Film Education -

Errol Morris directs The Fog of War
Photo © Sony Pictures Classics

Exercise 1

The term 'documentary' has long been a source of argument. An early pioneer of such filmmaking was called John Grierson and although he thought it a 'clumsy' term, he suggested it should stand. Another definition of this genre that Grierson used was 'the creative interpretation of actuality'.

What do you think that phrase might mean?

Consider one of the first kinds of documentary – in fact one of the first kinds of film at all – the movies that earlier pioneers made outside factories at the end of a shift when large numbers of workers could be seen leaving for home. What aspects of this kind of simple filmmaking can be considered?

• Actual (A) – in other words something that would have happened whether or not the camera was there?
• Creative (C) – in other words affected by practical decisions made by the director/camera operator, and which had the effect of making the sequence more entertaining
• Interpretive (I) – in other words affected by practical decisions made by the camera operator/director that might affect an audience's understanding of what they were seeing.

The following table (pdf) sets out a series of factors that might have affected the end result of such a factory exit film and some of the ways in which an earlier filmmaker such as Georges Lumière working with silent film might have shot this sequence in 1895. Print out the table. Your task is to decide which of A, C or I relates most to each situation. Space is provided to explain your decisions. Sometimes more than one of these elements will apply at the same time.