nature to like telling stories and listening to stories. Obeying the requirements of mass communication, many TV documentary columns take "telling stories" as the core strategy, and pursue the complete and powerful dramatic structure of the documentary, so as to stimulate the audience's desire to watch. This dramatic pursuit affects the topic selection, shooting, structure and other aspects of the documentary. Whether there are narrative elements such as characters, plots, suspense and conflicts in the theme has become the standard of documentary topic selection. Under this standard, it is understandable that the topic of "sending a stroller" to friends is not optimistic. For example, there seems to be no interrelated characters and stories in the whole film, so it is not easy to find nervous suspense and conflict. However, is the "car delivery" without a "story" necessarily ugly?

Some problems followed. Why on earth do people need to watch documentaries? Is storytelling a necessary attribute of documentary? How to treat the story of documentary? What criteria should be used to measure whether a documentary has a story that attracts the audience?

Documentary appeared in the early stage of film development and developed rapidly in the TV era. What is the reason why documentaries are enduring for a hundred years? Do people watch documentaries just to see a story? Obviously, the answer is no, people want to see some real people and real things through documentaries. The core words of the answer are "real existence" and "real occurrence", followed by "people" and "things". If you just want to see a story, you can only watch a fictional feature film, because the best storyteller is not a documentary, but a feature film. An artificial story must have all the story elements such as characters, plots, suspense and conflicts. As far as gripping suspense plots and interlocking contradictions and conflicts are concerned, documentaries are far less story-telling than feature films. However, people still need documentaries. Therefore, the documentary does not attract the audience by the story itself. The real reason why we watch documentaries is the desire for truth. We must observe and think about real stories that happen to real people who live in this world like us.

In western psychoanalytic theory, people's understanding of themselves is formed by their own external image responding to people's psychology. As a reflector, the mirror provides people with an impression about themselves. With this impression, people can establish their own image, distinguish themselves from others, and establish a complete self. The so-called "mirror" here is not limited to the real mirror, but also includes other people's eyes and their own reflection on themselves. In addition, people's enthusiasm for taking photos and making home videos now probably stems from this obsession with "mirroring" themselves. Documentaries restore the stories, people, scenes and images in life. People pay attention to others through the media, and also see their own "mirror image", and revel in this feeling of deja vu. Yesterday's daily life may become a touching story in today's eyes. A casual sentence may arouse your long-lasting nostalgia and arouse our memory, imagination and aftertaste of real life. In the documentary, we can observe others, and also discover, confirm and reflect on ourselves.

It is the greatest charm of documentary to reproduce the real life that has passed away or is passing away, which is irreplaceable by other video art forms, including feature films. This is the enduring power of documentaries in the past century, and it is also the reason why the ratings of CCTV's Living Space and Shanghai TV documentary studio exceeded those of TV dramas broadcast at the same time in the early 1990s.

Now some narrative documentaries are welcomed by the audience, which really stems from the unique attraction of the story itself. But this doesn't mean that a documentary can't be made without a story or a good documentary can't be made. On the surface, the documentary Kindergarten directed by Zhang Yiqing seems to have no main characters, let alone plot structure and suspense conflict, but it is the most beautiful documentary. When the film was shown in a university, there were warm applause one after another. The students all said that the film was wonderful and beautiful. In fact, what attracts everyone is not a gripping story or a touching story, but vivid scenes in daily life: wearing shoes, tying the wrong buttons, spilling rice on your legs, complaining, fighting, eagerly waiting for your parents to pick you up after school, and normal life is so fresh and strange when it reappears on the screen. The children's innocent and lively behavior like adults makes people laugh: the children are looking forward to spending the weekend together, and one says, "Today is Thursday, tomorrow is Wednesday, and the day after tomorrow is Friday!" " "Without thinking, the other party replied," Yes! "A boy here said in an adult tone,' Give the leader some money if you have money', and the camera turned to the children who learned to recognize money. A little guy grabbed the toy money and patted it on the table." This is $10,000! "In this way, the film shows things that are usually difficult to see and experience in a dull life situation, as well as facts that everyone can see. Children face the same confusion and troubles, as well as expectation, satisfaction and loss, as the author said in the opening subtitles: "Maybe it's our children, maybe it's ourselves. "

On the one hand, we can take kindergarten as a counterexample of documentary storytelling. On the other hand, we can also understand the situation like kindergarten as an original ecological story without artificial carving. Real life is unpredictable, and it is impossible to plan when each story will happen, how it will unfold and how it will end in a documentary. Therefore, what enters the documentary lens is often fragmentary stories or plot fragments, or even some life situations in kindergarten. We have reason to regard these fragments or situations as an original ecological story, because these video fragments from real life can arouse people's memories of the past and imagination of life, and the fragments of situations are woven into the stories of the audience's own inner world. Compared with the intact and well-structured story, this fragmented original ecological drama scene also satisfies people's enthusiasm for the story and can make up for people's nostalgia, aftertaste and imagination of real life.

So the story of documentary and feature film should be different. In addition to characters, plots, suspense, conflicts and other elements, the story of documentary should pay more attention to letting nature take its course, and pay more attention to and capture the behavior state of characters and the situational atmosphere of events. Documentary stories may be incoherent and fragmented, but this is exactly in line with some characteristics of human memory. The closeness to real life may be the most touching part of these situations, and each audience's different interpretation of incomplete stories just caters to modern people's psychological needs for open expression of works of art.

My friend who wanted to take a picture of "seeing the car off" ran with his father for a few days when he came home for the New Year, and wrote down the following diary:

On the first day, New Year's Eve, three babies were discharged from the hospital, and their relatives and friends who picked them up crowded a car, which was very lively.

On the third day, on the second day of New Year's Eve, a baby boy was born. On the day of discharge, the baby was stuffed with lucky money, but cried all the way.

On the sixth day and the fifth day of the Lunar New Year, the children who were discharged from the hospital lived near the county seat, showing that their family was well-off.

On the eighth day, the seventh day of the Lunar New Year, it snowed. Today, a baby girl was discharged from the hospital, and only the child's sister-in-law came to pick up the mother and daughter. My home is in a remote mountainous area, and my house is low and shabby. My family didn't come out to meet me like other family members. Maybe they don't welcome this girl who can't get married.

My friend regrets that he didn't bring a DV player to write this trivial but fascinating story. Indeed, real life is unpredictable and uncontrollable. A lot of things happened in front of our eyes, but the camera was not there at this time. Some people may just be passers-by in life, and they are doomed to be unable to enter our lens. This seems to be a regret that can never be shaken off in documentary creation. Of course, this also makes the recorded story, even the fragments of the story, seem precious and charming.

References:

[1] Dai Ting. The storyline in the novel documentary. March 2006.

[2] Dong Zhang. Talk about some unforgettable plots in the story.