Documentary: Structure

The structure of a documentary determines how the story the filmmaker wishes to tell is presented to the audience. This can be simple or more complex, but 'Simplicity of structure allows for complexity in the overall film. If you have a strong narrative spine, you can hang a tremendous amount of content onto it and audiences will stay with you' (Curran Bernard, 2010:47).

However, a documentary's structure can be summarised by its train, since this encapsulates its main message and/or focus (Curran Bernard, 2010:50-1).

Therefore, after the train of the documentary has been established, it can then be broken up into a structure, which can change over the course of production, as can the train. A structure of three acts can be used, with act one serving as an introduction to the characters and conflict, along with the inciting incident, defined by Curran Bernard (2010:55) as 'the event that sets the action of the story...into motion.' Act two is where obstacles become apparent and the stakes are raised before act three, which is the point of the story where the tension is greatest, pushing the story to a resolution (Curran Bernard, 2010:58-9).

The structure can also include a point of attack, which brings the audience into the documentary's world and is normally where the film starts (Curran Bernard, 2010:56). From this beginning point it is possible to tell a single story, or multiple stories.

Combining multiple stories, 'often enables filmmakers to create films that are more complex than would be possible with a strictly linear approach' (Curran Bernard, 2010:59-60). However, these stories have to inform each other, so that they flow together in a natural progression or order, even at some point connecting and driving a single central narrative (Curran Bernard, 2010:59).

Multiple stories can mean that the filmmaker can present several aspects of a character's life, in the past, or present. However, if the contributor's backstory is to be covered it must add necessary information to the main narrative, and add extra layers to the characters (Curran Bernard, 2010:57).

Deciding what is cut and what is kept can be determined by deciding what each sequence or sync pull adds to the overall narrative (Curran Bernard, 2010:62).

To determine if this cutting has been done successfully, Curran Bernard (2010:63) proposes filmmakers ask these questions: 'What story do you think is being told? Where are the turning points? Do the act breaks relate to the specific story (the train)? Does the film bring a satisfying end to the story with which it began?'

'Red Ape: Saving the Orangutan':

To analyse the structure of a documentary, I watched Red Ape: Saving the Orangutan from BBC 2's Natural World. Straight away in the opening sequence, the train of the film is established as orangutans being under threat through the comments from contributors, sequence of an orangutan being rescued, and especially through the voiceover stating, 'This is the story of how orangutans are being pushed to the brink.'

Several stories are then told, but they always link back to the train and connect with each other, helping the main narrative progress.

Act one starts with a contributor discussing how close orangutans are to humans, as well as their relationship with the forest and the skills they need to survive here. This then goes on to show where the forests they live in are in the world using a map, highlighting how little habitat they already had, and showing that the number of orangutans are declining, meaning they are critically endangered and need to be saved. This acts as the inciting incident of the film, since it then goes on to show how a contributor got involved with helping to attempt to save orangutans by rescuing them from forests which are being destroyed, and then rehabilitating them in a centre before releasing them back into the wild. The contributor tells an anecdote about her rescuing an orangutan, then the audience are shown how much the centre has grown since this, as well as the latest arrivals, linking back to the opening sequence since these are the babies that were previously seen being rescued. By focusing on the centre, it is shown that some progress is being made in helping orangutans, but as the contributor states, it is not a cure for the long term problem.

The first act lasts for just over ten minutes, before the start of the second act. It has now been established that there is a long term problem and that orangutans need to be helped, establishing the rescue teams as key characters in the narrative.

The second act therefore opens with a complication, raising the stakes as deforestation is seen to have increased over history as technology has improved. This is the reason orangutans have to be rescued, since there is not enough food, water, or habitat for them. A sequence of a rescue then connects to this, and the challenges faced by rescue teams are covered, leading to the fact that most of the orangutans rescued are orphan babies. This takes the audience back to the centre, where the goals for the centre are then discussed, as well as showing the audience forest school, where baby orangutans learn how to survive since they are like human children. By discussing their likeness to human children, it is a natural progression from this when the mental abilities of the baby orangutans are then discussed, since they mourn as humans do when they have been affected by a tragedy. This shows the impact on orangutans because of deforestation, which leads into a section on impact, again showing the rescue and rehabilitation of a orangutan, but leading to the question of how did we get here? Palm oil is then provided as the answer to this question, so the history of how this came to be so in demand is covered, meaning that there was a rapid increase in deforestation. Predicted deforestation at this rapid rate is then covered, leading to the predicted rate of decline of orangutans and the importance of their rescue, as the audience are led to return to the centre. The babies from the beginning are again shown, and are starting rehabilitation, which is outlined as being going to forest school before graduating to release in a national park. This raises the stakes considerably, setting up the third act, since it is shown that national parks are biodiversity hotspots, and since orangutans need lots of space they act as an umbrella species and protect other species which are under threat.

Lasting almost 40 minutes, the second act is the longest, but shows why orangutans need to be fought for and how they have become endangered in the first place.

The third act immediately has more tension than the last two, as it opens with the fires in 2015 which destroyed significant amounts of forest, meaning more orangutans had to be rescued. Risks of the rescues are then highlighted, with an anecdote about one orangutan showing that the fall when they are sedated is the riskiest part. This shows that rescuing one orangutan takes the effort of a lot of people, but that caring for one is becoming more important as numbers decline more and more rapidly. Therefore, this tension leads to the end thoughts as contributors give their opinions on a possible solution, aiming to make palm oil production sustainable so that organisms such as orangutans are not put under threat to produce it. Ultimately, the documentary concludes that since humans dominate, they control the fate of other animals, summarising other points raised previously, such as the likeness of orangutans to humans, deforestation caused by humans having such a large effect on the animals in the forest, and fires being caused because of humans trying to clear land to produce the product as a second plan after excessive logging drained the other resources.

Overall, watching this documentary and analysing its structure helped me to see how to make one point progress to another so that they flow naturally. It also showed me how contributors and their stories can be combined to produce a central narrative, with points overlapping and even being returned to, until later being summarised at the end of the documentary.

Our film:

Watching this documentary helped to structure our own, applying this knowledge to breaking down the transcripts from the interviews.

At first, we broke down the key points each contributor talked about on index cards to break the transcripts down since they were quite long, and therefore it was hard to remember each point which was covered:

However, to create a structure out of these points, and begin using parts of the transcript to cut together clips, we then used some post-it notes since they were easier to move around as each only included one point:

So that we could stay focused on the main reason each contributor took up their sport, we also wrote these on separate post-it notes to refer to:

Even so, the points in this structure did not link together enough, so we found the narrative wasn't as simple or flowed as well as could do. Therefore, we established the train of our film, as well as the inciting incident, and what could be included in acts one, two, and three, in order to create a clearer structure, which had a beginning, middle, and end.

Since separating roller derby and skateboarding made the documentary seem like two different films, we also tried to intertwine each of the contributors' stories to tell one overall narrative about women breaking gender stereotypes in sport:

Nevertheless, we had begun to find that because we were only writing out the points we wanted, sometimes the structure was turning out differently when cut into a video. Therefore, we decided to make a paper edit, changing the structure of the film to start with Jasmine instead of Kayleigh as we always had previously, to see if this would further help intertwine the stories:

The problem we found with this was that it was hard to find links between the stories. To solve this, we separated out each contributor's points, and then ordered them into their own independent narratives, since this made it easier to find links and also gave each stories, and therefore the overall narrative, a much more natural progression.

Kayleigh's:

Rachael's:

Jasmine's:

From this, we were able to find links more effectively, and come up with a new structure for the sync:

We were then able to combine this with sequences which enhanced the points the contributors made, and made them clearer to the audience:

After receiving more feedback, we also decided to change the order so that Rachael begins, since the points that she makes explain what the film is about effectively so this makes it immediately clear to the audience, as well as adding some captions to establish the topic at the beginning, and help bridge the transition between skateboarding and roller derby. We also made the ending better by making it so that the narrative begins with more personal points and builds to bigger points such as why stereotypes should be broken, and advice the contributors would give other women who wanted to take up sports but may be afraid to:

References:

Curran Bernard, S. (2011) Documentary Storytelling : Making Stronger and More Dramatic Nonfiction Films. (3rd ed.) Oxon: Focal Press

Natural World, Red Ape: Saving the Orangutan (2018) [television programme online] BBC iPlayer. At: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0b2n9v0/natural-world-20182019-4-red-ape-saving-the-orangutan (Accessed on 13 May 2018)