Blog post #7: Documentary
After reading the Bernard piece and watching Speed Cubers, what do you see as key differences in how documentaries tell stories compared to entertainment film?
In honesty, I was not expecting to enjoy reading Sheila Bernard’s interview with Jon Else. I first was introduced to Else’s work by watching Wonders are Many in the Emmanuel Art Department’s short film production course “Stories in Motion” taught by Stephan Jacobs. Else’s style of intertwining storylines and nonlinear storytelling is absolutely riveting… if your audience is fully paying attention. By looking away from the screen for just a moment, I was lost. Undeniably, that left a bitter feeling in me against his work.
While a decently long video, I feel this is a good breakdown of what “documentary” film means in todays media consumption, and how the surge of reality TV popularity is effecting documentary ethics.
However, in a way I can’t quite accurately articulate, I was shocked to find some of my own ethics of media creation reflected in Else’s responses.
From my perspective of spending my undergrad experience attempting to blend multiple media forms into a cohesive presentation of information (in an existing academic structure that pushed against that), I absolutely have independently landed on Else’s insistence on planning ahead for creative projects but allowing for plans to change.
In that way, documentary film can be viewed as longform visual journalism, or as visualized narrative nonfiction; in essence, the same morals apply. Else’s response that liberties can occasionally be taken with the timeline of events, thoughts, or specific actions (but his regretting on doing that so liberally) echoes to me as the notion of creative nonfiction – if the story is strengthened by bending the truth, sometimes you tell it how you wish it had happened.
Considering Speed Cubers, Else’s notion of finding the story before it happens is evident. Max and Felix were traced through the competitions, and allowed for the documentary to have a naturally progressing timeline. (Of note: watching the film at 1.5x playback speed made it look that much more impressive.)
From Else’s commentary and the narrative structure of Speed Cubers, it appears to me that the primary differences between documentary and entertainment film are essentially everything except that they both produce films. The emphasis on utilizing editing and flexible storyboarding in documentary film to develop your story is crucial, whereas entertainment film tends to rely on the story plan existing in full before a camera is ever turned on.
