Blog #1

Chapter 1 "introduction" Directing the documentary by Michael Rabiger

While I read I learned some about what a documentary actually is. Michael Rabiger writes that a documentary explores actual people and actual situations. A documentary could be about the Past, the present or the future and he calls it a "creative treatment of actuality".

I also learned that a documentary needs a good story with interesting characters, narrative tension and an integrated point of view. It's also important that the documentary is to somewhat objective. That minimize the dangers and responsible you can have as a director. To be objective it's important to get facts from both parts of the case and cross-check everything.

The thing that surprised me the most was that he writes that it's important that the documentary is actuality and that everything can be proved and defended in court. I never thought that you can actually be sued for making and expressing your thoughts, actions and people through a documentary. This also made me think of how important it is to get all the facts correct, and be sure not to expose people in a negative way.

I am satisfied with what I learned, the paper/essay was pretty long so I feel that a lot of what was written was unnecessary for us Voices students to read and that we could just have got the basic facts. When I get that long papers to read I find it hard to learn something at all in between all the other information, so I'm satisfied that I learned some good basic facts about documentaries.

Lena