Chapter 6 Recording and Presenting Reality 227Frederick Wiseman began making movies in the 1960s, and the titles of
his fi lms refl ect the observational mode of his fi lmmaking: Hospital, Welfare,
Model, Deaf, Blind, and Zoo are among his many documentaries spanning
over four decades of work. In one of his fi rst movies, High School (1967),
Wiseman, working as sound recordist, went with cinematographer Richard
Leiterman to a high school in Philadelphia and recorded many hours of
everyday activities taking place at the high school. Instead of interviewing
people about what they do and think about the high school, he simply fi lmed
many diff erent scenes, in classrooms, administrative offi ces, and hallways.
As is typical in his fi lms, there is no voice-over explaining what one sees,
and there are no statistics or written explanations. Wiseman projects his
own viewpoint into the fi lm through the choices in shooting footage and the
editing of sequences in which he develops a structure for the movie, even if
it does not follow conventional narrative or character development.
In order to let the events speak for themselves, Wiseman and other
directors may use long takes to allow sustained observation of people and
places. For the 2003 short fi lm Good Morning Yokohama, fi lmmaker Satoshi
Ono shot footage of morning rush hour at a railway station in Japan. Th e
documentary structures itself around the stages of the commute: putting
tickets in the turnstile; waiting on the platform; being stuff ed into the train.
In its categorical depiction of the repetitive and spontaneous behaviors of
commuters, the documentary presents a portrait of public behavior in which
viewers must observe societal interactions and interpret what they see.Stylistic Innovation
Other fi lms use techniques of direct cinema but employ formats and styles to
create motion pictures that do not look or feel like traditional documentaries
or non-fi ction segments on television. In the 2003 short documentary Mojave
Mirage, fi lmmakers Kaarina Cleverley Roberto and Derek Roberto recorded
shots of activity around an odd phenomenon: a phone booth in the middle
of the Mojave Desert. Th e movie consists primarily of sequences of people
speaking on the phone (both making and receiving calls) and talking to each
other about the reputation and use of the phone booth. Th e fi lmmakers develop
rhythm and meaning in the movie by editing sequences categorically, cross-
cutting recurring conversations, and using digital methods of superimposition
and split-screen eff ects.
Some contemporary documentaries have capitalized on digital techniques
to employ animation and visual eff ects. For their 2002 documentary on
movie producer Robert Evans, Th e Kid Stays in the Picture, directors Nanette
Burstein and Brett Morgan used digital techniques extensively to animate
still photographs into movable layers, which energized their subject matter
through stylistic innovation and reinvigorated the use of archival photos in
documentaries. Th e documentary Th e Prisoner (2006) by Petra Epperlein
and Michael Tucker draws on footage shot with diff erent cameras under a
variety of circumstances along with animated sequences to tell the amazing
story of Iraqi journalist Yunis Abbas. In a similar fashion, the documentaryVIEWFINDER
“Surprisingly,
documentaries were
probably the best training
I got to direct actors.
Because what I learned
from them, more than
anything, was about
human behavior.”–John Boorman–
British director of many
feature fi lms including Point
Blank (1967), Th e Emerald
Forest (1985), and Hope and
Glory (1987); also editor of the
Projections fi lm book seriesCopyright 2010 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).