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ELA 5: Documentary 33 Views


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Description:

Who says documentaries are boring? This video's basically a mini documentary about documentaries and it's awesome. Right everyone? Right? ...We'll take your silence as a yes.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:04

[Coop and Dino singing]

00:13

What do you think of when you hear “documentary”? [People watching a documentary]

00:16

Boring, British people talking about floods?

00:19

Morgan Freeman and penguins?

00:21

Your aunt’s YouTube channel of cat videos? [Aunt holding a kitten]

00:23

Well, a documentary is a non-fictional movie that aims to document some part of reality.

00:28

But they can be a lot cooler than all of that stuff! [Coop explaining a documentary]

00:31

Not that your aunt’s cat channel isn't cool… We’d never say that.

00:35

Unlike a fictional movie, where the director hires actors…

00:38

… shoots on a set… [Batman and Joker on a film set]

00:39

…. and maybe throws in some special effects…

00:41

… the idea behind a documentary film is that the director simply sets up their camera

00:45

and observes real life as it happens. [Woman with a camera on a beach]

00:47

And, sure, sometimes real life can be pretty boring…

00:49

But real life is also the thing that brought us sharks…

00:53

extreme surfing…

00:54

and moon landing!

00:56

And documentary films are there to capture it all. [Documentary film of moon landing]

00:59

Documentaries usually provide information about real places, people, and events.

01:03

Some of the tools documentaries use are images…

01:06

… interviews with experts…

01:07

… and artifacts.

01:09

Traditional documentary styles are biopic profiles, which tell the story of real people, [Coop discussing biopic profiles]

01:13

or pieces about actual events in history.

01:15

But just like Pokémon, the documentary as an art form is continuing to evolve, and sometimes

01:21

the boundaries of the genre can be unclear.

01:23

Which isn’t always a bad thing. [Girl walking towards fiction]

01:25

One new development in documentaries is known as the Reflexive style. This is a documentary

01:30

that isn’t just about a subject…

01:32

… it’s also about how the documentary itself was made. [Dino teaching about reflexive documentaries]

01:35

It’s like documentary inception.

01:37

The coolest thing about documentary films is how versatile they can be.

01:41

Almost anything can be the subject of a documentary…

01:43

…and as the genre grows more popular, so do the topics it touches. For example, a documentary

01:49

might look at some obscure or unusual interest, like, say “Competitive Stamp Collecting…” [Boys in stamp collecting competition]

01:53

Or look at a common concept from an unusual angle… like… the U.S. Economy… as seen

01:58

from the perspective of bunnies.

02:00

But don’t think that documentaries are perfect.

02:03

Because they’re made by people, they can be biased. [Girl with camera on beach and stamped biased]

02:05

The bias could be the result of what equipment they choose to film with…

02:09

… what they choose to film…

02:10

… and even how they plan to release it once it’s done. [Boy and girl walk to entrance of theatre]

02:13

So even though documentaries can be totally informative and cool, don’t assume that

02:17

they're 100% truthful all the time.

02:19

Who knows what went into making those cat videos… [Aunt giving thumbs up]

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