Chapter 3 - Film App

interview:

A component of documentary filmmaking, traditionally shot with the person being interviewed speaking to an off-camera interviewer. (page 71)

persuasive documentary:

A documentary film concerned with presenting a particular perspective on social issues or with corporate and governmental injustice. (page 70)

instructional documentary:

A documentary film that seeks to educate viewers about common interests, rather than persuade them with particular ideas. (page 70)

propaganda documentary:

A documentary film that systematically disseminates deceptive or distorted information. (page 71)

factual documentary:

A documentary film that usually presents people, places, or processes in a straightforward way meant to entertain and instruct without unduly influencing audiences. (page 69)

stream of consciousness:

A literary style that gained prominence in the 1920s in the hands of such writers as Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Dorothy Richardson and which attempted to capture the unedited flow of experience through the mind. (page 78)

theme:

A shared, public idea, such as a metaphor, an adage, a myth, a familiar conflict, or personality type. (page 85)

reenactment:

A staged re-creation of actions and events used in a nonfiction film when authentic documentary footage is unavailable or impossible to obtain. Reenactments are typically filmed and presented in ways that make clear their status as fabricated representations of real events. (page 72)

Narrative structure:

A structure defined by Aristotle in Poetics (335 BCE): Exposition, Rising action, Climax, Falling action, Denouement

reflexive documentary:

An approach to documentary filmmaking that explores and sometimes critiques the documentary form itself. The documentary production process becomes part of the experience in ways that may challenge viewer expectations of nonfiction filmmaking conventions. (page 73)

observational documentary:

An approach to documentary filmmaking that seeks to immerse viewers in an experience as close as is cinematically possible to witnessing events as an invisible observer. Observational documentaries typically rely entirely on b-roll and eliminate as many other signs of mediation as possible. (page 72)

expository documentary:

An approach to documentary filmmaking that uses formal elements, a script prepared in advance, and an authoritative narrator to explain subject matter to the viewer. (page 72)

participatory documentary:

An approach to nonfiction filmmaking in which the filmmaker interacts with the subjects and situations being recorded and thus becomes part of the film. (page 73)

performative documentary:

An approach to nonfiction filmmaking related to the participatory documentary. The filmmaker's interaction with the subject matter is deeply personal and often emotional. In a performative documentary, the filmmaker's experience is central to the way viewers engage and understand the subject matter. (page 73)

text and graphics:

An element of documentary filmmaking that includes statistics, graphs, maps and text. Text is commonly used to identify interview subjects, dates, and locations presented on screen. (page 72)

poetic documentary:

An expressive approach to nonfiction filmmaking that provides a subjective and often impressionistic interpretation of a subject by an emphasis on conveying mood and generating ideas, rather than developing a realistic observational experience or communicating an information-driven explanation. (page 72)

b-roll:

Documentary footage of subjects in action and events as they unfold. (page 71)

animated film:

Drawings or other graphical images placed in a series photography like sequence to portray movement. Before computer graphics technology, the basic type of animated film was created through drawing. (page 105)

voice-over narration:

Narration heard concurrently and over a scene but not synchronized to any character who may be talking on-screen. It can come from many sources, including a third person, who is not a character, to bring us up to date; a first-person narrator commenting on the action; or in a nonfiction film, a commentator. (page 71)

Fred Camper's Six Common Criteria for Most Experimental Films:

Not commercial, Personal, Do not conform to conventional expectations of story and narrative cause and effect, Exploit the possibilities of cinema, Critique culture and media, Invite individual interpretation

archival material:

Preexisting images or sound that is incorporated into a documentary film. This material can be any media captured previously and by different sources, including radio broadcasts, news footage, historical photographs, official documents, and home movies. (page 71)

Other Experimental Film Styles:

Stream of consciousness, Style as subject, Image as shock, Manipulation and rearranging of preexisting footage, Continues to thrive in "microcinema" on YouTube and Vimeo and at numerous film festivals.

computer-generated imagery (CGI):

The application of computer graphics to create images, backgrounds, animated characters, and special effects. (page 108)

genre:

The categorization of narrative films by form, content, or both. Examples of genres include musical, science fiction, horror, and western. (page 82)

generic transformation:

The process by which a particular genre is adapted to meet the expectations of a changing society. (page 103)

Documentary Concerns:

The recording of reality, Education of the viewer, Presentation of political or social analyses

setting:

The time and space in which a story takes place. (page 86)

narrator:

Who or what that tells the story of a film. The primary narrator in cinema is the camera, which narrates the film by showing us events in the movie's narrative. When referring to the more specific action of voice narration, the narrator may be either a character in the movie (first-person narrator) or a person who is not a character (omniscient narrator). (page 71)

Narrative:

a type of movie, A way of structuring fictional or fictionalized stories presented in narrative films, a broader concept that both includes and goes beyond any of these applications.

Four Documentary Approaches:

factual, instructive, persuasive, propaganda

Integrated musical:

musical performances at key dramatic moments/Dominated by romantic comedies and animated features

Backstage narrative:

stock characters/storylines.