Chapter Four

Question 4: What Makes Documentaries Engaging and Persuasive?

            In this chapter Nichols discusses the triangle of communication, concrete events and abstract concepts, common issues, recurring topics, the challenge of persuasion, and the power of metaphor. The triangle of communication of every documentary includes at least three stories that connect: the filmmaker’s, the film’s and the audience’s. Considering the filmmakers previous work and continuing preoccupations is one of the ways in which you can discuss what a film is about. This gives you the opportunity to understand and explain his or her intentions or motives, and how these considerations relate to the general social context in which the work was made. When it comes to the film itself and your understanding and interpretation of its story. We tend to concentrate on what the film reveals about the relation between filmmaker and subject and what the film reveals about the world we occupy. Nichols points out that knowledge of the various forms, modes, and techniques of documentary filmmaker prove useful (Nichols 96). Then comes the story of the viewer. “Every viewer comes to a film with perspectives and motives based on previous experience” (96). Basically meaning each person understands the meaning of a film differently due to where he or she came from and what he or she has gone through. As an audience we often find what we want, or need, to find in films sometimes at the expense of what the film has to offer others.

Most concepts and issues within a documentary are almost always abstract and invisible. “We cannot see affluence or poverty as general concepts,” is the example Nichols gives (99). Explaining that we can only film certain evidence and indications of a wealthy lifestyle or depraved existence, to which we then assign the concepts affluence or poverty. When it comes to common issues and recurring topics, if a concept is not in doubt, there is no need for a documentary film to address it. Documentaries usually address debated concepts and contested issues. Specifically concepts and issues where there is considerable amount of social concern or debate or experiences that the filmmaker can provide as a unique perspective.

The challenge of persuasion starts which the uses of spoken and written language, which has led to a classification scheme that sketches out three broad categories. They include:

·      Narrative and poetics (for telling stories and evoking moods)

·      Logic (for rational, scientific, or philosophic inquiry)

·      Rhetorical (for creating consensus or winning agreement on issues open to debate)

These three categories are not mutually exclusive (103-104).

Rhetorical is the language of particular interest to the study of documentary film and video. There are three divisions that identify most issues documentaries address. The first is deliberative, “this is the domain of encouraging or discouraging, exhorting or dissuading other on a course of public action” (105). This includes political issues of social policy such as war, welfare, conservation, abortion, artificial, reproduction, national identity, and international relations. The next division is judicial or historical; “this is the domain of accusing or defending, justifying or criticizing previous actions” (105). Questions towards the past like, “What really happened?” are usually what filmmakers focus on. Questions of fact and interpretation, where guilt or innocence is at stake in relation to the law and truth or falsehood is at stake in relation to history. Lastly, commemorative or critical; this branch of rhetoric assigns praise or blame to others or a mix of both (107). It evokes qualities and established attitudes toward individuals and their accomplishments. The power of metaphor is the basic idea that we need metaphors to describe the concepts and issues. Metaphors “help us understand things in term of how they look or feel; they establish a likeness that involves our own physical or experiential encounter with a situation rather than our knowledge of a standard dictionary definition” (109). Metaphors help us understand the deeper message within the documentary film.