Monday the 11th to Friday the 15th February
This week was one of contrasts, I spent the beginning of the
week waiting to film people and clubs for the sports documentary and was often not successful.
For example I had arranged to film the Aikido club but when I turned up to film
they had no mats and so could not train properly. On this occasion I happened
upon some climbers in at the climbing wall and so I managed to get some footage
even if it was not what I was anticipating. This has become a regular theme of
doing documentary work for me, I can plan and arrange all I want but when it
comes to non orchestrated content I have to wait for it to occur. I have to be
there with the camera running in order to catch it and I don’t say go or stop.
This inevitably means a lot of waiting around for the subject to ‘perform’ so I
can gather content. Even though the relationship can be mutually beneficial (I
gather content and the subject achieves exposure) I still feel somewhat guilty
for benefitting from content that was created by someone else. All I am doing
is capturing, sequencing and amplifying it.
The contrast I refer to at the top of this post is regarding the work
experience I undertook on the set of the fictional short film Rubai. While onset I observed the extent
to which directors engineer the scenarios that they film. No detail was left
without intervention, where a documentary filmmaker prods the subject and the
world to capture its reaction the fictional film creates the world, the subject
and the course of events that unfold onscreen.
Where fictional films contain a script a narrative and a
story, documentary films contain factual event, narrative and a story. Script
takes the place of content. In comparison with the fictional film documentaries
have more scope and range once filming has begun, the action of filming itself
is not tied to a rigorous preplanned schedule of specifically what is to be filmed. It is the content that dictates
the course of the documentary film, and although there are more time constraints on the set of
a fictional film there is more waiting around for content to occur in the case
of the documentary film.
Another noticeable difference between the two film
types is the use of the mise en scen; in fictional films the background is
specifically designed to emphasize certain aspects that correlate with the
script and the theme. In the documentary film it is taken for granted
that the backround is a representation of the realism being portrayed and thus is
not significantly altered. My experience on Rubai brought this aspect of filming home; that the
fictional film allows for a level of control and manipulation that is not
available when making a documentary.
When filming Rubai the shot list was arranged in order
of most convenience and would be edited at a later date into an ordered
sequence of events that unfold the narrative. When filming it was not
possible to follow the story in a linear fashion as it was completely out of sync. In the documentary it is
presumed that the sequences are shown in the order that they are captured to
the extent that they stick with the same structure, more or less, as the actual
events unfolded.
Although fictional films can be biographical or based on
real events the method of illustration and representation can be repeated until
perfect. Documentaries on the other hand are captured as is, in situ.
The one shared characteristic of both documentary films and fictional
films is the intention to make you believe that what you are watching is real.
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