Aufderheide, Defining the documentary - Essay Example

Aufderheide: Defining the Documentary A documentary is a construction by artists and technicians of a story that claims to be truthful about real life. The documentaries are used by commercial broadcasters, public broadcasters, public social media and individuals on the edge of the mainstream media with the purpose of serving as a marketing, communication and entertainment tool. Documentaries seek to satisfy two elements; representation and reality. Even though they are made from manipulation of reality like the other films, they make a claim of being truthful through a representation of reality.

Documentaries take the form of an analytical argumentation combined with some educational animation and formal elements. The formal choices in documentaries make them more representative of the importance the content they show. Documentaries lack the natural representation as they are characterized by manipulation of content so as to shape the meaning around what the audience want to know. Documentaries share the narrative convention. They are based on stories with an introduction, body and end.

They invest in taking their viewers into an emotional journey by sharing the perspectives of the documentary characters with that of the audience. They also share techniques employed in filmmaking such as editors, musicians, digital designers, cinematographers and sound technicians. Documentaries are governed by the economic context of business realities. Producers strive to make documentaries more appealing to the viewers in order to ensure that the documentary gains audience. This is because the appeal of the documentary is associated with the brand identity of the product in the documentary.

Furthermore, sponsors such as the government affect the reality present in the documentaries by encouraging some aspects of the content while discouraging others. Work CitedAufderheide Patricia. Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford university press. 2007. Print.