Even a nature film with the camera running, taking non-stop pictures of polar bears on snow has an editorial bias unless you make your audience sit through the parts that have no bears.
First, you have 90-120 minutes to make a point. You have to have a point to make the movie in the first place or you might as well call all web-cams documentaries and nothing else.
Second, your placement of camera, choice of location (field or garbage dump, in the case of polar bears) affect the received message. The way you cut and edit also changes the message. Are there people in the bear's area? If so, that causes a change in bear behavior. You might have to wait 2 weeks and have a perfectly disguised camera to capture bears without them being affected by the camera to any appreciable degree. By some definitions, you're being dishonest if don't share this tedious process with your audience. So the only honest documentary about GWB would follow him everywhere: into the shower, in his love making, his pretzel eating, his vacation times and every waking or sleeping moment. To remove any of this, is to be dishonest. Yes, I'm ready for that type of GWB documentary. But, I'd want someone to edit it for me. There's only so much GWB snoring or staring into space I could endure. But I would like to see the documentary of Cheney with Enron.
I guess some people want to narrow the definition to the point where a documentary has no point and becomes a web cam. Everything that goes into a film of finite length and the choice of material reduction, shapes the message. Even in the case of a web-cam there is a editorial bias that someone cares about the cam so even the web-cam, then, has an editorial bias of the person who bothered.
If you care about a documentary subject then implicitly you are biased against those who don't care about the subject. |
