DRAMA AND DOCUMENTARY:Documentary film, Defining documentary

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TV News Reporting and Production MCM 516

LESSON 24

DRAMA AND DOCUMENTARY

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. It is derived from a Greek word

meaning "action" or "to do".

Dramas are performed in various media: theatre, radio, film, and television. Drama is often combined

with music and dance: the drama in opera is sung throughout; musicals include spoken dialogue and

songs; and some forms of drama have regular musical accompaniment like melodrama.

In certain periods of history (the ancient Roman and modern Romantic) dramas have been written to be

read rather than performed. In improvisation, the drama does not pre-exist the moment of performance;

performers devise a dramatic script spontaneously before an audience.

Documentary film is a broad category of visual expression that is based on the attempt, in one fashion

or another, to "document" reality. Although "documentary film" originally referred to movies shot on

film stock, it has subsequently expanded to include video and digital productions that can be either

direct-to-video or made for a television series. Documentary, as it applies here, works to identify a

"filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception" that is continually

evolving and is without clear boundaries.

Defining documentary

The word "documentary" was first applied to films of this nature in a review of Robert Flaherty's film

Moana (1926), published in the New York Sun on 8 February 1926 and written by "The Moviegoer", a

pen name for documentarian John Grierson.

In the 1930s, Grierson further argued in his essay First Principles of Documentary that Moana had

"documentary value". Grierson's principles of documentary were that cinema's potential for observing

life could be exploited in a new art form; that the "original" actor and "original" scene are better guides

than their fiction counterparts to interpreting the modern world; and that materials "thus taken from the

raw" can be more real than the acted article. In this regard, Grierson's views align with Vertov's

contempt for dramatic fiction as "bourgeois excess," though with considerably more subtlety. Grierson's

definition of documentary as "creative treatment of actuality" has gained some acceptance, though it

presents philosophical questions about documentaries containing stagings and reenactments.

Drama

Drama serial

Soap serial

Mini-serial

Sit-com situational comedy

Long play

Tele-film

Short film

Documentary

Historical

Informative

Investigative

Docu-drama

More Hazards in News and Documentary Work

Although we touched on the hazards of news reporting in the last module, we need to note here that

seasoned reporters realize that people can go into a kind of "shock fog" during crises, and cannot always

be counted on to respond rationally.

Add to this the fact that a crew will be working under its own deadline-related pressures and it becomes

obvious that special precautions must be observed.

TV News Reporting and Production MCM 516

Finally, you ever should have some ideas for news stories or documentaries that can make a positive

difference.

It Takes Commitment and Courage

When we see news and documentary stories from hostile and dangerous locations, we seldom stop to

think that in capturing the story a video grapher took the same or greater personal risks than the reporter

that you see on camera. (The reporters are often not even on the scene; they add their narration later in

relative safety.)

In each of these cases, and in many more like them, courageous video graphers were willing to risk it all

for what they saw as a greater good.

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