Contextual Information

Inspirational Documentaries

For my narrative piece, I was initially unsure as to what route I wanted to go down. Poetry seemed like an interesting aspect to think about, as I am fond of literature, and felt this would open up for some beautiful cinematic shots. A drama also interested me, giving me the opportunity to hone my screenwriting portfolio. However, I had just recently been on a documentary academy with the BFI in London, where my passion for documentary's grew, so it seemed silly not to improve on this with the knowledge I had learnt, and do my own style of documentary. I knew straight away that I wanted to do something based on the music industry, as I am so passionate about my music and my band, that I felt conjoining the two would be good in showcasing both talents. Therefore, I decided to do a documentary based on the theme of "Women's Representation in the Music Industry". When collecting ideas for this, I watched a few music based documentaries, some which were re-enacted, and therefore created more into a drama, and some which used mostly archive footage and verbatim script. I felt that this was interesting in being able to craft my documentary. Although most of them were based on particular artists, I did find that they gave me ideas for cutaways and visual styles. However, they weren't helpful in using actual live interview shots, as most of said artists were deceased. However, I didn't just look at music documentaries for my narrative, I also looked at some award winning Docs, to gather ideas for interview shots, stylistic choices and interesting ways of editing.

The Imposter

On my BFI course in February half term, we were given the opportunity to talk to the editor of a very successful documentary called "The Imposter". It centred on French man, Frédéric Bourdin who in the late 1990s appeared to have all of America fooled – claiming to a grieving Texas family that he was their 16-year-old son who had been missing for 3 years. As the documentary unfolds, it becomes clear that this "young" boy is in fact a con-artist, attempting to uphold the façade of their son in order to be granted access into America, and live a new life. The 1hr and 40 minute documentary was thrilling and incredibly tense, with the editing leading the audience down any different paths and ideas, making it confusing and having me on the edge of my seat. Although this feature documentary is far from the subject I am going for, I loved the stylistic choices the director (Bart Layton) and the editor (Andrew Hulme) made to create such a fantastic and award winning doc. By withholding information from the audience, and not being completely upfront with all the information much like most docs are, it created an incredible finale, and portrayed how easy it is to fool people who want to be fooled.

The use of lighting in particular in this documentary is what to me, gave it the edgy, dark aesthetic that drew me in. The re-creation scenes of the young boy in the phone box (top picture) were especially successful in creating a world of darkness and terror that he came from. The use of shadows, almost making it noir style, added a foreboding sense to the story, eluding to the plot twist that was cleverly sprung upon me. This kind of lighting would be interesting to use on my doc, with stylistic shots of live performances of shadows on the face and surroundings would add to the darker side of the music industry, that is hidden from the outside world, perhaps a topic I could touch upon. These beautifully created shots stood out for me. Another shot that stood out was the last shot, where one of the private investigators in the documentary, was digging in the back garden of the family, as he believed that they did in fact murder their son. This moment was extremely tense, and was the perfect end to the piece. The use of a crane shot here, and a slow zoom out to me symbolised how things are sometimes left unknown and in the hands of god, with god himself seeing everything. The piles and piles of dirt and no body was a ambiguous ending to the documentary, with the audience being left with no knowledge of if there was a body or wasn't, if the boy was dead of alive, and if the case was solved or unsolved. It was an eerie and beautiful shot that will stay with me for a long time.

This documentary also game me ideas for interview shots, as seen in the second picture. The use of the rule of thirds in Layton's shots makes an appealing and aesthetically pleasing visual. The colour pallet in these shots was also strategic in sticking to a mostly controlled and cool scheme, with blues, creams and yellows throughout, adding to the melancholy and thriller aspect of the doc. The use of archive footage of the actual Fredric was also successful in relating back to the fact that this is a true story, and this did happen to a family. Whether or not you think the family did kill their son, or they didn't, the ugly character of Fredric is still present, and what he did is not forgotten.