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"You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means..." Inigo Montoya.
I think there is a misunderstanding about the word - Here's the encyleopedia Britanica's take for instance - verisimilitude the semblance of reality in dramatic or nondramatic fiction. The concept implies that either the action represented must be acceptable or convincing according to the audience's own experience or knowledge or, as in the presentation of science fiction or tales of the supernatural, the audience must be enticed into willingly suspending disbelief and accepting improbable actions as true within the framework of the narrative. ---------------- So it IS used in conjunction with fiction, as well as non-fiction. And frankly I don't think it's any kind of definitive metric at all. It's simply a word that leaves room for subjective judgement of what is 'truthfull' - which is always up for debate in doc work. The OP's bicycle crash sound - 'truthful' or not? Suppose I'm shooting an extremely long shot of two people, walking along a battlefield - we get a context of where they are, and they are wearing WIRELESS mics - so we can pick up their conversation. You couldn't possibly hear them from the shot where the camera is placed, and yet we hear them as if they are standing right next to 'us' - the viewer. Is that 'truthful'? Does it 'appear' truthfull to reality? - No. But it is truthful in the context of FILM - which the viewer has come to accept and understand - most of us have an understanding of the syntax of cuts and distance implied in shots - this shot FOLLOWS that shot in Time... etc. So there is ALWAYS going to be a line drawn around what is acceptable and not. There are 'best' and 'standard' practices - most of these posts address those, and there are 'questionable' practices - where one mans' verisimilitude is another man's deception. And so it goes. |
Here is an example of what is IMO a verisimilitude FAIL: Newspaper upset with Michael Moore - Fahrenheit 9/11- msnbc.com
Getting the date on the paper wrong isn't so bad. For me, the fail is in the misrepresentation that the headline in question was on the front page when it was really a small heading above a letter to the editor. That IMHO is a verisimilitude fail. |
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And I don't think it means what you say... Definitely not. Best Vasco |
here is the defininiton from Webster's College Dictionary 4th edition:
1. the appearance of being true or real 2. something having the mere appearance of being true or real Vasco -the adjective you are looking for is verisimilar. |
Mike - Your definition of the 'fail' is absolutely accurate - for your definition of 'truth'.
Which is the point. The actual definition of the word, SAYS that the truth is subjective. Simply using the word as some sort of metric - proves that the 'truth' is what is true to both the FILMMAKER and the audience. I've seen a number of documentaries that seemed 'true' to the audience - but it seemed false to me because they didn't cover a particular aspect deeply enough, or long enough, or 'glossed over' some point that I thought was very very important to the subject. The word 'verisimilitude' - simply implies that the film is emparting a telling of 'truth' in its statement. NOT that it "IS" truth... There are facts. And then there are INTERPRETATIONS of facts. This is the fundamental struggle of any documentary filmmaker. Every. Single. Decision. We. Make. Is. Subjective. Period. |
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"Vero" in Italian means true, and "simile" means similar - and Italian being my mother tongue, the meaning of "verosimile" (verisimilar) is pretty obvious to me. What I fail to understand is your statement that (quote) "in documentaries it would be a backhanded compliment, hinting at deception of some sort." Thanks for pointing out the adjective. Best Vasco |
Very interesting discussion.
Perhaps the problem is not with any of the concepts of truth, or truth as seen in the view of the observer, but rather with the way films are currently labelled. In films, the word documentary has come to imply that the film depicts a strong measure of objective truth. This is not necessarily the case with books. One does not find books in a library labelled 'documentary'. They are labelled with words such as 'fiction' and 'non-fiction'. Note that the word is non-fiction, not 'truth'. Within non-fiction works the labels are words such as history, environment, current affairs, biography, etc. All of these types of books present their information with a slant, and often a very strong slant. Readers know this and judge the book and its interpretation of the information based on their own logic and knowledge. I wonder what would happen to film-making if the documentary shelf disappeared and was replaced by a section called non-fiction within which were many shelves with names similar to books. Would it allow a more innovative complexity of films to be made without any sense of guilt associated with "taking liberties" to make your points? Would viewers, like readers feel more at liberty to engage the film in a personal dialogue, just as one might with a good book? Alan |
I should have noted that my interest in this was because I am making a film about two real caterpillars fighting over a leaf. I will add music, voice-over and foley sounds for eating and when the caterpillars bashed each other. For fun in the VO I named the caterpillars "Slim" and "Curley". The events are all absolutely real with no visual trickery. I edited out long sequences where there was no action, but there are minute-long battles.
So I asked myself -- what kind of a film is this anyway? The added audio makes it engaging and easy to learn about the complexity of nature, but the audio is fake, and there was no background music, my VO is my interpretation of what is going on. Alan |
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Reminds me of a lot of some African wildlife films I've seen in the past where a narrator tells the "story" of a lioness (named something that sounds African) and her cubs (also named). It's an interesting narrative form. Is it a doc? I don't really know... |
Alan,
Well, to a certain extent - the word 'documentary' in film-making simply means 'non-fiction narrative' in marketing terms. Though I get your point. It can become confusing when you have to create 'fictional narrative' sections to fill-in for footage that doesn't/can't exist - for instance recreating a discussion that took place centuries ago. "Docu-drama" is another term that merges/blurs that distinction, and is becomming more and more popular. Your 'wildlife film' or 'nature film' is a sub-genre of 'Documentary'. To be more specific - its also a 'short'. But yes it is a Documentary film. And puts me in mind of the early Disney 'Nature films' where a narrator told the story of a rascally - (insert cute animal) as it followed him during the course of a year or so. |
Appearance vs Reality. The two are presented more often than not, as opposites. If you say "It looks real" the implication is that it may be fake.
But does it matter? Not often perhaps, but sometimes it does. A convicted cop-killer was released from prison after 15 years on death row because of Errol Morris' "Thin Blue Line". Watch the re-enactments Morris used - they were highly stylized, no-one could possibly mistake them for documentary footage of the actual events. And because they could not be mistaken for something they were not - those re-enactements claimed more authenticity, a greater veritas (transcendent truth). Shaun are you implying that the lions in those films don't use their real names? |
I like the way Pablo Picasso phrased it.
"Art is the lie that makes us realize truth" |
Magritte, late '20s:
the painting depicts a pipe; at the bottom there's a line of text that reads: "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" (this is not a pipe). Magritte asked: can you stuff my pipe? Obviously not. Image (or depiction) of reality vs. reality itself: old story, I guess... Best Vasco |
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Great discussion everyone!
I was still uneasy about the word "documentary" and its relationship to "truth", so I posed the question to one of my cousins who wrote her thesis on the topic of documentary film-making, and currently is the program director for a film festival. Her reactions are interesting: "Hey Alan -- I think your film sounds fascinating and I think it is definitely a documentary short. ALL documentaries are hugely edited and made to tell the story the filmmaker thinks should be told! For instance, we had a documentary short last year called "Safari" and it was an elaborate set up of bugs running around in a terrarium (of a sort) in the filmmaker's apt. Our description of the film was ... "When a New York City cockroach returns to the "wild" (it's actually an elaborate rainforest constructed in the director's studio) we witness its stuggles and interactions with the environment's other inhabitants." So, it sounds similar to your film. I could go into a long history of documentary film but from the very beginnings it was altered to suit the filmmaker so no documentary is completely truthful but more often they simply aim to show reality. So, I think what you made is definitely a documentary. Anyways, hope that helps!" So an expert is not so concerned about accuracy, but instead mostly about intent. Perhaps the issue remaining is how to let the viewer know what the intent of the film is before they see it so that there is no misunderstanding about the degree of accuracy and the degree of interpretation that the documentary film maker intends to portray. |
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your friend mentioned something about how the first docs were "altered to suit the filmmaker" which is true. In Nanook of the North the filmmaker had the Inuit he was filming use hunting tools that were previously used by the Inuit people instead of the modern hunting tools (eg. rifles) that had already been adopted and that the specific Inuit hunter was accostomed to using in his normal life. |
Thank you !
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I agree, the word documentary has been stretched and we now have mockumentaries and some people think Borat is a doc. film, but the original question about the audio to me only shows that there seems to be no clearly defined sub categories to label the types of film. I would call it a "nature film" and give you permission to do all the audio fx and tweaks you like and need, to bring your story across. ciao Hanno |
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Yes, as I initially mentioned on this post, I've seen top docs like History/Discovery Channel overlay sound effects to create a mood with "possible" animal sounds. To be sure, no microphone is going to capture a baby polar bear whimpering in high winds when the cameraman is maybe 1,000+ feet from the subject! And I'd simply love to see the audio engineer wire the baby polar bear with mom nearby - now THAT would make a great doc! Getting back to interviews, I've done audiocasts (podcasts) where a senior SME (Subject Matter Expert) has long pauses and regularly stammers. When I'm through with the edits, the subject sounds clear, crisp, consise - they way they did in their prime. So, is that ethical? IMHO, it depends on the context. If the interview was for a job candidate, someone seeking political appointment with regulary public speaking, etc, then I'd say doing so would be a no-no. Prez George Bush #43 would be a good example - it would be a distortion to miscovey his speaking acumen (or shortcomings). OTOH, if I'm interviewing a SME that's something like a book author, then I'll certainly clean-up the flubs since his speaking skills are not relevant to his core competency. However, if he/she might be going out on a speaking circuit, then I'd better carefully consider toning down the edits. Incidentally, another editing factor would be the genre and the news source. So audiences generally have come to expect a different shade of "truth" in a documentary from Michael Moore than one from Ken Burns. In summary, editors worth their salt always ride a slippery slope with varying shades of verisimilitude. But as all of us Stephen Colbert fans know, it's all about truthiness... (Truthiness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) Happy Trails, Michael |
Sound Actuality
A very interesting thread!
My angle is that documentary is not by definition necessarily journalistic (that seems to have crept in as the norm during the 1950s). The inventor of the term, Grierson, described it as the 'creative treatment of actuality' which is a very helpful precept. If you watch early docs they have no problem with all sorts of artifice - the silent 'Man with a Movie Camera' (Vertov) and 'Berlin: A City Symphony' (Ruttman) are my benchmarks still. I use all types of creative sound treatment as ultimately I think sound is more evocative and affective than the images so consequently concentrate on non-synchronous sound (but still diegetic). I like to promote the idea that there is nothing wrong with the concentrating on aesthetics in documentary and a poetic approach to this. It isn't journalism or making any attempt to convey an ultimate truth but a subjective impression of actuality. Funnily enough despite using all kinds of sound manipulation I very rarely actually 'fake' sounds in any way (that just reminds me of why I hate so many movies - the highly exaggerated hyper-reality Hollywood approach to sound and image is horrible) - why not use a different approach to practical problems like poor sound such as a 'metaphorical' sound or even silence!! |
If you are interested in the ethics of artifice/re-enactment in doc making - check out Errol Morris' blog posts at NYTimes.com.
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