Commissions | Factual Programming and the Documentary Genre (8th March 2017)

Today we had a more in-depth look at the conventions of the documentary as a genre and factual programming in general.  'Factual programming', in general, is any non-fiction programme: each variant of this has its own conventions, habits and clichés.

Truth and Controversy
In 2007, the BBC's reputation was damaged after revelations of 'fakery' surfaced - competitions in particular, such as on Blue Peter and Radio 1 had been faked which led to the BBC being fined £400,000 by Ofcom.  In 2016, 'Human Planet' was also revealed to have used staged footage of seemingly real scenarios in nature, which caused a great amount of controversy.  This brought further attention toward how much intervention is acceptable in documentaries.

There are rough degrees of 'accepted intervention' for television programmes:

We looked at a documentary (Hidden Kingdoms, BBC) which involved a lot of intervention but this did not deceive the audience in any way; it added to the story-telling element of the documentary [see clip].  It was interesting to see how the director has chosen to display reality in such a clearly staged and forced way that it adds drama and makes a factual documentary appear much more interesting and engaging.

Factual Genres
There are a number of differing factual genres which all serve different purposes depending on their subject matter:

• Current Affairs (such as BBC's Panorama and Channel 4's Dispatches)
• Reporter-led; less observational and more constructed; important for freedom of speech
• Investigative, consumer, political, health, social affairs, crime, business and finance.
• News
• Documentaries
• To inform, but also to entertain and engage us.
• 'Artistic representation of reality' (R. Flaherty quoted in Aufderheide, P. 2003, p.7)
• Documentary filmmakers often act as representatives of the public.
• Voyeurism: are these films 'in the public interest'?
• Documentaries provide a particular viewpoint, interpretation, or understanding of the evidence which they put before us
• Sub-genres and hybrids
• Poetic, expository, educational, observational, relective, participatory, performative
• Hybrid and evolving forms
• Drama-doc, docu-soap, reality TV, factual entertainment, structured/scripted reality, multi-cam observational
• Reality TV
• Factual Entertainment (such as ITV's The X Factor)

Conventions of Factual Programming

• Style
• Structure
• Varied Formats - e.g. studio discussion panel
• Shots - e.g. handheld cameras used for realism
• Commentary - allows for views to be imposed alongisde the visuals
• Narration
• Music - dependent on tone
• Experts - used to add intelectual weight to a piece
• Subject of Satire

Factual devices - for example, engineering tension through careful casting which allows for 'light and shade' to emerge

Funding and Truth

How and by whom factual films receive their budget has an important impact on style, content and their viewpoint.  The input of sponsorship and advertising, as well as pay-per-view channels can all have an influence on these things.  It is vital that this programming is impartial.

Purpose of factual programming:

• Revelation
• Entertainment
• Story-telling
• Style and content

We ended the session by watching and discussing Dreams of a Life by Carol Morley, which is a documentary that focuses on the life and mystery surrounding the death of Joyce Vincent who was found dead in her bedsit several years after her death.  Morley was inspired by news reports and sought to track down witnesses and people that knew Joyce so she could piece together an account of her life and deduce what could have happened to her.

We discussed the narrative structure of the film:

• Dramatisation:  the documentary relies heavily on the dramatic reconstructions of the events that took place in Joyce's life which allowed Morley to explore her as a character and the police investigation into her death.
• Motifs:  we see the taxi with the advert pleading for information about Joyce, which alludes to her character - "have you seen Joyce Vincent?" - was Joyce lost within herself as well as literally lost?
• Interviews and testimony:  the story is told through the interviews with Joyce's friends and colleagues as opposed to through commentary or a presenter which allows for the raw and human emotive side of the film to come through.
• Timeline:  we started at the end of the story which allows for the sense of mystery to emerge from the very start of the film.

We also discussed the challenges that Morley likely faced when producing the film:

• Investigative journalism:  Since there was very little evidence of how Joyce died, Morley would have had to carry out extensive research into her life and had to track down anybody and everybody that knew Joyce when she was alive.
• Monetary:  The film relies on extensive reconstructions using actors and sets, so she would have required a large budget in order to achieve this.
• Permissions:  The film tackles some sensitive and personal details of Joyce's life, and so Morley needed to ensure that the people related to and involved with Joyce were happy for this information to be shared.
• Subjudice/public domain: it is illegal for films to be released before a police case has closed, but since the case had closed with an open verdict, this was not an issue.

I had seen Dreams of a Life before and viewing it a second time around enforced the confusion and mystery surrounding Joyce Vincent's death.  I feel that Morley tackled the subject very well as she seemed to bring Joyce back to life in a way through the juxtaposition of the past and present, as well as the reflexive nature of it which we see through the interviews describing her life through other people.