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
 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
 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. It’s hard to define. But …
it would be a theater without actors. Plays without
playwrights. Reporting without summary & opinion.
The ability to look in on people’s 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….”
 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
 American TV Networks
• CBS Sixty Minutes
• ABC Prime Time
• 20/20
• NBC Dateline
• Magazines
• Have replaced the TV documentary
form at traditional US networks
 TV Documentaries Today
• In America
• Public Service Broadcasting commissions
much of the best documentary making
• Plus Cable Television airs many films
HBO, Canada’s Documentary Channel
CNN, Discovery Channel, Nat-Geo,
Sundance, History Channel, A and E, others

• At PBS – Frontline – worth noting

 PBS Series
• “Frontline”: - variety, traditional
• Sometimes controversial
• “The Jesus Factor” 2004
• International Subjects
• Independent Series
• “China from the Inside”[2006] ( ) in 4 parts

politics, women, pollution, justice

• http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/
 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)]
 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.html

• 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
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
 POV: Docs with clear political
agendas
• Ex: Robert Greenwald
American political documentaries
“Outfoxed” (2004)

“Iraq for Sale” (2006)

 Beyond TV
Documentary 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?v=8kd0L3fhG4w
 Next Week
• Elements of Style
• Some very original film makers
• Ken Burns
• Errol Morris
• Nick Broomfield
• February 29 – Cinema Verite’
• Thank you
Footnote:
See ABC News Report about Greenwald and “Iraq for
Sale:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGPLchIl6p4