Historical documentaries

For filmmakers, this book focuses primarily on longer-form work, but the principles of documentary storytelling can and do apply in a range of forms and formats. I have applied the story and structure tools contained in this book to six-minute historical documentaries, eight-minute natural history films, and even 90-second audio presentations. Brett Culp, interviewed in Chapter 18, applies these tools as an event filmmaker, crafting stories from key moments in his clients lives. 

I recently led a seminar that looked at the presentation of history on screen. It was a nonproduction course, and only a few of the students had film experience. I wanted them to evaluate the storytelling in others films and learn how to apply it to their own (hypothetical) documentaries. For the first half of the semester, we screened and critiqued several historical documentaries as well as some dramatized (and fictionalized) histories. 

Ric Burns (New York) describes his experiences as a filmmaker who specializes in long-form historical documentaries, including the multipart series New York A Documentary Film. 

Not all historical documentaries explore themes some present a story or situation without that added complexity. 

The illusion that film performs, when it s powerful, is it gets people to confuse the experience of the film with the experience of the past—to get audiences to almost unconsciously confuse the aesthetic experience the/re having as the film unfolds with their imagination of what it must have been like to be there in the past. In a way, I think that for historical documentary filmmakers, that s the way you animate the... 

I ve been making historical documentaries for many years, yet I learned new things from this book. This is the definitive guide for archival research for documentary filmmakers. An invaluable resource."... 

During the Golden Age of Islam (7th through the 17th century) Muslim philosophers and poets, artists and scientists, princes and laborers created a unique culture that has influenced societies on every continent. Here documentary writer Howard Turner offers a fully illustrated, highly accessible introduction to the scientific achievements of medieval Islam. Howard Turner opens with a historical overview of the spread of Islamic civilization from the Arabian peninsula eastward to India and westward across northern... 

Although archaeology is a historical discipline, in that its aim is to reconstruct events in the past, it is not the same as history. If history is reconstructing the past from written sources, then 99.9% of humanity s five million years or more of global evolution is beyond the reach of history. Even in historic times, where written records exist, there is still a distinctive role for archaeology. Documentary evidence often provides evidence for big events -famous people, battles and invasions, religious dogma, and the history of states but such written sources are inevitably biased. History is written by the... 

Bijlefeld, Marjolijn, ed. The Gun Control Debate A Documentary History. Westport, Conn. Greenwood Press, 1997. A collection of more than 200 primary source documents relating to gun control issues. Includes historical, constitutional, legal, and legislative aspects of gun regulation. 

For the documentary history of a nearly unprecedented art-historical apotheosis of MD, ca. 1960-1995, mainly centered on the supposedly artless readymades, see Roth, MD and America, especially chapters 2, 3. 

This study is devoid of any psychological or sociological consideration for the Auschwitz gas chamber testimonies, as well as any consideration along the lines of what is physical, chemical, topographical, architectural, documentary, and historical by which these testimonies are unacceptable. It aims above all to make evident a point which the Revisionists have so far not mentioned but which is nonetheless of prime importance up until 1985, no judicial witness of these gas chambers had been cross-examined on the material nature of the facts reported. When, in Toronto, at the first Ziindel trial in 1985,1 was able to cause such witnesses to be cross-examined, they collapsed since this date, there are no longer any gas chamber witnesses presented in court except perhaps at the trial of Demjanjuk in Israel where, there again, the witnesses revealed themselves as false.1... 

After retirement in 1963, she began writing her classic work, Machina Carnis The Biochemistry of Muscle Contraction in Its Historical Development,00 which was published in 1971. The book had a dedication page to F.G.H. mentor and friend. Then, for many years she assisted Mikulas Teich with A Documentary History of Biochemistry 1770-1940. Unfortunately, Moyle s health deteriorated, as her former student, Jennifer Williams, described ... 

Women chemists made up a significant proportion of the scientific workforce. Fortunately, the Women s Work Collection of the Imperial War Museum (IWM) has a significant amount of documentary evidence on the wartime women scientists. This useful material was compiled in 1919 by Agnes Ethel Conway of the Women s Work Subcommittee of the IWM. Conway circulated a questionnaire to universities and industries informing them that the Committee was compiling a historical record of war work performed by women for the National Archives. In particular, Conway added they [the Subcommittee] are anxious that women s share in scientific research and in routine work should not be overlooked. .. 13 Enough replies were received to provide a sense of the breadth of employment of scientifically trained women during the war. 

Retrospective validation is based on a comprehensive review of historical data to provide the necessary documentary evidence that the process is doing what it is believed to do. This type of validation also requires the preparation of a protocol, the reporting of the results of the data review, a conclusion and a recommendation. 

Charles and Ray Eames made a 1968 ten-minute documentary film, Powers of Ten, showing the universe at different scales, from the cosmic scale down through the human DNA, its atoms, and beyond. The Philip and Phylis Morrison were scientific advisors on the movie, which Philip Morrison narrated. It was elected in 1998 for preservation in the National Film Registry, which selects culturally, historically or aesthetically significant motion pictures for preservation. The resulting book is ... 

However, historical research has found little evidence to support any of these stories. The only mention of ice in connection with Nero comes from Pliny the Elder in the first century AD, who records the discovery that water that has been boiled freezes faster and is healthier. There is no mention of ice cream in any of the manuscripts describing Marco Polo s travels. Indeed, modern historians doubt that he even reached China. It is unlikely that Catherine s chefs knew how to make ice cream since, at that time, the method of refrigeration by mixing ice and salt was known in Europe only to a handful of scientists. Nor is there any documentary evidence for Charles chef. 

It is in the documentary film-maker s futile attempts to interview key players that the film s adversarial stance towards Shakespeare is crystallised when told that the film was written by a contemporary of Shakespeare s, John Webster, Hayek s character asks to interview Webster. The target of the joke is not the interviewer s ignorance as much as the Shakespeare industry s erasure of Shakespeare s historical specificity. Instead of taking its inspiration from the Shakespeare industry or from heritage films (Merchant-Ivory productions are explicitly attacked in the film). Hotel draws its roots from Jarman. Jarman s Tempest is alluded to in the casting of Heathcote Williams (Jarman s Prospero), who plays both the scriptwriter-within-the-film and Bosola, the spy who embodies the normative order and surveillance that lead to the death of the Duchess (see Fig- 4)-... 

Again, this is just an illustration. Take the time to look at successful documentaries and identify the sequences within them. Watch a range of films and film styles, from historical films (such as Middle-march s Benjamin Franklin) to social issue films (compare the use of sequences in Taxi to the Dark Side and The War Tapes, for example) to traditional verite. Sequences, also known as chapters, are structural devices that enhance, rather than limit, presentation. 

Narration or voice-over, if done well, can be one of the best and most efficient ways to move your story along, not because it tells the story but because it draws the audience into and through it. Narration provides information that s not otherwise available but is essential if audiences are to fully experience your film. When documentary makers dive into fairly complicated historical policy or legal and legislative issues," notes filmmaker Jon Else, "narration is your friend. It may mean that you have only two or three lines of narration in a film, but something that might take 10 minutes of tortured interview or tortured verite footage can be often disposed of better in 15 seconds of a well-written line of narration."... 

What we re involved in, always, is trying to tell a story. Before I became a producer in documentaries [in 1988, on Eyes on the Prize], I had edited a lot of docs, but I wasn t always thinking about how to tell a story and have it escalate dramatically and emotionally. That s something I learned from the irascible Henry Hampton [executive producer of Eyes, a series that used a three-act structure to tell historical stories). And then right after, Spike called me about cutting Mo Better Blues, and I ve worked with him since on a series of narrative fiction features. What I ve learned from both is to always make the story dramatic. Get the characters up a tree, how re we going to get em down I apply three-act structure to everything. I don t always adhere to it as closely as we did on Eyes, but it s always in the back of my mind. 

Transcripts and other useful materials are available online for many documentaries that have been shown on U.S. public television, including American Experience (a historical series, www.pbs.org/wgbh/ amex/). Nova (science, www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/), and Frontline (current affairs, www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/). These can be very useful as a reference while watching and analyzing story and structure. 

---