Concrete circus

-Effects

-What kind of documentary

-Codes and conventions of documentaries

-Interviews

 Shots-

There are lots of small short clips are used for effect.- this kind of shot is used to grab the audiences attention when watching the documentary.

The shots that are used are medium close up and then it goes back to normal- medium close up shots are used to show the protagonist in a certain way.

They use long shots on the cyclists and other people that may be in the shot- long shots are used to typically show the entire object or human figure and is usually intended to place it in some relation to its surroundings, in this case the cyclist on his bike doing a stunt, or a protagonist jumping off a building.

They also use titles before certain clips to show whats about to happen in the short clips that are about to be shown. 

They also use 1 second shots for effect.

when they show a new protagonist they introduce them to the audience by showing different parts of the person for e.g. their shoes, clothes and also body parts like their eyes.

-Effect 

Homework- What is a documentary?

                                                     What makes a documentary?

1. Poetic documentaries, which first appeared in the 1920’s, were a sort of reaction against both the content and the rapidly crystallizing grammar of the early fiction film. The poetic mode moved away from continuity editing and instead organized images of the material world by means of associations and patterns, both in terms of time and space. Well-rounded characters—'life-like people'—were absent; instead, people appeared in these films as entities, just like any other, that are found in the material world. The films were fragmentary, impressionistic, lyrical. Their disruption of the coherence of time and space—a coherence favored by the fiction films of the day—can also be seen as an element of the modernist counter-model of cinematic narrative. The ‘real world’—Nichols calls it the “historical world”—was broken up into fragments and aesthetically reconstituted using film form.




2. Expository documentaries speak directly to the viewer, often in the form of an authoritative commentary employing voice over or titles, proposing a strong argument and point of view. These films are rhetorical, and try to persuade the viewer. (They may use a rich and sonorous male voice.) The (voice-of-God) commentary often sounds ‘objective’ and omniscient. Images are often not paramount; they exist to advance the argument. The rhetoric insistently presses upon us to read the images in a certain fashion. Historical documentaries in this mode deliver an unproblematic and ‘objective’ account and interpretation of past events.

3. Observational documentaries attempt to simply and spontaneously observe lived life with a minimum of intervention. Filmmakers who worked in this sub-genre often saw the poetic mode as too abstract and the expository mode as too didactic. The first observational docs date back to the 1960’s; the technological developments which made them possible include mobile light weight cameras and portable sound recording equipment for synchronized sound. Often, this mode of film eschewed voice-over commentary, post-synchronized dialogue and music, or re-enactments. The films aimed for immediacy, intimacy, and revelation of individual human character in ordinary life situations. 


4. Participatory documentaries believe that it is impossible for the act of film making to not influence or alter the events being filmed. What these films do is emulate the approach of the anthropologist: participant-observation. Not only is the filmmaker part of the film, we also get a sense of how situations in the film are affected or altered by her presence. Nichols: “The filmmaker steps out from behind the cloak of voice-over commentary, steps away from poetic meditation, steps down from a fly-on-the-wall perch, and becomes a social actor (almost) like any other. (Almost like any other because the filmmaker retains the camera, and with it, a certain degree of potential power and control over events.)” The encounter between filmmaker and subject becomes a critical element of the film. Rouch and Morin named the approach cinéma vérité, translating Dziga Vertov’s kinopravda into French; the “truth” refers to the truth of the encounter rather than some absolute truth.


5. Reflexive documentaries don’t see themselves as a transparent window on the world; instead they draw attention to their own constructiveness, and the fact that they are representations. How does the world get represented by documentary films? This question is central to this sub-genre of films. They prompt us to “question the authenticity of documentary in general.” It is the most self-conscious of all the modes, and is highly skeptical of ‘realism.’

Documenaties
 Click and this shows my prezi which i created, it shows what documentaries are about and moreee :)