The importance of details in documentaries?

Tell me the details in the documentary.

Jing Liu

The so-called details are the smallest elements that constitute the character, career development, social situation and natural landscape. Just like in literary works, film and television works and even the whole artistic creation, building a brick and tile of a tall building.

The use of details is one of the characteristics of film and television program creation. The difference is that the story details in film and television dramas, including the modeling details of characters and the development details of stories, are refined and designed by writers and directors in their lives; Documentary editing is different from directing, and the details used here are captured in real life. In addition to the details, it is more important to create a perfect artistic image with carefully arranged storylines in film and television dramas, which will arouse people's understanding and follow the footsteps of the creators. Documentary can't use fiction to create a plot, but can only stimulate the audience's emotions through details. Therefore, in most cases, details have become an important emotional starter, and their position and role in documentaries are more prominent. Therefore, it has been suggested that a documentary can have no plot, but absolutely no details. Others say: capturing and using details is the soul of documentary.

The charm of detail

Mr. Zhong Danian wrote in the book "Outline of Documentary Creation": "In a work, details are very important. Details, like flesh and blood, are the basic elements of art as a whole. Real and vivid details are an important means to enrich plots, shape characters and enhance artistic appeal. It is often the case that you watch a program for a long time and may not remember the specific content, but the wonderful and vivid plot in the film is deeply imprinted in your mind and will be remembered forever. This is precisely because the details in the documentary show the great charm of being fascinating, making the finishing point and shocking the soul.

First, emotional expression makes the original emotional power in life more concentrated, stronger and more shocking. Through a small detail in the program, the audience can gain insight, understand and know the shocking world inside the characters, thus enhancing the authenticity and vividness. There is such a detail in Grandpa Sun Jingxiu's Story: the last words of an old man. It was a note that the old man wrote to his apprentice before he died, "Let father benefit future generations". The handwriting is trembling, but it is so serious that the word "benefit" is illegible. The old man wrote it again. This detail vividly reflects Sun Jingxiu's selfless dedication to the next generation all his life, which is touching and makes people cry. I love Tiananmen Square in Beijing, showing the weight of Tiananmen Square in the hearts of ordinary people with a set of vivid details: photographer Jiao Bo's old parents measured the thickness of the city wall with crutches under Tiananmen Square; The 84-year-old Shandong woman came to Tiananmen Square in a flatbed pulled by her son. A "foreigner" carries dozens of cameras and takes pictures of camera owners one by one in front of Tiananmen Square. ...

Second, the excavation and expression of nuances make the characters more vivid, fuller and more distinctive. A word, an action and a look of a character in a program can often reflect the unique character and mentality of the character, reveal more full personality characteristics of the character, and reveal the subtle connection between the character and the event, which is more delicate, concrete and vivid. There is such a plot in the documentary "National Day Chronicle": an old farmer suddenly stops in the procession and bows deeply to Tiananmen Square. It reflects the gratitude of the newly expropriated farmers to the Party for the new China. In the column "Experts on Soil and Water Conservation and Outstanding Scientific and Technological Personalities", the hero's persistent personality is shown in a detail: he never comes uninvited to any professional conference on soil and water conservation, even at his own expense. There are several details in Approaching Mao Zedong: when Mao Zedong went back to his hometown to visit his mother's grave, he collected a bunch of branches on the roadside and presented them to the grave: Mao Zedong teased the little monkey on the Hangshan Mountain; Mao Zedong's beloved crutches and so on, these details allow us to really get close to this great man and feel his side as an ordinary person.

Third, deepen the theme, use details as a means of emphasis, and highlight the value of details through the performance of the subject. This point plays a very important role in the documentary. The documentary "Looking for Old Stores in Shanghai" selected several old stores, such as Laojiefu, Wang Kai, Jin Hongxiang and Guanshengyuan, to show people their successful business philosophy. This program uses several details to highlight and deepen the theme. For example, Chaplin went to Shanghai in the 1920s and ordered 300 high-grade silk shirts at a time. In order to ensure the quality, Wang Kai Photo Studio employs the best photographers, whose salary is nearly 100 times higher than that of ordinary employees. Jin Hongxiang women's clothing store made special dresses for the popular actresses in Shanghai at that time, and took photos to publicize them in various newspapers.

Conquering the sea of death, in order to show the theme of our geological exploration team's spirit of conquering the sea of death, Taklimakan desert in Xinjiang, some details are unforgettable. Tears left by camels when they fall down because of thirst; The chapped lips of the exploration team; I planted flags on that rare sand dune for more than ten years. ...

Fourth, render the atmosphere and create some fun with relaxed and humorous details. This is often used in documentaries, which will make the audience sometimes smile, sometimes laugh, sometimes fall into meditation, and sometimes burst into tears. From the countryside to the market tells the story that rural farmers in the south of the Yangtze River get rich by processing sweaters and set up a sweater market to attract a large number of city people to buy them. The film tells two details of a city woman in the market: after trying on a red wool coat, she said to her boss with satisfaction, "Manho, Manho, I'll take it." I won't take it off there! Another detail is that she took a lot of bought goods and told reporters excitedly in front of the camera: "I bought more than 20 pieces. These are two pairs of pants and this is a sweater vest." ... "she couldn't hold on any longer, and her clothes fell directly to the ground. This vivid and humorous detail not only highlights the theme of the program, but also adds a happy atmosphere. I remember that the author also watched a program reflecting the scientific cotton picking of cotton farmers in Xinjiang, saying that after scientific cotton picking, cotton farmers wore white coats and hats in order to reduce cotton impurities. One of the scenes is that the dog watching the scene in the yard is also wearing a small white coat and hat.

Detail classification

Details in documentaries are varied, sometimes a subtle action, sometimes a dialect, sometimes a scene, sometimes a still life.

Scene details: Scene details are often shown as a picture in movies, so they are also called picture details. There was once a legend that in ancient times, in order to select court painters, painters were required to paint according to a poem "Walking on flowers and returning with horseshoe fragrance". The successful painter painted a dignitary riding a horse, and a group of colorful butterflies danced up and down around a horseshoe. This idea has been amazing for generations in the past 100 years because the details of the picture are so wonderful. In our documentary, the detailed application of this picture is very common. The Hard Green Dream tells the story of ecological desertification caused by cutting down trees. There is such a detail in the program: a peasant woman swept the dust and sand on the kang with a small broom, and asked the reporter to sit down, only to see a thick layer of dust and sand swept away with the broom; A child dug deep in the sand dune, but didn't dig out the wet sand he wanted to dig ... The close-up of the dust and sand on the kang and the close-up of the deep sand pit in the picture are all convincing details.

Character details: mainly refers to the subtle inner meaning conveyed by the character's body. There is a detail in "Hard Green Dream": When Xu Zhimin, a hero of sand control, came to the tree king planted by himself, his thick hands stroked the stump of this big tree for a long time, and tears fell on the stump. "Memory of Huangpu River" talks about the joy of Shanghai residents when the new Huangpu River Bridge was completed. There is a detail: a blind man, accompanied by his family, measured the width of the bridge step by step and touched the railings of the bridge one by one.

Sound and sound details appear at the same time. At the same time, sound details often play the role of finishing touch in documentaries. For example, there is a detail in the documentary "The 2nd1Summer": Because summer is the busiest season for oil pipeline workers, this pipeline team in the program has not spent 2 1 summer with their relatives. When a reporter asked them what their greatest wish was, a worker replied, "I want to see my wife in a skirt", which surprised people and made plumbers selfless. "Love is a Health House" tells the story of the old couple overcoming many difficulties and raising the endangered Chinese alligator. There is a passage that the old couple's crying all over the mountains and plains is very touching. The design of several simultaneous voices in the documentary Hello Xiaoping highlights the charm of details.

Audio details are common in programs. The unique and distant flute sound in The Flute Sound on Lake Hanas, the crying gull sound in The Black-billed Gull No.2001,the roaring mountain wind in The Last Mountain God, and the distant artistic conception in Ying and Bai all play an important role in the program, which deepens the theme.

Explain and dictate the details. The explanation or oral details in documentary mainly play the role of picture details and interpretation of picture details, which increases the amount of information, satisfies the audience's thirst for more information, and makes up for the absence of reporters and the lack of pictures. The documentary "Let History Tell the Future" said that when the Guangzhou Uprising was brutally suppressed in February 1927, there was such a detailed explanation: "Because of the soaking of sweat, the red cloth tied around the necks of the insurgents faded, and as a result, they were found to have red on their necks, all of them were killed." Another example is "Approaching Mao Zedong" when it comes to the closing of the "Top Ten". When Mao Zedong couldn't stand up and watch the delegates leave because of leg disease, he used the understanding theory to add details to the picture, adding story, authenticity and appeal. In recent years, oral details have been widely used in documentaries, especially TV documentaries. "Crossing the Yangtze River" interviewed 140 witnesses and parties, and told many unforgettable details before and after the battle. In The Past in the West, the old photographer of our factory also told the details that could not be seen in some pictures during the construction of chengdu-kunming railway.

Detail capture

Documentary is the biggest highlight of documentary, and details are the easiest highlight of documentary, which is also the difficulty in documentary creation, especially in shooting. Because it must be captured by our photographers in real life, and captured by our directors in countless video materials, graphic materials and eyewitness dictation. Therefore, capturing details should be an important basic skill for documentary creators.

Successful detail capture is based on three foundations: first, the creator's sense of responsibility, which is a very critical point. The second is the professional sensitivity of the creator. The third is excellent business ability. Here are two telling examples:

In the third volume of the memoir "Our Footprints" published by our factory, there is an article "I caught an inaudible voice" by Jin Yongfu, which is about a little thing he shot when he visited Western Europe with the Beijing Buddhist music delegation from 65438 to 0987:

"After the performance, I observed the expression of the audience and chose the person who took the close-up. Found a middle-aged man asleep with his eyes closed? When I looked closely again, I found two fingers flapping up and down on my knee. It shows that the audience is not only awake, but also fascinated. This made me very excited, so I quickly adjusted the distance and took a close-up of the audience's face. The camera was shot in this close-up position for five or six seconds, so that the future audience of this film thought that he was asleep like me, and then slowly opened the camera, and the picture became the middle scene of this audience-motionless, which made people sure that this audience was asleep. Then slowly push the finger on the knee to close up. This shot will make people suddenly realize that this gentleman didn't sleep, but he was fascinated! "

This authentic text shows an old photographer's deep sense of responsibility. He captures the sensitivity of details and uses superb business skills.

There is also a documentary program that tells the story of legal aid. A man's daughter was raped by a neighbor at home. The man angrily hurt his neighbor and was arrested and imprisoned, while the evil neighbor escaped punishment by virtue of his relationship. A year later, because the prisoner got legal aid, the evil neighbor was finally brought to justice. The victim girl in the film has been lying on the kang in a small room, with her back to the distant camera. The door of the hut scrawled "I don't want to see anyone". The girl's mother cried and told reporters that since the accident, the girl has never been to school, never stepped out of this house, and spent most of her time just lying there. When the reporter went to the girl's house for the second time and told her at the door that the bad neighbor had been brought to justice, the girl was still lying with her back to the camera. It began to rain, and the reporter had to leave, with an unspeakable regret. It is this regret that keeps the cameraman from turning off the lens. When the reporters went to the yard of the girl's house and looked back, something unexpected happened: a young girl's face appeared in the window of the hut, and she smiled. A precious detail was captured in this way. Although I have watched this movie for a long time, the unforgettable smile is still deeply imprinted in my mind, and it still hurts me to talk about this detail. Without a strong sense of responsibility and a high degree of professional sensitivity, I am afraid it is difficult to capture such wonderful details.

In a word, it is very important to capture the details carefully and arrange them reasonably. It can be said that whoever has rich details in documentary creation can master and use these details well, and it is possible to do better than others and create excellent programs.

Excerpts from Documentary Films (2005)