Visual Elements
1. Montage
- Process of combining a number of small shots and weaving them together to communicate a large amount of information QUICKLY
- Can portray the past life of individual character of film, covering childhood, adolescence young adulthood and middle age in a matter of seconds.
2. Talking heads
- Common feature of documentaries
- Either interview of people on camera or people talking directly to the audience on camera or both
- Documentary is non-fiction, so the idea of people talking to camera, or a filmmaker behind the camera is acceptable
- Talking heads usually experts, etc
3. Colour Symbolism
- Language of colour, harnessed in a film, is a powerful one
- Choice if hues for certain items or its use in out-of-the-ordinary contexts and even type of lighting gives subliminal messages to the audience
- Red = emotion, etc
- Don’t overuse symbolism
4. Textures
- Giving old footage a ‘grainy’ texture, thereby signifying that footage is of real events that happened in the past
- A ‘sepia’ texture used in recreations or flashbacks
5. Lines
- Lines and frames add another dimension
- A man walking tall amidst the vertical columns of an old building perceived as someone powerful
- Same columns bathed in dark lighting so that only the layers are shown in implies his dark or negative power
- Using green emphasises nature
Sound Elements
- Sound is as important as the image
- French film theorist Christian Metz identified five channels of information in film à visual image, print and other graphics, speech, music, noise
Types of sound:
1. Narrative commentary / Voice over
- The narrator telling the story, the voice of authority
- Narration is sound-track commentary that accompanies a visual image
- Also called ‘voice-over’
2. Talking heads
- Speech element of talking heads, of interviews, is important element of soundtrack.
- Effective way to communicate information
- Effective way to communicate information
- In some documentaries, filmmakers discard narration in favour of talking heads for more credibility
3. Music
- Enhances moments and create moods and cultural flavour in documentary.
- Background music appeals on emotional level with audience and increases level of empathy with events on screen
- Used to establish geographical location and introduce the concept
4. Ambiance sound
- Traditionally referred to as ‘noise’.
- Speech and music given more attention
Sound technology developed, its important that is has grown
- Essential to the creation of a location atmosphere. E.g. French accordion music
5. Sound effects
- Any sound that is not speech, music or ambiance
- Artificially injected to enhance soundtrack
-Can be natural sound like bird chirping to digitally created or distorted sounds and of microphone feedback
6. Silence
- Helps audience to hone in on visual to such an extent that it takes them into a kind of suspended or unnatural reality.
- Should be used sparingly
- Too long a gap between sound risks losing audience attention.
Deborah Méndez ©
Deborah Méndez ©
