Michael Moore

Michael Francis Moore (born April 23, 1954) is an American filmmaker, author and liberal political commentator. He is the director and producer of Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11,  Sicko, and Capitalism: A Love Story, four of the top ten highest-grossing documentaries of all time. In September 2008, he released his first free movie on the Internet, Slacker Uprising, documenting his personal crusade to encourage more Americans to vote in presidential elections. He has also written and starred in the TV shows TV Nation and The Awful Truth.

Awards:
Bowling for Culumbine: won the Anniversary Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and France's César Award as the Best Foreign Film. In the United States, it won the 2002 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. It also enjoyed great commercial and critical success for a film of its type and became, at the time, the highest-grossing mainstream-released documentary.
Fahrenheit 9/11: was awarded the Palme d'Or, the top honor at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival; it was the first documentary film to win the prize since 1956. Fahrenheit received no Oscar nomination for Best Picture but at the box office, as of 2010 Fahrenheit 9/11 is the highest-grossing documentary of all time, taking in over $200 million worldwide, including United States box office revenue of almost $120 million.
Sicko: The film is currently ranked the fourth highest grossing documentary of all time^, and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature.

Controversy surrounding Michael Moore:
Michael Moore has been accused by Peter Schweizer in his book Do as I Say (Not as I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy of being a "Corporate Criminal, Environmental Menace, and Racist Union-Buster", making the following claims:

• Moore portraying himself as working class is deceptive, and that he actually grew up in an well-to-do home.
• While Moore criticizes racial disparity in Hollywood, Fahrenheit 9/11's crew was all white.
• While Moore claims to not own any stock, he and his wife's foundation owns stock in many large companies, including Halliburton.
• While praising unions, Moore tried to dissuade his workers from joining them.

Mockumentaries

What is a Mockumentary?
A mockumentary (a blend of mock & documentary), is a typeof film or television show in which fictitious events are presented in documentary format. They may be either comedic or dramatic in form, although comedic mockumentaries are more common. Mockumentaries are often partly or wholly improvised, as an unscripted style of acting helps to maintain the pretense of reality. Comedic mockumentaries rarely have laugh tracks, also to sustain the atmosphere, although there are exceptions.
Conventions of a Mockumentary:

• They use the same codes and conventions as documentary and related media, such as an authoritative voice-over narrator or on-screen presenter, apparently 'real' footage of events, archival photographs, interviews with apparent 'experts' and 'eyewitnesses', and the other familiar ways of representing reality.
• Mockumentaries 'work' because of the assumptions and expectations that we as viewers have of representations of reality. When we see a text that looks and sounds real, we tend to begin reading and responding to it as factual. We may in fact read 'real' texts in very different ways to fictional texts.
• At some point a mockumentary will 'flag' that it is fictional. This might happen through promotional material, or become obvious when watching the mockumentary itself, or not be revealed until later (as with mockumentaries designed to be hoaxes)
• Because they demonstrate how easily all of the codes and conventions we associate with the conveying of 'reality' can be faked, mockumentary can often cause us as viewers to consider why we place so much faith in the accuracy and integrity of genres such as documentary.
• Mockumentary, then, is a fictional form which can encourage us to reflect on the nature of the documentary and related genres, and on the 'privileged' position that we tend to give such factual texts.

Many popular mockumentaries are simply looking to create humour by using the documentary as the 'straight person' in a comedy double-act. They make an absurd subject funnier by taking an apparently rational and sober perspective on it. Others incorporate a number of popular culture references, often building a satiric commentary on other media. Some of the more interesting mockumentaries can create quite 'layered' forms of experience for their audiences.

Why create a Mockumentary:

• simply as a novelty or stunt style;
• for promotional purposes;
• as an innovative dramatic style;
• or for parody and satire.

Examples:
 Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan 
Synopsis:  
Borat Sagdiyev is a TV reporter of a popular show in Kazakhstan as Kazakhstan's sixth most famous man and a leading journalist. He is sent from his home to America by his government to make a documentary about American society and culture.
 Conventions: 

• Hand held camera 
• "On the run" interviews 
• Synchronous sound recording 
• Archive footage of maps 
• Inappropriate/ exaggerated characters 
• Sacha Baron Cohen acts the part of Borat, who is an entirely fictional character

 

Analysis of A2 Documentaries

Caught on Camera 

• Use of voiceover and interviews 
• Filmaker not present in any shots, no direct interaction with subject matter 
• Use of a Voice of God voiceover 
• Use of upbeat music- made the pace lively and kept the audience interested 
• Still shots used throughout all interviews- emphasised the serious situation 
• Archive footage such as news reports, newspaper headlines
• Could have used a stronger voiceover as the voice used was very weak and sounded young

Skin Deep 

• Use of voiceover 
• Film maker interviewed subjects from behind the character
• modern music used alongside the very modern topic of tattooing- makes it clear that this is aimed at a younger audience 
• could have improved in editing as the fade outs used appeared to cut the person of to soon, whcih makes it clear they have edited bits of the interview 
• Also, the voiceover at the beginning is of a strong voice whilst later in the documentary, the voice changes this can be confusing for the audience

Secret Surveillance 

• use of interviews 
• Film maker very involved in the documentary 
• Edited the colour of the shots to make it look more like real CCTV footage 
• No archive footage used  
• Could have improved with sound levels as there were numerous sound jolts 
• The interviews also looked very low budget as they were set in the wrong location for a crime style like program 

Wikileaks 

• Voiceovers 
• Direct interviews with the film makers involvement 
• Strong soundtrack to introduce the documentary- draws instant attention 
• Heavy use of archive footage 
• Interviews with important people that were very relevant to the subject matter 
• However, the difference in definition from HD to standard camera in an interview makes the film maker appear to be in a different room than the interviewee 
• The interviews are very long which makes the documentary appear slow 

Modes of Documentaries

 Poetic Documentaries
Conventions

• The poetic mode of documentary film tends toward personal interpretations of its subject. 
•  Individual characters and events remain undeveloped, in favor of creating a particular mood or tone.
• Unrelated shots linked together to create a more artistic effect

Examples.....

• Joris Ivens’ Rain (1928),
• Francis Thompson’s N.Y., N.Y. (1957)
• Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil (1982).

Expository Documentaries

• Voiceover- addresses the audience directly
• The voiceover will either be the "voice of god" (heard but not seen) or a "voice of authority" (seen and heard- usually an expert)
• Images are used to illistrate (or sometimes counterpart) the voiceover
• Editing is used for continuity, to link images that support the arguement
• Assembles a variety of footage, interviews, stills and archive footage to support the argument.
• Attempts to persuade the audience of a particular point.

Examples.....

• Ken Burns’ The Civil War (1990
• Robert Hughes’ The Shock of the New (1980)
• John Berger’s Ways Of Seeing (1974)

Observational Documentaries

• Location shooting- handheld cameras
• Long takes dominate
• synchronous sound recording
• No voiceover
• No interviews
• Film makers presence is hidden from sight- does not influence the subject matter
• Subjects pretend they are not being filmed

Examples....

• Albert & David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin’s Gimme Shelter (1970)
• D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back (1967)

Participatory Documentaries

• Documenatry maker and crew interact with subject
• Interviews dominate, tend to be very formal (on the run questioning)
• Use of archive materials- stills, news, footage, newspaper headlines, letters etc...
• Location shots- handheld camera
• Long takes dominate
• Sychronous sound recording
• Voiceover

Examples....

• Supersize Me
• Louis Theroux 
• Michael Moore 

Reflexive documentary 

• Borrows techniques from fiction film to produce an emotive response in the audience 
• Uses expressive lighting, expressive music etc...
• Voiceover is likely to be questioning and uncertain 
• Relies on suggestion rather than fact 

Examples...

• Cathy Come Home 

performative documentary 

• Documentary maker and crew interact with subjects 
• Documentary maker comments on the process of making the documentary 
• The narrative is usually an investigation or search 
• Adresses the audience in a direct way 
• The subject matter is usually to do with identity (gender, sexuality) rather than factual subjects 

Louis Theroux

Louis Theroux is an English broadcaster and journalist, he is famous for his participation in all his work via a first person narrative and objective view. He currently works with BBC, producing documentaries. Theroux moved to London when he was four and attended Westminster School where he befriended comedians Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish. He then went to Magdalen College in Oxford where he gained a first class degree in modern history. His first journalism job was at Metro Silicon Valley, an alternative free weekly newspaper in California.
    In 1992 he was hired as a writer for Spy magazine. He was also working as a correspondent on Micheal Moore's TV nation series, for which he provided segments on off-beat cultural subjects, including Avon ladies in the Amazon, the Jerusalem Syndrome, and the attempts by the Klu Klux Klan to re brand itself as a civil rights group for white people. When TV Nation ended he was signed to a development deal by the BBC, out of which came Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends . 

Louis Theroux's Wierd Weekends 
This is a television documentary series that gives viewers an insight into the lives of individuals in which an average person would not come into contact with. This usually means interviewing people with extremist beliefs or being involved with organizations that are disproved of by society. 
 Books
In 2005, Louis wrote a book named The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures which was centered around characters he had previously interviewed and filmed in episodes of Weird Weekends. He tracked down over 10 of the participants 7 years later to see if they had changed at all. 


When Louis met....
In the series, Theroux accompanied a different British celebrity in each programme as they went about their day-to-day business, interviewing them about their lives and experiences as he did. This series was far more observational then Weird Weekends. This series was less successful and was cancelled before season 3 due to Louis struggling to find people to appear.

BBC Two Specials 
n these special programmes, beginning in 2003, Theroux returned to American themes, working at feature-length, this time with a more natural tone. In March 2006, he signed a new deal with the BBC to make ten films over the course of three years.Subjects for the specials include criminal gangs in Lagos, Neo-Nazis in America, ultra-Zionists in Israel, and child psychiatry. The 2007 special, The most hated family in America, garnered particular critical praise from the international media.
 Awards and Nominations

1996 Emmy Awards:

• Nominated: Outstanding Informational Series for TV Nation

British Academy Television Awards 2001:

• Won: Richard Dimbleby Award for the Best Presenter (Factual, Features and News) for Weird Weekends

2002 Royal Television Society:

• Nominated: Best Presenter for When Louis Met…

British Academy Television Awards 2002:

• Won: Richard Dimbleby Award for the Best Presenter (Factual, Features and News) for When Louis Met…
• Nominated: Flaherty Documentary Award for When Louis Met the Hamiltons

Journalists John Safran and Harmon Leon cite him as an "important influence".