Use of Ethos in documentary films is effective but dangerous.

• Main Author: Teng, Elaine YuLing.
• Other Authors: Brian Keith Bergen-Aurand
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Mass media::Broadcasting::Motion pictures and films::Documentary
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/38825
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an ongoing war that is intensely documented and featured in feature films and documentary films and the in order to analyse how spectators react differently to the documentary because of the intention of the documentarian, I will discuss the four fundamental tendencies of documentary that Michael Renov identifies in the article “Toward a Poetics of Documentary” published in his book, Theorising Documentary, which is : “to record, reveal, or preserve; to persuade or promote; to analyse or interrogate; to express” (21). Renov further explains that he does not “intend to suggest that the most meritorious work necessarily strikes an ideal balance among these tendencies or even integrates them in a particular way” and that he “hope(s) to show the constitutive character of each, the creative and rhetorical possibilities engendered by these several modalities” (Renov 21). It is the documentarians who determine how the documentary the structure of the documentary—what will be filmed, who to film, what to film, when to film and where to film so as to attain the final piece of art that they aspire to achieve in their vision. That is the initial vision that gives birth to the project. But the actual process is not as straight forward. The vision of the documentarian will frame the documentary and the message that it carries. However, there are other elements of the film making process that is in the control of the production crew. Elements like the filming equipment and technique, the editing equipment and technique, the subjects being filmed and the limitations imposed on the distribution of the documentaries, will all affect the way the spectators react and receive the documentaries.