Paper Example About Documentaries

Documentaries can be as a creative reality of presenting the biased perspective of filmmakers. The facts are evident and real, but the biased side of the coin is well hidden in the circumstances (Pinnell, 2013). If documentaries are not biased, then it would not be a filmmakers show. There would never be too much effort to sell their beliefs in good light and yet hide their other side of the story from the audience. The documentary Super-Size Me biased nature is blurred by the artistic ways in which the producers borrow and quotes statistics and facts creating a single picture of the damage fast food has made to the public.

Fredrick Wiseman a renowned filmmaker who has created a career in films by keeping bias and commentary out of his movies says movies and all that they feature is misleading this is no different in a documentary (Biesterfeld. 2016). The producer determines the subject to feature, what actions to include and shoot, where the cameras are placed in the scenes to cut and add in the cutting room. Documentaries are construction just like and another video whether reality or a film.

It is hard to see the calculated manipulation techniques in a documentary that include music, camera angles, lighting and change of sound. There is also a lot of rhetoric used in documentaries to trigger question, response, and discussions among many other things. In Super-Size Me, a rhetoric theme is identifiable, the discourse in this film is designed to trigger conversations about first food and how it triggers obesity.

In any documentary that includes the Super-Size Me the director keep zooming the camera now and then, what we do not realize is that this is when the filmmaker intends to milk every drop of empathy from the viewer. In Super-Size Me, the director zooms in every scene a fat man, woman or child appear. The constant zooming to the obsess person scene in the documentary creates an illusion of numbers. In mind, the viewer keeps recalling an increasing number of fat people with minimal none obese, this translate to the creation of a painful theoretical truth in the viewer mind.

It is funny how the viewer fails to catch this insightful moment when the cameras are being zoomed towards the subject at play manipulatively. In the Super-Size Me documentary Spurlock zooms in every scene of obese persons walking in McDonalds. The scene zooming is strategic as it is meant to create an illusion to the viewers that the overweight is because of the excessive consumption of McDonald's foods. He also zooms into obese children scenes more because he is aware children are a sensitive topic and portraying them as endangered will make his point best driven without question.

Obesity is presented as an epidemic in the film, and the issues are convincingly backed up by professionals. The filmmaker use of experts is manipulatively calculated. It is obvious many of us are comfortable to believe scientist, scientists being featured in the documentary was an easy way to convince the audience of the seriousness of the epidemic which many viewers agree with ease.

In the film, Spurlock uses constant images of obese persons to create an illusion of the increased rate of fat persons. Spurlock visit school and film their meals to show how children are making bad choices endangering their health. This was convincing as children, in reality, are known for making bad decisions. The techniques applied in the filming of this documentary are quite compelling, this is because the film mages to create some reaction in media and the people as this was the most praised documentary of all times.

As much as we judged documentary as manipulative, some documentaries are well balanced. Journalism documentaries are well recreated, simplified and arranged to reveal the hazardous truth. Journalists are trained to produce justifiable accounts of events in their reports and when presenting any documentary both sides of the story are told. The independent filmmakers create a film for cinematic reasons, and they deliver the movie based on their biased belief (Biesterfeld, 2016). They view their work fair though lacks balance. However, their primary objective is to trigger emotions.

It is obvious no one want to watch hours of boring content and the filmmakers need to create good content whether in movies or documentary. A viewer like to feel intrigued and their emotions aroused, therefore, it is essential to develop engaging content, but on the other hand, it is the role of the viewer to identify the manipulation and grasp what is real.

References

Me, S. S. (2004). Morgan Spurlock. Hart Sharp Video.

Pinnell, I. (2013). Community Involved Visual Documentary Project (Doctoral dissertation, West Virginia University).

Biesterfeld. P, (2016) Documentary Bias - Rearranging the Truth. Video-maker magazine