First every Documentary!

In 1895 two brothers August and Louis Lumiere from Lyons in France decided to design a camera of their own.
They began to take 50second long films which were taken in one shot, with the camera fixed to the tripod looking the same way all the time.
Their first ever film to be shown to an audience was titled, 'Workers leaving the factory' (1895). This was the first time audiences had seen moving image projected onto a screen, the brothers had invited a new era in cinema.

'Workers leaving the factory' (1895), is basically what the title says. It shows men and women of various ages leaving a factory. From viewing this scene I compared it to the saying 'fly on the wall', because cameras were extremely rare and people did not have a clue as to what they are, the workers are oblivious to the fact they are being filmed so many of them dont look or notice the camera at all.

Do Documentaries present the truth?

From 1895 onwards everything that was captured by film were documentarys. They were filmed to create a portrait, people were viewed working or socialising because it presented the truth.
However, one director was critiscised for faking their own piece Robert Flaherty, 'Nanook of the North' (1922). Robert Flaherty decided to document Eskimos and their way of living particularly filming one Eskimo called Nanook, further information concludes that this wasnt his real name and was in fact made up. This highly informative documentary was all re-enacted due to Flaherty losing most of his footage in a fire, he then went back and asked 'Nanook' to re-enact everything Flaherty had already filmed. Flaherty wanted to show the Iniut way of life but because so much was staged and re-altered i n far too many aspects to completely accurately show how the Inuit lived in the early twentieth century, (for example, Nannok hunted with a gun but Flaherty persuaded him to use a spear which was used by Nanooks ancestors).
This can be compared to todays documentaries, many of them have to meet a deadline or time slot so quite a substantial amount of footage would have to be cut out, quite possibly a lot of vital information may be re-edited to get straight to a point or convey an emotion quickly.
With Documentaries we either want the truth or someones opinons as many documentaries are concerned with the truth, objectivity and the real.

I watched a documentary on ITV with Sir Trevor McDonald being educated on how life is on death row in one of Americas Notorious prisons, many people will have a different opinion to mine but I thought that a lot of information was missing, it felt like a lot had been edited to just get straight to the point. On various episodes of this documentary I was confused as to what we were supposed to be shown, in some cases when a few of the convicts were being filmed and shown their way of life within the prison we were made to feel sorry for them in their cramped comditions and low previsions, many of them will never be let out and it showed how they are coping with that fact, this diverted from the fact of what they actually did to end up in prison, I sometimes forgot that this person murdered or raped and began feeling sorry for them that they have to live in fear from other inmates with nothing. (they should have told us about the prisoners convictions first off rather than ask about their opinions on the prison and how they cope). Like I said much of the filming will have been edited to be straight to the point, they basically wanted to show  Sir Trevor asking questions and making our own mind up about what to think, but I think they should have stuck to one emotion either have us hating them or feeling slightly (not even that) sorry for them.


Re-enactment- If you re-enact an event, you try to make it happen again in exactly the same way that it happened the first time, often as an entertainment or as a way to help people remember certain facts about an event.

Re-construction- Re-creating a scene but using different people/ locations.



Referencing;

Oxbridgewriters, Nanook of the north (online) 
Available: htp://www.oxbridgewriters.com/essays/film-studies/nanook-of-the-north.php (1 Feb 2013)

(2013) Cambridge University of Press, Dictionary (online)
 Available: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/re-enact (1 Feb 2013)

Higton, H (2002) The Lumiere Brothers (online)
Available: http://www.exeter.ac.uk/bdc/young_bdc/movingpics/movingpics10.htm (1 Feb 2013)