Documentary Film: History, Types, and Production Phases
Documentary Film: An Overview
Documentary: Maria Moliner: applies to films with no plot or a minor one, whose value is primarily informational or instructional. OER: refers to films that represent informational purposes only, facts, scenes, experiments, etc., taken from reality. A. Moreno: A film genre based on images taken from reality and based on true facts. It attempts to prove the truth of events, situations, behaviors, and so on.
The first exhibition room was the Hall Indien, in the basement of Café du Boulevard des Capucines, Paris, 1895.
Prominent Examples:
- Alexander Promio: The Arrival of the Bullfighters
- Eduardo Jimeno: Maneuvers in the Ebro River in a Pontoon Regiment (1896) and Mass Output of Twelve del Pilar de Zaragoza (1896). Both approximately 12 meters.
Other Examples:
- Fructuós Gelabert (Gal): Rina at a Cafe (1897), approximately 20 meters.
- Segundo de Chomón (Aragon): Eclipse of the Sun (1905), scientific documentation, and others: The Electric Hotel.
Key Figures in Documentary Film
Robert Flaherty: 1920s, American. Filmed at the pole and lived in an igloo. Nanook of the Eskimo (1922), spent 15 months in the Arctic, making a documentary exploration.
Dziga Vertov: 1920s, Russian, famous for cinema-eye. The Man with the Camera (1929) is a social documentary that dared to cut the film and mount different perspectives.
Leni Riefenstahl: Triumph of the Will (1935) recorded the Nazi party rally and Olympia (1936). Worked with Goebbels.
Luis Buñuel: Surrealism. An Andalusian Dog and the documentary Land Without Bread (1932), assisted by Ramón Acín (poet of Huesca). It was released in France and Spain in 1975. Social genre.
Documentary Types and Phases
Classification of Documentary Types:
- Social and moral
- Adventure and travel (exotic, exploration)
- Nature (especially botany, animals)
- Science
- History
- Political-propaganda
- War documentary
- Etc.
Phases of Documentary Production:
- Choice of subject
- Synopsis or story structure (introduction, middle, end)
- Documentation, research, and file
- Search and choice of testimonials (players)
- Search and choice of informants (knowledgeable)
- Search and choice of locations
- Creation of fictional characters (documentary, docudrama)
- Rundown
- Recording of the interviews
- Literary and technical script
- Other recordings
- Assembly and post-production
Source: Visual Information Genres by Cebrián Herreros (1992)
Educational and Business Video
Educational Video (didactic) and testimonial: Used in various ways, including teaching curriculum, occupational and vocational skills training, acquisition, organization, and structuring of knowledge. Features:
- As a tool for recording and analysis of the surrounding reality of users.
- As an instrument of production and creativity of students and teachers themselves.
- As a resource for research, experimentation, and monitoring processes in laboratories and other empirical work.
- As a self-observation of the behavior of the relationship between teacher and students in educational events for later analysis or personal group reflection.
- As a resource to exemplify social behavior, economic status, clash of ideologies, and language uses according to various audiovisual communication strategies.
Video business and institutional or industrial: An integrated resource in the particular design of corporate image and identity. Its function within the relations between managers and workers. The video shows and displays business entities, manufacturing processes, or services, as information. Key aspects:
- Issues related to industrial activities in companies and institutions.
- Scientific research into new technologies in enterprises and institutions.
- Human and social aspects of the world of business and institutions.
- Creativity, innovation, and industrial design.