The Future of Documentary

What changes will documentary face in the future?

It has seen many technical changes in the past with smaller and more portable cameras, the ability to record clear sound and the shift from film, to analogue, to digital. I have spoken to documentary maker and teacher Sharon Woodward about how she thinks documentary may evolve and how this may affect her. 

Nick Mirsky, Head of documentary at Channel 4, sparks the discussion with his predictions.

Nick - A shift to digital will only accelerate and scheduling programmes for channels will matter much less in a digital world. And that is an issue. That means there’s more premium on how you get audiences to documentaries. Marketing? Recognisable brands? Talent (like Louis Theroux)? Very strong ideas?

How do you think a lack of television scheduling will affect things?
Sharon - I can see a time when TV as we know it doesn't exist. That also might have an impact on the style of films because if we’re watching something on our phone, it's a different experience. There's so much happening, you can't possibly know where this is going to go.

Will there be a premium on getting audiences to documentaries if they can't stumble across them on TV?

Sharon - I think it has a knock on effect, the way films are marketed might have to change. It might be that there will screens in supermarkets marketing your film on a drop down screen. If you go to download music there might be an advert for a music documentary. You see them now at bus stops with the posters.

Both Nick and Sharon mention a change in marketing, which is already happening with the use of social media, but 'more premium' could be problematic. Attracting audiences may cost more time and money and this is already an issue for documentary making. 

Another change largely talked about is virtual reality. This IndieWire article believes that VR "is here to stay as a new platform for storytelling that demands new ways of constructing stories and shaping experiences". The article reports on the New Frontier exhibition at the Sundance Film Festival where convergence of video game and film was being demonstrated in a number of documentaries. This new form of storytelling allows audiences to be immersed within an environment and experience events.  

“1979 [VR film] suggests alternatives to realism in documentary by borrowing from game design." - Vassiliki Khonsari, visual anthropologist and documentary filmmaker

The BBC has already produced VR content, such as Easter Rising: Voice of a Rebel. It is a documentary about the 1916 rising, where viewers are able to visit the streets of Dublin to witness the event.

"We wanted to explore a completely new method of making knowledge and learning content more accessible." - Catherine Allen, BBC freelance digital producer 

Digital artist and filmmaker Chris Milk thinks that a new medium of storytelling is enabled due to advances in technology and that VR is a powerful form of storytelling. In the article there are claims of it being used increasingly for documentary and news coverage, with the potential to take out the middle man of journalism. 

However, as well as enabling documentary to be greater, technology changes could also have a negative impact.

Sharon - People are allowing you more into their environment when there's a smaller device. So I think the style might change, which will throw up other ethical questions like: should we be there? I've seen some films that make me very uncomfortable because the filmmaker (or people that aren't actually trained) are filming people in quite awful situations and I'm wondering how much consent will be wavered. Also the way it's filmed, I think documentaries will become much shorter. You’ll get more five minute shorts online that are a bite of peoples' life. You might also get more people that aren't necessarily filmmakers making factual films about themselves and voicing their opinions because mainstream media hasn't given them a voice. So there are good and bad sides to technology.

A significant addition to filmmaking is the Lily drone camera, which automatically tracks a subject. This article says "you basically have your own personal cameraman. For self-shooting filmmakers who want to present or star in their own documentaries, or even documentary makers who just want a second ‘cameraman’ when filming a subject, the Lily drone could be invaluable". The article also talks about User Generated Content (UGC) and the growing use of smartphone filming but Sharon's take on this is a little less hopeful. 

Sharon - For people that have trained for years, it's a bit scary that people are going out there and feeling that they can just make a film. But in terms of content I think what they can do is make short sound bite factual programmes. To make something of any depth with real researching - because a lot of stuff online isn't accurate, to really go out and talk to people and find the truth - that's still quite a skill. How you film those interactions and then collate that information and edit it in a constructed way is still a skill and not everyone that goes out with a camera can do that.

"The revolution now is all about accessibility. Once, documentary was an elitist thing. Now it's a mass participation activity." - Mandy Chang, Head of BBC Storyville

In this interview with Swedish filmmaker and producer Magnus Gertten, the notion of transmedia is discussed further.

"From your point of view, what is the recent development of the form in the documentary filmmaking, do you see some new trends for example in narrative structure or in using new media more?

-There's obviously happening a lot when it comes to narrative structure and storytelling in documentaries right now. 'Act of Killing' is a good example of how to approach a story in a different way. There's also loads of hybrid documentaries with fictional parts. I see a lot of doc's connected with transmedia projects, which gives the film a longer life and builds an audience on the net as well. Most likely this is what the future looks like. Just watching films on the TV and on a cinema, is disappearing, even though it might be true for some of the bigger projects still."

But with collaboration for documentary in the future, could this lead to an issue in ownership? This essay says "multi-platform documentary will increasingly rely on open source technologies along with the other collaborative efforts, making it increasingly difficult to define the auteur. Will the traditional role of the director shift more towards that of the editor? It is an open playing field at the moment". The level of uncertainty is something in itself to be wary of. Sharon also expresses uncertainty for her future in the industry. 

Sharon - I've been trained three or four times, on film, on analogue video and digital video and there will become a time when I can't retrain again. But I love filmmaking, I'm passionate about it, I care about what I'm saying and where I'm taking that message and I want to be able to do it for as long as I possibly can but I don't know what changes there will be in the future. I will try my very best to overcome any obstacles of technology. Where ever my films are screened, however they're made, as long as I know I'm being true to myself. If I feel like I'm compromising then I think I’ll jack it in myself. 

When I asked filmmaker Nick Harmer about documentary's future, despite the amount of potential change, he gave the impression that documentary will not be going anywhere.

Nick - Sometimes people say I'm in a high tech industry but what I’m doing is a very traditional art form. It's 100 years old. This stuff has been around for years, it's the same thing. So I don't think technology is changing what I'm doing as such. Just as novelist are still writing books, just with a MacBook instead of a quill. There are new things and they're changing distribution models and techniques but the form is the same. 

"The internet and digital media has not changed everything – good stories and good storytelling are still at the root of a good documentary" - Colin Pons, MA Filmmaking course leader, Sheffield Hallam University 

To conclude, if documentary has lasted 100 years already then it will be sure to live on, no matter the form or how it may be watched. We must not lose focus on what documentary's purpose is and what makes it distinctive and valuable, yet we should not lose faith or question its place in the world.