Documentary practice is the process of creating documentary projects. It refers to what people do with media devices, content, form, and production strategies in order to address the creative, ethical, and conceptual problems and choices that arise as they make documentary films or other similar presentations based on fact or reality. Colleges and universities offer courses and programs in documentary practice (see External Links).
Traditional definitions put forth by scholars of documentary film address documentary practice in terms of formal codes, categories and conventions. These are used by filmmakers to create "non-fictional" representations of the historical world.Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary, Bill Nichols, Indiana University Press, 1991 Subsequent definitions made by others define various approaches to documentary in terms of how they use such rhetorical strategies as voice, structure and style.Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film, Carl Platinga, Cambridge University Press, 1997 Such definitions focus on finished documentary projects and how they measure up to contemporary notions of truth and representation.
However, recent cultural, technological, stylistic, and social shifts have turned attention in documentary studies to the process of documenting as such. Documentary-makers and scholars alike are showing interest in the present moment and how new media tools can be used by documentary-makers to initiate formation of new communities, conversations, and ways of being together.
Such interests characterized conceptual art works of the 1960s and 1970s. The connective potentialities of art as a practice are currently being explored in the contemporary relational aesthetics movement. In these movements, the potentialities and dilemmas of aesthetic practice take precedence over traditional concerns with the finished artwork. Likewise, growing interest in documentary as a practice is opening the definition of documentary beyond considerations of finished documents, to include the act of documenting itself. This expansion of the definition of documentary work became possible when consumer-level video cameras became widely available.The Collective Camcorder in Art and Activism: 1968-2000, Jesse Drew. In Collectivism After Modernism,, B. Stimson and G. Shollette, eds., University of Minnesota Press, 2007 Some collectives of video producers used this new technology to address issues such as politics of cultural representation, the critique of daily life, the deconstruction of culture control mechanisms, and the subversion of authority.
While practices of documentary-makers continue to be informed by existing documentary traditions, conventions in documentary, and genres, they are also reshaped by emerging media environments, content, devices and uses for those devices. Emerging media, in turn, are greatly affected by their political, economic, and cultural contexts. Various emerging technologies and the situations in which they are used present documentary-makers with new challenges, opportunities, and dilemmas. This makes documentary practice dynamic and ever-evolving.
Many documentary-makers seek innovative approaches to their field in response to emerging technologies and the practices they make possible. Continuous innovation in documentary practice prevents the "documentary idea"The Documentary Idea: A Critical History of English-Language Documentary Film and Video, Jack C. Ellis, Prentice Hall, 1989Doing Documentary Work, Robert Coles, Oxford University Press, 1997 from becoming stagnant or locked into any single generic form. This challenges each generation of documentary-makers and viewers to approach documentary-making as a living practice.
Emerging media New documentary practices associated with cinéma vérité and Direct Cinema began to appear in the mid-1950s when technological developments made film and then video more portable, accessible and affordable. This allowed more people to engage in the practice of documenting. The 1991 video of Rodney King being subjected to police restraint is an example of the continuing power of this shift. An ordinary citizen was able to capture the police brutality with his camcorder, transforming him from a witness to an amateur documentary filmmaker. Scholars have cited the events following the widespread dissemination of the Rodney King video as one of the earliest examples of "participatory culture."Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition, Henry Jenkins, MIT Press, 2003
Today's new media continue to reshape documentary practices in significant ways. Recording technologies embedded within personal portable devices such as video-equipped mobile phones and hand-held digital video and still cameras have made it possible for vast numbers of people to engage in citizen journalism and "documentary practices." Additionally, Web 2.0 platforms such as video and photo-sharing websites and blogs now enable amateur "documentarians" to share and collaborate on content in ways never before possible. A practice that Howard Rheingold and Justin Hall have labeled p2p Journalism, now exists at the blurred boundary where traditional definitions of journalism and documentary meet and influence each other.
Promises of new media technologies have raised expectations of a freer flow of ideas and content. Scholars are studying how participants in documenting practices engage in the social process of acquiring knowledge, sharing stories, and documenting events-in-the-making. Through such practices, social ties among people and groups as they arbitrate what qualifies as knowledge evolve continuously, facilitating the emergence of what Pierre Lévy refers to as collective intelligence.
By enabling more people to record and share their experiences, emerging media technologies have transformed the way people document reality and how they participate in the very events that they are documenting. Everyday life can become performative as people respond to encounters and events through documentary practices, creating records of daily life which they then share with others via the Internet. For many people, digital media-making becomes a form of documentary practice when the results are created for and shared via social-networking sites like MySpace, Flickr and Facebook.
The 2006 documentary of a Beastie Boys concert, Awesome; I F***n' Shot That!, directed by Adam Yauch, is an example of how participation in documentary practices transforms the way people take part in events such as concerts. A live performance in 2004 was documented by 50 fans who were all given Hi8 cameras and told to film their experience of the concert. Their footage was later edited together with professionally shot footage. It provided contrasting points of view and established dialogue between artists and fans.Awesome I F***n Shot That!: User-Generated Content in Documentary Film, online at http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/mit5/papers/Porst AwesomePaper.pdf
Some scholars argue that as an increasingly widespread practice, the nascent cellphone documentary genre creates more possibilities and forms of social agency; people use cell phones to document public events and network their collective responses;Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, Howard Rheingold, Perseus Books, 2002 others have used their phones to mobilize crowds during public demonstrations.The Cell Phone and the Crowd: Messianic Politics in the Contemporary Philippines,, Rafael Vincente, published in Public Culture Vol. 15 No. 3, 2003. Vincente writes: "The crowd itself takes on a kind of communicative power, serving up channels for sending messages at a distance and bringing distances up close." http://communication.ucsd.edu/people/f_rafael_cellphonerev_files.htm_
Mobile communications devices
The pursuit of "filmic truth" has been a hallmark of documentary practice since early film-makers such as the Lumiere Brothers, Robert Flaherty and Dziga Vertov created its foundations. (see External Links)
Today, people use mobile devices in ways that open new possibilities for the practices of documenting—especially those practices involved in efforts to achieve "filmic truth." For example, in June 2006 a 93-minute remake of Pier Paolo Pasolini's documentary entitled Love Meetings (1965), in which he interviewed Italian citizens about their views on sex in postwar Italy, was shot entirely on a cell phone by :it:Marcello Mencarini and Barbara Seghezzi. Entitled New Love Meetings, the remake was filmed in MPEG4 format using a Nokia N90. It is the first feature-length movie to be shot entirely on a mobile phone. Their premise was that even though they asked their subjects the same questions that Pasolini had posed, the results of their documentary would be clearly influenced by the medium they used to capture the images. They believed that the use of a cellphone, an instrument of daily life, produced an intimacy absent in Pasolini's movie, making people more spontaneous and open, creating a dialogue more like a chat than an interview. They propose that the line between subject and observer becomes thinner through such practices, as the documentary film-makers present themselves as "normal people" using their cell phones to preserve an instant. New Love Meetings is a prime example of how a specific emerging technology, the mobile phone, is shifting documentary practice today. (see External Links)
In this modern era, all over the world, many filmmakers take advantage of mobile phone's such advantages. After the launching of New Love Meetings, a docufiction was made in Dutch named Why Didn't Anybody Tell Me It Would Become This Bad in Afghanistan directed by Cyrus Frisch in 2007. In 2008, a Narrative film, SMS Sugar Man came out by Aryan Kaganof from South Africa. In the same year in India, repeated the victory of the mobile phone's advantages through a documentary film, Veenavaadanam, directed by Sathish Kalathil in Malayalam. And, the next victory of the narrative films, captured with mobile phone camera was also from India. Again in 2010, Sathish Kalathil launched an experimental film, Jalachhayam in Malayalam. It was also a theatrical release. Nowadays, beside documentaries, several narrative films, captured by mobile phone cameras are also released. Many of these are theatrical release. Hooked Up, To Jennifer, Tangerine, 9 Rides, Searching, Unsane, High Flying Bird, I WeirDo are some examples of narrative films, captured by camera phones all over the world. Above these films are a prime example of how a specific emerging technology, the mobile phone, is shifting documentary practice and mainstream film industry today.
The use of the so-called "fourth screen" (the first screen being cinema, the second television, the third the computer, the fourth the mobile device) as a documentary tool has become a subject of academic study. In fall of 2007, graduate students of The New School produced an experimental five-minute metadocumentary shot with three cell phones. It explored the possibilities of mobile media devices as a medium for documentary practice by using them to restate Dziga Vertov's perspectives on filmic truth as expressed in his film: Man with a Movie Camera.
See also List of Mobile phone films
Surveillance media Surveillance is the act of observation or monitoring, usually of places, people, and activity, and typically without the subject's knowledge. Much of contemporary surveillance involves observation from a distance with the help of electronic devices, such as telephone tapping, directional microphones, covert listening devices or "bugs", subminiature cameras, closed-circuit television, GPS (Global Positioning System) tracking, electronic tagging, motion tracking, satellites, internet and computer surveillance.