Back to the Future (of documentaries)

For example, Alex Jansen and Jason Gilmore from Toronto wanted to make a documentary on Igor Kenk, the world’s most prolific bicycle thief. Gilmore started shooting, but with a zero budget and only three months in between two jobs to work on it, the quality of the footage was very bad. So with Jansen, a graphic designer, they decided to turn the footage into a graphic novel, using the transcription from the video as dialogues but transforming the shots into drawings. This way, the aesthetic of the story improved considerably, and the result was a best-seller in Canada, which has now been turned into an animated documentary done with the same technique applied to video. The future of documentaries according to Gilmore is indeed a “mash-up of styles, technique, distribution methods: whatever combination will allow you to tell the story in its purest form, give you more control, reach the audience in the best way”.

Another enormous possibility comes from journalism: specifically, from the medium formerly known as the ’press’. “I don’t read newspapers", said Zack Wise, senior multimedia producer at The New York Times. "I never subscribed to a newspaper, I don’t know anyone of my generation who did. But we all read their websites, and they are all getting better and better!!"

Everyone can probably agree that it is just a question of time: sooner or later printed newspapers will disappear, moving onto the web. And that’s how we have to look at the press nowadays: as news organisations, never again as newspapers.

The great news for documentarists and filmmakers is, of course, that the Internet is an intensely visual medium and the multimedia content of news organisations will become more and more important compared to text. Wise himself does not come from a journalistic background, but from video game programming and photography. The prevalence of visual tools does not only mean more working opportunities, but also a ready-made audience: “What I do at The New York Times is seen by millions of people without me worrying about it: the audience is there already, it’s the readers”.

Whether in the most important newspap… news organisation in the world or on a small blog, operating on the Internet does require a big change in language. “The linear narrative structure is still very strong", says Wise, "a beginning, a centre and an end are always the best way to tell a story. But we have to play with it in order to make it interactive: getting the information cannot be a passive activity anymore, it is an interaction of the audience with the professional journalists. Sometimes user-generated contents are actually the only way to have a real, collective view of what happens. They cannot substitute the work of professionals, but they can provide a tremendous amount of information”.

Even if you are old-style and prefer feature-length documentaries which are shown in cinemas, and in which the director is the one and only creator, computer science can still provide you with an immensely useful tool - even for the most conservative: the motion graphic. How else can you explain difficult concepts such as hedge funds, private equity or how children are born using visual tools, if not by creating stylized companies, money bags and storks moving on screen?

Finally, the best thing that is happening to documentaries is the halved weight and dimensions of the equipment. What ten years ago required lighting, microphones, 10kg video cameras and a whole crew to move all this, can now be done with a 5000g camera: a massive game-changer. “We can now really be flies on the wall", said Wise, a statement which is also a wish to all filmmakers around the world. "We can capture reality without being part of it”.

There are no excuses anymore: anybody should get a camera, get out there, and film something important.

By Marta Musso