Moving Documentary to the Web, Part I

2 October 2008

Traditional documentaries usually focus on an idea or social issue and explore it in a linear fashion. Today, on the web, documentaries no longer need to be linear. Here are some thoughts on the past and future of documentaries.

What is a documentary?

At the simplest level, a successful documentary tells a good story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Typically, a producer/director collects a variety of characters, voices, pictures, graphics, words, and music and weaves them together into a narrative experience.

Bad documentaries bore, frustrate and confuse the viewer.

The best documentaries organize their material in an emotionally powerful and intellectually insightful way. When done well, the experience of watching the film can profoundly influences how individual viewers think and feel about the topic. At the community level, the most powerful films can alter social policy, save lives, change public behavior and inspire new legislation.

Traditional Forms

The traditional form of the documentary is a creature of the movie theater and the television station. Feature documentaries, those designed for release in theaters today, are intended to be viewed by a “locked down” audience who occupy fixed seats in an physical establishment and passively consume the product in a darkened theatre. These kinds of films – think of the best films of Werner Herzog or Michael Moore – often combine long narrative arcs from beginning to end with a strong first person narrative that enables the film makers to include tangential sections that don’t necessarily contribute to the overall narrative. Narration may be strong or weak, depending on the degree to which the filmmaker embraces an observational style – but a physically captive audience allows the filmmaker to take the viewers on a long, meandering, and often idiosyncratic journey.

The television documentary is a creature of the network time-slot. If the documentary was produced for a commercial network or cable outlet this usually translates into thirty-five to forty-two minutes of material broken down into seven or eight digestible chunks (each with their own nearly completed cliff-hanging dramatic arc) that can be interrupted by commercial breaks – the life blood of the for-profit television distributor – and which keeps you coming back to find out “what’s going to happen next?” If produced for a PBS outlet then the typical hour-long film often runs about 50 uninterrupted minutes and needs to have both an overarching narrative arc as well as a series of smaller interlocking narrative arcs which can often be broken down into three or four act structures – that can sustain the interest of the audience without commercial interruptions.

The narrative demands of a televised documentary are often stricter than those of a theatrical documentary – one has to assume that the television viewers may be distracted by environmental concerns – be it changing a screaming baby, refilling their bowl of ice cream, or getting another beer out of the fridge. This means that the narrative guidance that accompanies the film must be strong and clear enough that the story can survive missed moments. This often translates into a very literal narration track that constantly tells and reminds the viewer of what is happening and repeats the main themes of the program.

Future of Documentary

The evolution of Web 2.0 technology and wide spread Internet access is transforming the communications arena – and giving rise to new narrative and documentary possibilities.

The vast realms of materials now available online can be a rich wellspring or a blinding torrent of unevaluated materials. The rise of blogs is one expression of the need for a point of view to guide the consumer through these jungles of raw information. Like the traditional documentary producer, the blogger assembles a collection of documents, narratives, and visual materials – photos and video – and weaves it together into a comprehensible narrative experience. Many of the first wave of bloggers were print journalists who began to post journal entries, op-eds and editorals about their areas of expertise and interest. The open world of the web meant that almost anyone could create a blog and post their thoughts in an easily accessible forum – and almost anyone did. The result quickly expanded the definition of an “on-line journalist” in ways that still haven’t been entirely assimilated by the social and legal systems of our society.

Web sites now proliferate for almost all television documentaries. These sites typically make the documentary available for on-line viewing and provide additional “web” features that are usually scraps and left overs from the production process: Supporting documents, outtakes from the main production, and interviews with experts and production staff. These websites are almost always supplemental – in the best sense of the word – to the liner visual experience of the documentary film.

Some “web-based" documentaries are also appearing – usually fairly short episodic narratives that offer a “TV” on the web viewing experience – but they are fairly traditional in form and content.

The traditional documentary must now evolve to meet the new potential of the interconnected and interlinked world of web 2.0. In the last few years we’ve seen the rapid and dramatic rise of photo and video sharing sites that enable people to produce and then distribute their own “content.” I would argue that these uncurated public sites, while immensely popular and often profitable, do not rise to the challenge of the documentary tradition. The central element of the documentary tradition, no matter the medium, is an authored exploration of a complex social subject matter.

Elements of Web Documentary 2.0

Web 2.0 now allows now us to combine a whole new set of graphic tools and informational system to depict and explore complex social phenomenon through a narrative lens. A true Web 2.0 documentary will take advantage of these new ways of depicting information and engaging with an audience. The Web 2.0 documentary will still be an authored experience – once that involves entering into an interactive space that is structure and organized to lead the consumer thought a series of experiences – visual, aesthetic, intellectual and emotional – which leaves them transformed in their understanding of a particular social phenomenon or issue.

The Web 2.0 documentary will not have a single “finished” product but will instead be a temporally evolving experience that will grow and change from day to day as the phenomena it addresses continues to grow and change.

It will also be interactive in several senses – it will enable have accessible points where the public can contribute their own thoughts and experiences as a comment upon – or an amplification of -- theme addressed in the production – be it through photo or video sharing.

It will enable "crowd sourcing" of actual content -- meaning that individuals will be able to add their own video or audio or graphic contributions to the project. These elements will always be vetted by the documentary producer/ currator -- to ensure that they are relevant and contribute to the overall themes addressed by the documentary project.

There will also be spaces built into the main story elements that allow viewers to add comments, and links to other relevant materials, and contributing to on-line data bases and archives.

It will be accessible through a variety of entry points and will offer a variety of simple narrative storyline that can be followed depending on the point of access or the interest of the consumer. Each story point in a particular story line will be self-contained enough to stand alone and provide a satisfying and digestible experience but will also combine together to form and frame a larger story that evolves over time.

Each story point will also be “actionable” meaning that it can easily be shared – emailed, exchanged, etc, with friends and other potentially interested parties.

to be continued....