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 The Art of the Narrationless Documentary by David Kattenburg, Earth Chronicle Productions In a narrationless documentary, people tell their own stories, free from journalistic meddling. The narrationless documentary is a voice collage. Effectively constructed, it carries the listener effortlessly along. Central to narrationless documentary production is the artful juxtaposition of voices. An effective voice sequence goes back and forth between the concrete and the philosophical; the analytical and the emotional; the objective and the subjective; the scientific and the passionate; the in-door voice and the out-door voice. Gather voice recordings with these aural categories in mind. Go through your interviews, selecting everything your interviewee said that makes sense. Each clip is saved as a voice file. Assign voice files to categories. "Starter clips" state a simple case, outline a story, offer a broad view or introduce an idea or issue. "Middle clips" explore details, put forward arguments, defend views. "End clips" editorialize, offer conclusions or hope, or reflect on the future. As the narrationless documentary takes shape, voice islands emerge. Which voices are chosen to inhabit each island, and the relationship between islands, will depend on the complexity of the topic and the stylistic approach of the documentarist. A simple documentary might proceed logically from the start, through middle arguments to end thoughts. The body of a documentary dealing with a complex, multifaceted issue might consist of several distinct voice islands, each one beginning with a statement of some sort, leading into arguments and culminating in a conclusion. In either case, islands can be punctuated with sounds or music. The most startling and enjoyable moment in the production of a narrationless documentary comes with the discovery of a perfect match. Editing two voices together for seamless logical continuity -- truncating the end of the first clip, trimming down the beginning of the next -- is particularly satisfying. If you're lucky, you can find a way to unite two clips, the first one ending, the next beginning with the same word. Or someone might come to a conclusion, followed by someone else saying, "Oh yes, that's true" (provided, of course, that the two people are referring to the same point, and actually do agree. Otherwise, this manoeuvre would be unethical). In other cases, one thought can be united with another that begins ambiguously -- with a "... well, I'm not so sure," or "I'll tell you what I think." Alternatively, a laugh, a cough or a long sigh can transport the listener from one voice to the next. Silent gaps between adjacent voices -- at least a second, sometimes more -- allow a serious thought to sink in and create space for the next. The listener's ear will reach forward in anticipation, to be greeted by the comfortable sound of someone new. Alternatively, one voice recorded in a quiet location can segue into another one recorded out-of-doors, or in a noisier setting, through the use of 15 or 20 seconds of ambient sound. Of course, in a narrationless documentary, people must be allowed to introduce themselves. In your interviews, get people to provide you with three or four intros, each one of a slightly different nature (including: "... Oh yes ... uhhh ... I forgot to introduce myself. My name is ... ). Take care where you insert these intros. A sequence of voices, each beginning with an intro, can become tedious. Here and there, embed intros in the body of a clip (thus, the need for the intro above). As you may imagine, the three key tasks for the narrationless documentarist are editing, editing and editing. The more you listen, the more you cut and rejuxtapose, the more you edit down, the closer you come to the sublime voice sequence. Once your sequence is complete, then you can superimpose sounds and music. Have fun. Copyright CSIRP 2001 Copyright for materials on this website is the property of the content creators and the Canadian Society for Independent Radio Production, unless otherwise noted. Materials may be freely used by non-profit organizations and educational institutions for non-commercial purposes only. For evaluation purposes, CSIRP would appreciate it if you would let us know how you have used these materials, and in what context. Material reproduced from this website must include the CSIRP logo, website address and this message. |
