Documentary | mysite

Documentary Production

What are Documentaries?

Documentaries are non-fictional pieces of media that document subjects. They are factual, informative and educational as that is their aim. They're often on subjects such as poverty, wildlife and nature, crime, countries/locations, history, geography, space, physics, dinosaurs, the list goes on, documentaries can be on anything.

Although documentaries are factual they can often be dramatised for the sake of the audience as it gives them a story to follow for example, a lot of wildlife documentaries add a story behind a lot of the scenes in them and add Foley and sound effects to add to the story and to make it more believable. The reason they have to use sound effects is because there is many reasons they may not be able to use the original audio such as, wind noise, as most of wildlife documentaries are filmed outside there will often be a lot of wind noise in the audio.

Funding

Obviously a documentary costs a lot to make if it is a television production or for something like a streaming service. You have to pay for the equipment, travel, the crew, etc. You have to be sure with what you're plans are for the documentary and be able to provide the plans and information on what the documentary is about otherwise you'll likely not get the funding for the documentary as the people funding you don't have the evidence that they'll get what they need out of it.

On the BFI website (BFI development fund) they tell you what someone needs to provide for the application and these are:

synopsis, story and themes
previous work of the writer, producer and, if applicable, the director
motivations behind the project, ideally provided by the writer or director
details of the audience you are aiming to appeal to
ideas for casting (if applicable) and how you plan to approach that cast
approximate dates and locations you are hoping to film
details of potential or actual financial partners on the project and any expenditure to date
budget you anticipate needing in order to develop the project and get it made, including the amount you are requesting from the BFI
an estimate of the total production budget
any unusual or challenging technical or budgetary requirements that you foresee

If a documentary isn't funded properly then most likely they won't be able to get all the information they need for a documentary and wont be able to get the footage that they would need to complete the documentary as well as not being able to pay for the crew, equipment, travel, etc.

Examples Of Award Winning Documentaries

Planet Earth II

Planet earth II is an incredibly renowned nature documentary and has been since it first aired on 6th November 2016 and gained a lot of attention because of one scene in particular, the Snakes vs. Iguanas chase which won the BAFTA for Virgin's must-see moments which isn't the only award it got.

Here is a list from Wikipedia that shows the awards Planet Earth II won and was nominated for.

Wildlife/nature documentaries such as Planet Earth II take a long time to make because the amount of stuff that goes on and that can go wrong. Here is an example of the effort that goes into creating these shows with some of the stats from Planet Earth II.

There are many things that can go wrong with trying to film a nature documentary especially as a lot of the environments are very harsh and can change very quick like a rain forest/jungle can drench a camera very quickly if it starts raining and a hot desert can get extremely which can cause problems for the crew and the equipment and the same can be said for cold deserts.

Planet Earth II link

Blackfish

Timeline Of The Documentary Genre

Nanook of the North is a silent film created by Robert J. Flaherty. This was one of the first documentaries to be made although the term documentary wasn't around yet. It showed what life was like for Inuk man and just like documentaries today there was stuff staged to show what life would've been like 100

1922

years before.

Blackfish is a documentary that came out in 2013 which exposes the issues with Sea World and the captivity of Orca.

The documentary has been on Netflix for quite a few years now and that has helped it gain more publicity.

One of the main focuses of the film is the Killer Whale called Tilikum who is the largest Orca to have been in captivity however, he wasn't born in captivity, he was captured and taken from the wild in Iceland in 1983.

Tilikum has been the cause of 3 human deaths however, the point of the documentary isn't to say that Tilikum is bad but that you can't keep animals in captivity like this as they are wild and shouldn't be treated the way they are treated as it is unfair and just because they are animals it doesn't mean they can't get mentally ill and they will eventually snap.

These documentaries are to inform and educate people about animal welfare issues such as Sea World and to spread to word about the cruelty that goes on.

Documentaries like this really do make an effect because although for years people have known that Sea World and similar places are cruel it took blackfish for a much wider range of people to grasp how cruel they really are. This is a prime example of why documentaries are made and the effect they can have.

Blackfish link

Kino-Pravda which is Russian for cinematic-truth is a series of newsreels launched in 1922 by Dziga Vertov, Elizaveta Svilova, and Mikhail Kaufman. Dziga Vertov added slow-mo, time lapses, etc which changed documentaries and showed things that can't be picked up by people normally.

1920's

There were many propaganda films around especially around WWII and the leadup to the war. Triumph of the Will was a Nazi propaganda film by Leni Riefenstahl that was released in 1935.

1935

In the 1960's and 1970's documentary film was often seen as political weapons against neocolonialism and capitalism.

1960's & 70's

Hoop dreams is a documentary film that came out in 1994. William Gates and Arthur Agee were African-American teenagers who this documentary is about and their dream of becoming professional basketball players. It has won many many awards as listed:

1994 Sundance Film Festival: Audience Award for Best Documentary
1994 Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Best Documentary
1994 Chicago Film Critics Award: Best Picture
1994 Producers Guild of America: Special Merit
1994 Academy Award Nomination: Best Editing
1995 George Foster Peabody Award
1995 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award
National Society of Film Critics: Best Documentary
New York Film Critics Circle: Best Documentary
Directors Guild of America: Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary
National Film Registry inductee (2005)

1994

Touching the Void is a Docudrama which are usually dramatized re-enactments of events that actually happened. The film is about Joe Simpson and Simon Yates who in 1985 decided to ascend the previously unclimbed West Face of Siula Grande in Peru. A lot goes wrong however, it is a truthful bit of film as although it's dramatized it is a true story.

Planet Earth is a nature documentary by the BBC and presented by David Attenborough. It is one of many similar documentaries and the first in the Planet Earth franchise. It took 5 years to complete and at the time it was the most expensive nature documentary the BBC had ever done and it was the first to be in HD.

In 2016 the 6 part sequel was released, Planet Earth II, which was the first BBC TV series to be filmed in Ultra-high-definition which to a lot of people is known as 4K.

In 2022 Planet Earth III is set to air however, obviously this cannot be certain.

2000-Present day

Reflection on Documentary Modes

Pros and Cons of Bill Nichol's Documentary Modes

Pros and Cons cover why filmmakers use different documentary modes and strengths and weaknesses.

Documentary modes are fundamental when creating a documentary, it would be a lot more difficult to create a documentary without knowing about the modes and even if you did create a documentary without the knowledge of the modes, chances are the modes will still have been used just without the filmmaker knowing.

Documentary modes help with many things in documentary as they help with knowing the general idea of what a documentary is going to be like which helps with the structure.

Documentary Treatment

Mental illnesses are just as common as physical illnesses, and this documentary will talk about how they can make you feel, and ways people try to deal with their mental illnesses.

This documentary will start by exploring what the government is doing for the nations mental health and how this could be improved. There will be contact with a local charity that help young people to see what sort of things they struggle with as a charity and the type of funding they receive, although this is only one charity hopefully it will give an idea of what it is like for charities across the nation. Unfortunately, due to the circumstances of having a second lockdown in the UK I cannot physically interview the charity however, I have sent them some questions for them to answer.

Following the charity section will be an interview section where the answers will be revealed to how someone dealing with mental health issues struggles and deals with their health, there may be more interviews but due to the Covid-19 Pandemic this may be difficult. The questions will be on how they feel and the causes of these feelings and the activities they do to take their mind off things.

Since I myself struggle with a few mental illnesses I have decided to do a section on how I feel and how I deal with things. I will film in the locations where I feel relaxed and free. Mountain biking is one of the ways I relax and deal with my mental health so in this documentary there will be a (very) short bike edit as this documentary is not going to be long however, I still want to add a bike edit as it is something different and not just talking about a depressing subject. I personally find bike edits very intriguing and I hope it will add something to the documentary and show the viewer why MTB is such a good thing to take your mind of worries.

Medication, this is something that a lot of people don’t really question, however, I question medication because a lot of the pills and other substances that are prescribed to people, haven’t even been around long enough to understand the long term effects and a lot of them are classed as class A drugs, there’s a lot of natural remedies which could be used instead yet these aren’t often talked about. I will be talking about CBD Cannabis which is a form of cannabis that doesn’t get you high however, it does help with many things to do with mental and physical health. CBD is something a lot of people still question because it is from cannabis yet the amount of benefits it has is amazing and people shouldn’t be concerned. The documentary will talk about the benefits of Medicinal cannabis however, I will also talk about the drawbacks because with every medicine there is drawbacks. Following this I will also list other natural remedies that can help with mental illness.

Documentary Script

Contingency Plan

Risk Assessment