Year 10 Unit 1: Lesson 4 September 9 2011.

This lesson we weren't able to focus and learn as much because of the mid-autumn assembly. However, we didn't let any time get to waste so Ms Rosati taught us as much as possible. She elaborated on our first unit: Documentary. We would first learn the basic facts of the topic, then proceed to watch and analyse two documentary films; Babies and Bowling for Columbine.


First, we learnt the Film Making Focus, which is the three different varieties of film making. There's Documentary, Narrative and Experimental.
- A Documentary film is basically a non-fiction film.
- A Narrative film has fictional story line that tells a story or an event through visuals.
- An Experimental film is expressionistic, and brings out the film maker's unique point of view.


Then we learnt the different types of films that fall into these categories. Such as...
- Documentaries are a wide range of Observational films, newsreel, biopic (biography), travelogue, sports, nature shows etc.
- Narratives; there are Linear narratives and Non-Linear narratives. Linear narratives are films that have the story told in order. Non- linear narratives are films that have story lines not in order (such as Inception). Basically they are all genre films.
- An Experimental film usually is a poetic film or a visual abstraction.  


The last part of the basics were the Characteristics of a Documentary which were...
- On Location; meaning it must be filmed on a space that already exists and has not been re-touched or created.
- No or few actors; meaning no acting at all, must be all natural.
- Socially relevant subjects or themes.
- High ratio of shooting to final footage; for example, you film 10 hours of footage but only use 1 hour.
- Born in the editing room; meaning there really is no plan of how you'll edit it because it's all natural footage, not staged.
- "You need to know the subject before you film"; meaning you can't just go and shoot, you need to take time to really understand your subject in order to capture the true essence of the film.


Watching both documentaries really helped me understand how to grasp the essence of documentary film making. I hope that I can acquire these skills and produce a film quite extraordinary as the ones we watched.