Documentaries and TV Pt' 2

1
Documentaries and TV Pt. 2

• Television from 1998 to 2008
• More channels more opportunities
• Technology and smaller budgets
• Economics of film making
• First a look back
• A follow-up to the Robert Drew lecture before the
  New Year Break

2
Robert Drew

• 1961 - The Reason many docs
• Are dull is because traditionally they have been
  little more than ILLUSTRATED LECTURES.
• Drew in TV wanted to change that tradition
• Traditional TV resisted

3
Robert Drew

• Real life never got out of the film. never came
  to the television set. We must drop word
  logic,
• find a dramatic logic in which things really
  happen.
• If we could do that we would have a whole new
  basis for a new journalism. Its hard to define. 
  But
• it would be a theater without actors. Plays
  without playwrights. Reporting without summary
  opinion. 
• The ability to look in on peoples lives at
  crucial times from which you could deduce certain
  things and see a kind of truth that can only be
  gotten by personal experience.  In order to do
  that we need to re-engineer the equipment and
  style of film making.

4
In America Change at the Big Three US Networks

• 1988 ABC Close Up others
• shut down
• public service requirement diminishes
• Staged Reality shows develop
• Documentaries become multi-subject magazine shows
  or long form programs of a more sensational
  nature focusing often on crime or celebrities

5
American TV Networks

• CBS Sixty Minutes
• ABC Prime Time
• 20/20
• NBC Dateline
• Magazines
• Have replaced the TV documentary form at
  traditional US networks

6
TV Documentaries Today

• In America
• Public Service Broadcasting commissions much of
  the best documentary making
• Plus Cable Television airs many films
• HBO, Canadas Documentary Channel
• CNN, Discovery Channel, Nat-Geo, Sundance,
  History Channel, A and E, others
• At PBS Frontline worth noting

7
PBS Series

• Frontline - variety, traditional
• Sometimes controversial
• The Jesus Factor 2004
• International Subjects
• Independent Series
• China from the Inside2006 (in 4 parts )
  politics, women, pollution, justice
• http//www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/

8
Range of BBC TV docs

• Index to BBC Docs
• http//www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/
• BBC produces dozens of documentary films each
  year. Styles differ. Often multi-part in the
  tradition of Civilisation (1969)
• Sometimes cultural but more often topical or
  investigative - still traditional style
• show excerpt New Al Qaeda (2005)

9
British Documentaries

• Arguably more attention paid to long form non
  fiction film on Television in Britain than in
  America
• Channel Four London archives
• http//www.channel4.com/fourdocs/archive/a_to_z.ht
  ml
• More than 30 British films on line from 1906 to
  2001.
• A powerful one in 1995
• Dying Rooms
• http//www.channel4.com/fourdocs/archive/the_
  dying_room_player.html

10
Cable TV makes possible more graphic films

• VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED
• Two films on similar topic Iraq War
• CNN Combat Hospital (2006)
• HBO Baghdad ER (2006)
• veteran film maker Jon Alpert
• HBO
• www.hbo.com/docs

11
POV Docs with clear political agendas

• Ex Robert Greenwald
• American political documentaries
• Outfoxed (2004)
• Iraq for Sale (2006)

12
Beyond TVDocumentary Distribution

• Some experts predict DVD, e-cinema and the
  Internet will replace Broadcast TV or
  theatres/film festivals for documentary
  distribution.
• Interview with Robert Greenwald.
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?v8kd0L3fhG4w

13
Next Week

• Elements of Style
• Some very original film makers
• Ken Burns
• Errol Morris
• Nick Broomfield
• February 29 Cinema Verite
• Thank you

14
Footnote

• See ABC News Report about Greenwald and Iraq for
  Sale
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vJGPLchIl6p4