Topic: The Documentary Film

ASSESSMENT TWO: The Documentary Form: Treatment and Analysis [2000w] This task is both creative and analytical in its orientation. You are to develop and submit a treatment for a ‘documentary’ feature film. The treatment functions as a blue-print; thus, you will not be required to produce a documentary! TREATMENT – 1000 words The treatment must use the following subheadings: • Introduction (250 words): The introduction will comprise an overview of your project. What is it you are ‘documenting’, ‘analyzing’, ‘exposing’, ‘arguing’, ‘satirizing’, etc. What is your film “about”? Note: This section should engage the reader’s attention. It should be clear, concise and economical. • Background and Significance (250 words): This section will offer a description and analysis of the aesthetic, cultural, political and ideological framework of your concept/object of inquiry. What are the historical, cultural, aesthetic foundations of the project? How do you locate your documentary within a wider context? What is the significance of your project? This section constitutes the 4‘why’ of your project – why are you doing this? Why is it important? • Method (400 words): What will you examine, observe, collate, represent? What form will the documentary take? How will you actually accomplish what you set out to do? How does your method accomplish the objectives set out in sections 1 and 2? • Conclusion (100 words): This critical section is a summation of the proposed outcomes of your documentary. NOTE: Your treatment cannot exceed 1200 words (excluding all cited material). You are permitted to include additional (and thus not included in your word count) relevant data in an appendix. CRITICAL ANALYSIS – 750 words • You are to use the material in the course (primary and secondary sources) to reflect on the processes undertaken in the development of the treatment. Draw on lecture material, seminar discussions and sources to present a rationale for the approach adopted. The analysis will support the concept and methodology of your treatment. Thus, the two texts, while separate documents, should be intimately connected. Your critical analysis should make close reference to the treatment and should draw on some of the broad and enduring questions that have accompanied the evolution of the documentary film. Reflect on the questions we have asked of this genre throughout the course. Revisit the foundational materials on the course set as primary and secondary sources. Your analysis should make reference to these sources as exemplary of the theoretical formation of the documentary film that has directly informed your construction of the treatment. How do you situate your treatment in the history and theoretical development of documentary film?