What is a film documentary?

What is a film documentary? In recent ten years, documentary has gradually become a prominent school in Taiwan Province Province. Many people are interested in learning to shoot documentaries. Documentaries broadcast by public TV stations and Discovery Channel often attract many intellectuals, and film screenings at the International Documentary Film Festival held in Taipei are more common. Although documentary has established its own position in Taiwan Province Province, in fact, everyone has no definite concept of what documentary is, especially many viewers have seen some documentary forms that they have never seen before. This is because in the past two decades, there has been a wave of experimental expression in documentary production around the world. In the 2000 Taiwan Province Documentary Biennale, many works combined elements of documentary, fiction, reenactment and drama performance.

These goods placed on the "documentary" booth, under the brand of "documentary", have aroused the confusion of customers (viewers): "Is this a documentary?" Or "can a documentary be filmed like this? Recently, a report in China Times mentioned a film "Life in Metropolis" shown in this documentary biennale, and the director admitted that many paragraphs in the film were for him to pay the clients to repeat their lives. For example, an almost naked dancer in Mexico allows guests to touch her; A gangster in new york robbed a stranger in front of the camera. At the seminar, the director was attacked by the audience, saying that he exploited and insulted the theme and called him a liar. The author of the article "China Times" is quite wronged by the director, arguing that "the people in the film were reinterpreted in front of the camera, but the performance did not reduce the moving quality of the film. Is it honest to ask the director to take unclear photos with a pinhole camera? Why is "truth" so important? 』

Although this article has great problems in argument and logic, it is not the focus of this article. However, this paper points out some key issues about the nature of documentaries, such as whether documentaries must be "real"? Another question is, if it's a performance or repetition, isn't it a documentary? ) and the documentary should be "honest"? (The reverse question is, what kind of documentary is honest? This paper starts with the essence of such a documentary.

What is truth?

Documentary has always been regarded as a film type that captures people, events and things in the real world. So, the key question is: what is "truth"? The word "true" in Chinese can be used to express the meaning of too many different words in the west. Finally, "truth" corresponds to English adjectives such as truth, practicality, truthfulness, fact, truthfulness, legend, vividness, truthfulness, truthfulness, truthfulness, truthfulness, truthfulness, truthfulness, truthfulness, truthfulness, etc. Nouns have their own specialties, but generally speaking, they are mostly used to describe or explain people and things. But the state of truth not only refers to the physical state, but also applies to the psychological state; It is not only a metaphysical problem, but also a metaphysical philosophical problem. For example, a simple question: "Does the real world really exist? If you think that "the real world certainly exists", is it because we know its existence through senses and experience, or must we understand its existence through an intellectual interpretation system (historical, political, economic, social and philosophical)?

This reminds people of the story of Zhuang Zhou's dream butterfly; People's understanding of the world should be different from that of butterflies (or other animals, plants and even minerals). Then how do we know what the "real" world is recognized by butterflies? So, is the "real" world an objective fact, or the construction of human subjective intelligence, or even just an imagination? This problem is actually the most fundamental problem when we discuss the relationship between documentary and "truth". This can lead to some related questions, such as whether documentaries can only capture the physical (superficial) real world? Or is a film that captures the psychological (inner) truth in various ways a documentary?

What is a documentary?

Regardless of whether "reality exists objectively or is it subjectively constructed or imagined by human beings?" ",such philosophical thinking. Suppose it does exist first, and then we can think: whether it is the real world of physics or the real world of psychology, does the documentary have to capture the "truth"? First of all, what is "psychological truth"? How do you know that the "psychological truth" you understand really exists, and what he thinks is only his imagination? This is controversial. In fact, this debate is also prominent, and the definition of documentary has a lot of room for operation; In other words, there has never been a convincing definition of what a documentary is.

Please allow me to discuss the definition of documentary later. Here, let's first think about what the documentary production is all about. Documentary worker's working way is, of course, to capture people, things and things he or she perceives in the real world through the lens (and recording device) of film or electronic camera. Different from other arts (except photography), what a documentary photographer captures must be an entity (real existence) that really occupies the camera. Painters can sketch by imagination, writers can write by memory, but documentary photographers who shoot trains arriving at stations must really have trains and platforms. After the shooting, the train in the film and the real train established an index relationship. In the process of documentary production, documentary workers play the role of intermediaries, turning the real world captured by cameras into moving images that can be reproduced by electronic means or physical and chemical means.

In the past, before the emergence of digital technology, people always thought that "the image reproduced by documentary must be true" for images (including photos, movies and electronic videos) copied by mechanical, chemical or electronic means, which was based on the index relationship between the subject and its image. Now let's think about it. Although people, events and things in the film can correspond to the real world where it originated, the film is limited by factors such as lens coverage angle, recording time and screening time, and cannot contain all the real world. So the world reproduced by movies is only a small part of the real world at best. Documentary workers play the role of intermediary here, so they are not as neutral or neutral as everyone thought in the past. It is a choice and interpretation that he points the camera lens at the real world instead of other places; Whether or not he will use the captured images in the final film and combine them into a film in what order also represents his choice and interpretation of the real world.

However, what didn't appear in the last movie, whether it was made or not, can't be recognized by the audience in the real world reproduced by the movie. On the contrary, compared with everything in the real world, the things captured and presented in movies are not only relatively emphasized, but also live in the virtual image world forever, free from the original restrictions of time and space. Therefore, the image reproduced by the documentary is not only impossible to be "absolutely true", but actually represents an interpretation of the real world from a certain angle. That is, these documentary concepts are generally accepted by the documentary industry in the world. Let's summarize several elements of documentary:

(1) Documentaries have opinions. Documentaries that represent the author's personal opinions are usually regarded as works of art, otherwise they may be regarded as propaganda films, which will damage their artistic value;

(2) Documentary must come from capturing the real world with camera lens. Therefore, any forgery, distortion and interference in the real world are considered inappropriate, and even cause strong protests from the audience, because it destroys the tacit understanding between the word "documentary" and the audience-the images reproduced by the documentary are "real".

Does the documentary have to be true?

John grierson, the father of British documentary, was the first to define documentary in the history of western movies. He thinks that documentary should be "the creative treatment of real things", which has been controversial for a long time, is creative, vague and contradictory in itself, but although it is not satisfactory, it can also be applied to all documentary forms (even non-documentary works), so no one has been able to put forward a more convincing definition in the past 60 years. Brian Winston, a British documentary scholar, believes that this definition includes three levels, namely, artistry (creativity), dramatization (processing) and scientific evidence (real things).

However, if we think carefully about the word "creative processing" in this definition, there are serious loopholes. For example, oliver stone's play Who Killed Kennedy? "It is also a movie based on real people; Compared with documentaries with exactly the same theme, the only difference is that all the plots are interpreted by actors and all the shooting is under the overall control of the director. Who killed Kennedy? Of course, this is a "creative treatment" of the real thing, but this film will never be mistaken for a "documentary". "It is easy to recognize from the appearance and form-this is an out-and-out drama; If it has anything to do with documentary, at most some people will think it can also be called "documentary docudrama". Repetition with actors and acting according to the script is a kind of drama and fiction. No one can deny this. Even if some films are made by actors according to scripts, if the form and appearance of the films are made into documentaries, they are still not documentaries. Academically, this kind of film is called "fake documentary".

The reason for saying this is that taking "real things" as the shooting object is the most important cornerstone of a documentary. Without it, a documentary is not a documentary. What is more troublesome is what happens when the documentary is mixed with drama elements. For example, in Guan's Ruan, there are interviews between director Guan and actors, as well as live feature films and information films. It looks like a documentary about Ruan, a star who fell in China in the early 1940s. But in proportion, the drama starring Maggie Cheung is the main line of the whole film, so it may be closer to the truth to say that it is a feature film with recording elements; However, if it is a documentary about Ruan (Ruan's production), it is not bad. The only problem is that there is no completely fictional drama Ruan directed and starring Guan! Some documentaries have to deal with situations that cannot be captured by the camera (such as court trials, such as suicide or rape) and will be dealt with by playback.

No matter whether the parties repeat themselves or the actors (whether professional or amateur) perform, as long as it is not regarded as a story-telling drama, or as long as it is not deliberately confused to make the audience think it is "real" and the proportion of the whole film will not be higher than the real part, then the average person will still accept this kind of "plot-documentary". The film "Metropolitan Life" mentioned at the beginning of the article can be classified as "drama documentary". The problem is that if the film deliberately confuses fish with pearls and does not provide clues to let the audience know which parts of the film are repeated, then the documentary workers will violate the above-mentioned "tacit understanding with the audience", and of course the director will be considered dishonest. This is a kind of "work ethics" that documentary workers should abide by.

A recurring problem

1922, American director Freddy filmed a film "Nannuk in the North" in Canada's sub-arctic region, which is considered to be the first real documentary and the first important ethnographic film. A local Inuit named Ala Kaljala (commonly known as Eskimo) was hired by Frodi to play Nannuk, the protagonist of this film. The whole film is a local reenactment of Inuit hunting life in the past. When the film was filmed, the concept of documentary had not yet formed, and the whole film was also released and shown in the mode of drama.

Therefore, Nannuke in the north is regarded as a documentary, discussed and even given a lofty status, which is a problem left to future generations. However, every film that Flaudi made in the future is the same, looking for amateurs to relive the past life, such as Mohana (about the traditional life of Samoans in the South Pacific), Ellen Islander (about the life of Ellen Islander in Ireland), Louisiana Story (about the life of Kaijun people in the swamp of Louisiana, USA) and so on.

Moreover, these films are discussed as documentary classics in the history of movies, and the problem is serious! The same serious situation also appeared in the British documentary movement led by Grierson, the father of British documentary. Some works, also called documentary classics, such as "Night Mail" and "Housing Problems", have repeated problems. These movies are all talking movies; In order to cooperate with the tedious recording technology, "Night Mail" pulled the message of sending mail in the train carriage into the studio to shoot-the real train carriage, the real postman, but the dialogue was rehearsed. In order to create the "realism" of the train running on the track, it also puts the carriage on the vibrating platform and vibrates the carriage every once in a while to increase the illusion of "realism".

This dramatic approach was common in the 1930s and 1940s. Paul Rota, a British documentary director in the 1930s who is equally famous with Greer, even publicly claimed that "dramatization" was the essence of documentary art ... Housing Problem was the earliest classic documentary with simultaneous recording and interview while shooting real scenes. Because the recording equipment is too heavy (loaded with a big truck), all the people who have been to the slums have to rehearse the interview answers over and over again before they start shooting. As far as the shooting principle of modern documentary is concerned, the housing problem is a film "replayed" by the parties. I repeat, isn't it a documentary? It depends on how we look at the relationship between documentary workers, subjects and documentary audiences.

There is an interactive relationship between documentary workers and the subjects. But usually this is an unbalanced relationship that favors the photographer, so documentary workers are often required to obtain the consent of the subject and try their best to protect the subject. Photographers and subjects can interact during the shooting process. Some documentary workers even run to the screen to interact with the subjects (such as Li and her children directed by Yii- Feng Wu), but there are also so-called "purists" who believe that documentary workers should not have any interaction with the subjects at all (or even try to avoid eye contact). These different practices have formed different aesthetic modes of documentary production-observation, participatory observation, interaction and reflection. If a documentary producer obtains the image and sound of the subject by sneak shots or illegal means, or changes the original purpose, and uses the image and sound of the subject for other unauthorized purposes, it actually constitutes an ethical or legal issue.

As mentioned above, there is a tacit understanding between documentary workers and audiences. When a documentary director intervenes in the "real world" (for example, repeats it) or even recreates it, he has the obligation to inform the audience as much as possible, because he has violated the tacit understanding established before. In some TV programs that simulate the real situation, such as 9 1 1, Emergency Room, America's Most Wanted Man, Forensic Medicine Mystery, etc., when actors are used to reenact, subtitles must be placed to explain that this is a reenactment, which is a established practice. Under the development trend that the differences between news, programs and advertisements are getting smaller and smaller, BBC strictly requires its producers to clearly mark any repetition or fiction in programs or news, which is also based on the same reason. As for the relationship between the viewer and the subject, it is quite complicated and difficult to elaborate in this paper.

Generally speaking, most documentary audiences recognize that the characters and events in the film are "real people and events", so they will project their thoughts and feelings on the people and events on the screen, thus producing empathy, sympathy and even the opposite effect. American documentary director Fred Wiseman filmed high school. As a result, the teacher of a Catholic high school in Philadelphia became the object of ridicule by film critics and audiences because of his appearance, forcing the parties to ask the court to ban the film from being shown within 500 miles of Philadelphia. In this case, the documentary producer obviously can't do his duty to protect the subject, because he can't predict how the audience will react to the characters in the film.

In fact, some documentary modes of operation satisfy the audience's voyeurism, such as some TV programs secretly shooting unsuspecting people and being teased. Documentary workers shoot a "direct cinema" with the aesthetic attitude of "flies on the wall", and the relationship between the photographer and the audience is mostly a "watched-peeping" relationship. To some extent, this documentary is similar to the common Hollywood drama. It is also on this basis that some "documentary dramas" are quite popular with the audience and even considered to be true. Who killed Kennedy? "is an obvious example, but it also caused a strong rebound of quite a few documentary workers, and even thought that director oliver stone was dishonest.

An honest question

Why do documentary workers have to be teachers of conscience and justice? This is the aura and burden of documentary after Grierson advocated documentary as a tool of social reform in the 1930' s. The 1990s witnessed the development of documentary towards all-round individualism and pluralism, but the role of documentary as a spokesperson for marginal people is still the self-expected mission of many documentary workers.

Documentary workers stand in a stronger position than the main body, because they can take other people's images, voices and lives as stepping stones and get applause, status and even benefits from society, so they are naturally exploitative. Because of this, when a documentary director takes the situation of marginal figures as the shooting theme, he should handle his responsibilities and relationship with photographers more seriously and frankly. This frank attitude has formed a new connection between documentary workers, photographers and audiences with mutual respect. If a documentary worker can't face the work ethics of this kind of documentary seriously, to tell the truth, he or she doesn't deserve to be called a "good documentary". For the documentary audience, whether watching a documentary is honest or not can also be said to be the first step to evaluate the documentary.

Note: The most famous is the old American TV program "candid camera". Strangely, most people don't think so when the teased people know that they have been fooled by this program. In addition to personal sense of humor, this program is teasing rather than swearing, which is probably the main reason for establishing word of mouth.