First+Principles+-+Lecture+notes

=First Principles - John Grierson and the creative treatment of actuality=

Lecture
This lecture will look at the work of John Grierson as film critic, and its relationship to the work of pioneering documentary maker Robert Flaherty. However, we will not confine ourselves exclusively to Grierson's original writings, and will examine how some of the concepts explored in his writings have continued to inform the debate surrounding documentary film. Central to this lecture is Grierson's definition of documentary as “the creative treatment of actuality”, and the implication of this statement for documentary film makers.

__"Documentary Value"__
Most histories of Documentary film credit John Grierson with the origination of the term, in his 1926 review of Robert Flaherty's //Moana//. Winston, however, has argued authorship of the term genuinely belongs to Edward Sheriff Curtis, photographer and film-maker. Curtis, while discussing his 1914 film //In the Land of the Headhunters//, discussed the film's value as "documentary material", predating Grierson's definition by 12 years (Winston 2008: 11-13). Curtis' use of the English-language term mirrored the way in which //documentaire// was used by French film-maker "to distinguish serious travelogues from other sorts of films, including mere scenic views" (Ellis and McLane 2008: 3). However, Grierson is to be credited with the popularisation of the term.

__The roots of documentary film__

Rotha (1935) identified four strands of early documentary film – Naturalistic (romantic), newsreel, propaganda and continental realist. Naturalistic documentary revolved around anthropological concerns, and usually took other human cultures as its subject. Newsreel was the use of film to report on current events, and to inform the general public. Propaganda film was used to expound political ideas, while the continental realist used avant-garde factual film to explore notions of time, space and the subconscious (see Ellis and McLane 2008: 4-6)

__Who was Grierson?__
Grierson was originally a British Social Scientist, working out of the University of Chicago during the 1920s. Primarily interested in the effect which film could have upon public opinion, and its implication for the political process, Grierson was also a cultural critic who wrote on a number of topics. Having taken an initial interest in mass media theory, he went on to work as a film-maker himself, under the aegis of the Empire Marketing Board (EMB). Having produced his first film, //Drifters// (1929) he then went on to establish the EMB Film Unit, which was later to be absorbed by the General Post Office (GPO) film unit. Both EMB and GPO Film Units were government owned, and were tasked with producing films which had a strongly propagandist element.

Grierson's work as a film-maker and as the driving force behind the EMB and GPO Film Units are important chapters in British Film history. However, for the purpose of this module, we will look at Grierson's work in theorising documentary film. Much of his early writing was in response to the films of others, and he is widely known as the man who first referred to factual film-making as “documentary”

__Grierson and Flaherty__
Grierson's use of the term “documentary” is found in a review of //Moana//, Robert Flaherty's 1926 film about indigenous Samoan culture. Grierson was an admirer of Flaherty, and called him "the father of documentary" (Platinga 1997: 28). Flaherty's films were primarily ethnographic, and dealt with the lives of cultures other than his own, notably Inuk (//Nanook of the North//), Samoan (//Moana//) and Ireland (//Man of Aran//), which was at odds with Grierson's emphasis on social realism. However, Flaherty's films serve as effective early examples of narrative, drama and character in non-fiction films.

__First Principles of Documentary__
Platinga argues that Grierson's First Principles of Documentary represents an especially influential chapter of his writings. (Patinga, 1997: 27). Contained in this essay are two fundamental arguments which can be found throughout Grierson's work. The first is that the documentary should be realistic, and should serve a socio-political purpose - documentary as propaganda The second is that documentary should be dramatic. Grierson frequently compares documentary to fiction, and refers to the documentary subject as "the original (or native) actor" and the documentary narrative as "the living story". (Grierson 1966: 147). This "Griersonian" conception of documentary as a combination of realism, creativity and social purpose remains influential today, and can be crystallised in his famous description of documentary as "The Creative treatment of Actuality" (Grierson, 1932: 8) =__The Creative Treatment of Actuality__=

Grierson's understanding of documentary is condensed in his famous phrase "Documentary is the creative treatment of actuality"(Grierson, 1932). The term "Griersonian Documentary" is often used to describe films which blend both actuality and creativity.

**What is meant by actuality?**
Ivor Montagu has argued that Grierson was using “actuality” in the same way as the French A//ctulaites//, meaning newsreels. To adopt this understanding of the term narrows Grierson's phrase significantly, so that it refers to the “creative treatment of newsreels”. (Montagu, 1966: 281) Montagu's interpretation of the term is not representative of mainstream thought, where most scholars assume that Grierson was using the term in a traditionally English sense, to describe "something that is real". Definition from Bloomsbury Dictionary (Rooney, 2004)


 * What constitutes “creative treatment”?** - 4 examples


 * Mise en Scene** **and Montage**

Slightly reductively, Monaco argues that "Three questions confront the film-maker: what to shoot, how to shoot it, how to present the shot. The province of the first two questions is mise en scene, that of the last, montage" (Monaco, 1981: 148). These, fundamentally, are the three main directorial choices which face the documentary maker. Mise en Scene, to use Monaco's simple definition, relates to two questions - "what to shoot, how to shoot it". Documentary makers, like film-makers who direct fictional stories, must make choices related to shot composition, framing, lighting, and length. The choices made will effect the final outcome of the film, and is thus part of the "creative treatment". Montage is the art of editing, of how to construct a sequence of shots. Documentary directors, and their editors, are forced to make choices, related to length of shot, rate of cuts, type of cut, and the relationship between shots. These decisions again contribute to the creative process, and influence the way in which actual events are perceived by the film or television audience.

It is recommended that you read Monaco's chapter entitled "The Language of Film : Signs and Syntax" for a detailed analysis of how film-makers communicate using these techniques.


 * The creative use of sound**

Early documentary films belong to the silent era, and use intertitles to give them a narrative voice. As the “Talkies” began to dominate the film industry, documentarists felt the need to compete, and added soundtracks to their films. Since sound recording equipment was often unsuited to location recording, soundtracks were recorded in the studio, and added later. Soundtracks usually consisted of four key elements
 * Scripted narrative. The written intertitles used by Flaherty were replaced in some instances by a narrative voice-over which complemented the images shown. Types of voice over varied in style. Some relied on simple informative statements, while others displayed a style which could be considered “creative”. Perhaps the most celebrated documentary voice-over found in pre-war documentary is the narrative poem written and read by W.H. Auden, to accompany the GPO Film Unit's film, //Night Mail//. (Watt and Wright, 1936)
 * Music. Documentary films often used recorded music to complement the images. Some documentary makes used pre-written scores, while others commissioned pieces specifically for use with their own films, seeking to underline the impact of the images with sound. (For a detailed analysis of the use of music in Film, see Brown, 1994)
 * Dialogue. Early documentary films did not rely heavily on recorded dialogue, due to the difficulties of location sound recording. Some films contained studio-recorded dialogue added in post-production (for instance, Grierson's 1934 //Granton Trawler//) but the dialogue was intended as part of the general atmospheric sound, rather than as a narrative device.
 * Atmospheric sound. This term refers to the natural sound heard on location. The manipulation of natural sound for creative purpose would later be described as //musique concré te//, yet it is present in early documentary film. Ellis and McClane argue that it is an important component of Grierson's //Granton Trawler//

“Sounds are laid over a succession of impressionistic views of parts of the ship, the fisherman's activities, and the shifting horizon, which becomes vertiginous in high seas. It is as if the makers of the film, and therefore the viewers, are standing on the trawler looking about as their eyes are led to one thing or another while their ears register certain sounds. Not only was it an aesthetic experiment ahead of its time, it represents the kind of filmic poetry that can be achieved by a stylized rendering of reality completely controlled by the maker(s)” (Ellis and McClane, 2008: 65)


 * Narrative structure**

In //First Principles of Documentary//, Grierson argued - using Flaherty as his example - that the documentary narrative "must be taken from the location, and that it should be (what he considers) the essential story of the location" (Grierson, 1966: 148). Location is important to Grierson when discussing Flaherty's work, since they both considered Flaherty's film to be essentially ethnographic, yet the point made has relevance beyond ethnographic films. Grierson firmly believes that documentaries should tell true stories about their subjects; in fact, he castigates Hollywood for wanting to "impose a ready-made dramatic shape on the raw material" (Grierson, 1966: 147). Yet he still recognises the role of the documentary maker as the teller of the story - it is "what he considers" to be the true story, and not the true story as seen from any other viewpoint. Documentary, for Grierson, involves "arrangements, rearrangements and creative shapings of [natural material" (Grierson, 1966: 146)

The way in which the documentary film-maker structures his narrative is often central to how he "tells" the story. Early films tended to have a traditional linear narrative, where we witnessed the passing of time; //Nanook of the North//, for example, takes place over most of the year, where we see the changing of the seasons. Yet by making editorial choices about when to begin and end the shoot, and which shots, sequences and scenes to include in the finished film, Flaherty creates an artificial narrative structure. This is clearly seen in //Moana//, where the film revolves around the initiation rites of the title character. Basing the film around a single, important, act gives it a simple beginning, middle and end which may not have existed in real life.

However, not all documentary films follow a linear narrative, and many films and programmes chose to show real events in a different order to which they happened - making them "sequential composites" to use Chatman's phrase (Chatman, 1980: 21). By manipulating real events to create a narrative, the film-maker is again exercising his creative influence over actuality.

(For a detailed discussion of Narrative Form in Documentary Film, see Platinga, 1997: 124-146)


 * Re-creating events**

Flaherty has been criticized for his deliberate re-creation of events in //Nanook of the North//. In Rothman's words, "Flaherty distorts the real way of life of Nanook's family in order to tell a story about a man's heroic efforts to keep his family alive in a harsh natural environment" (Rothman, 1998: 25). The hunting of the walrus is undertaken using traditional weapons, despite the fact that Nanook would have access to firearms, and the igloo is built larger than necessary, to accommodate Flaherty's camera. Winston argues that many of Flaherty's films included dramatised fabrications. The narrative centrepiece to //Moana// - a ceremony where the eponymous hero is tattooed - was a long-abandoned custom, revived by Flaherty for his film. (Winston, 2008: 26).

=References=

Brown, Royal S. (1994) //Overtones and undertones: reading film music// University of California Press Chatman, Seymour Benjamin (1980) //Story and discourse: narrative structure in fiction and film// Cornell University Press Ellis, Jack C. and McLane, Betsy A. (2008) //A new history of documentary film//, Countinuum Grierson, John (1932) "The Documentary Producer,” //Cinema Quarterly// Vol. 2 Issue 1(Autumn 1932) Grierson, John (1966) //Grierson on Documentary//, Faber and Faber Monaco, James (1981) //How to Read a Film//, Oxford University Press Montagu, Ivor, (1966) //Film World//, Penguin Platinga, Carl R. (1997) //Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film// Cambridge University Press Rooney, Kathy (ed.) (2004) //Bloomsbury English Dictionary:New Edition//, Bloomsbury Publishing Rotha, Paul (1935) //Documentary Film//, Faber and Faber Rothman, William (1998) //The film-maker as hunter : Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North// in Grant, Barry Keith and Sloniowski, Jeannette (Eds.) //Documenting the Documentary : Close Readings of documentary film and video//, Wayne State University Press Watt, Harry and Wright, Basil (1936) //Night Mail//, GPO Film Unit Winston, Brian, //Claiming the Real II, Documentary : Grierson and beyond//, Palgrave Macmillan