Documentary Lecture One: John Grierson and the Expositional Documentary

Expositional Methodology Voice-of-God Commentary Essay-like Presentation Refreshment of the Historical World Addresses Viewer Directly Uses Images to Counterpoint Commentary Emphasis placed on Rhetorical Continuity Or Evidential Editing Emphasizes the impression of objectivity and transpersonal certainty (a shared Unity), and supports the use of generalization. Ideologically, it frequently appeals to “Common Sense”

Grierson’s Proposed Themes Yes No Housing Schools Research Stations Modern Farming Methods People Problems Mountains and Glaciers Tree Ferns Sheep Mud Hot Water Trout Butter

“Core documentary on television, however entertaining it is also required to be, almost always works with a “serious” expositional (and frequently journalistic) purpose and, in Britain at least, this purpose has often been that of social inquiry set against a recognized (and visualized) context of economic inequality, social class difference and social change, together with the consequent “problems” thus produced.” -John Corner

“First principles. (1) We believe that the cinema’s capacity for getting around, for observing and selecting from life itself, can be exploited in a new and vital art form. The studio films largely ignore this possibility of opening up the screen on the real world. They photograph acted stories against artificial backgrounds. Documentary would photograph the living scene and the living story.” --John Grierson, 1932

(2) We believe that the original (or native) actor, and the original (or native) scene, are better guides to a screen interpretation of the modern world. They give cinema a greater fund of material. They give it power over a million and one images. They give it power of interpretation over more complex and astonishing happenings in the real world than the studio mind can conjure up or the studio mechanician recreate. John Grierson

(3) We believe that the materials and the stories thus taken from the raw can be finer (more real in the philosophic sense) than the acted article. Spontaneous gesture has a special value on the screen. Cinema has a sensational capacity for enhancing the movement which tradition has formed or time worn smooth. Its arbitrary rectangle specially reveals movement: it gives it maximum pattern in space and time.” John Grierson

Expositional Methodology Voice-of-God Commentary Essay-like Presentation Refreshment of the Historical World Addresses Viewer Directly Uses Images to Counterpoint Commentary Emphasis placed on Rhetorical Continuity Or Evidential Editing Emphasizes the impression of objectivity and transpersonal certainty (a shared Unity), and supports the use of generalization. Ideologically, it frequently appeals to “Common Sense”

Bill Nichols from ‘Representing Reality’ “The expository mode emphasizes the impression of objectivity and of well-substantiated judgment. This mode supports the impulse toward generalization handsomely since the voice-over commentary can readily extrapolate from the particular instances offered on the image track. Similarly it affords an economy of analysis, allowing points to be succinctly and emphatically, partly by eliminating reference to the process by which knowledge is produced, organized, and regulated so that it, too, is subject to the historical and ideological processes of which the film speaks.”

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