Two weekends ago, we participated in the 48 Hour Film Project in Los Angeles. On friday at 7pm we were given a genre, a character, a line of dialogue, and a prop, all to be used in a four to seven-minute short film we would turn in completed 48 hours later. We decided to make our short film in the style of a local news report (from a fictional news channel “K15”). We filmed on Saturday and we shot with 2 cameras at once.
This accomplished two things. The first is that we filmed at a faster speed, getting our coverage done at double the normal rate. The second, is that we were able to make our short film feel closer to a documentation of actual events, capturing one moment from multiple perspectives to create realism.
Of course, with Too Lemon at the helm, our short turned into a crude and hilarious mockumentary sketch about an unconventional home winery, but the filming style we used can also be seen in more serious films that blur together documentary and drama, in a style that is aptly called docudrama.
Utilizing lightweight handheld equipment, natural lighting, multiple cameras, and an observational perspective is also similar in many ways to the styles known as “cinéma-vérité” and/or “direct cinema.” I make the vague distinction between the two styles only because there are hundreds of articles dedicated to arguing about whether or not they’re the same thing.
French documentary filmmakers created cinéma-vérité at around the same time that North American documentary filmmakers created direct cinema. Since then both styles have influenced modern film. I’ll stick with cinéma-vérité, because it’s French and makes me sound pretentious.
Filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow utilized the cinéma-vérité style in her past three docudrama films: The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty, and in this year’s Detroit. Detroit depicts events from the 1967 riots in Detroit, Michigan, stemming from the racial tensions and police distrust that filled the city. Katheryn Bigelow filmed Detroit using up to four handheld cameras at one time. The weight, motion, and all-seeing nature of the multiple cameras puts the audience directly into the moment of the action. The result of this, is a film that feels closer to reality than fiction.
Bigelow uses cinéma-vérité to capture realism in a character interaction. The naturalistic quality of the dialogue is not snappy or stylish, but there is an unmistakable magnetism to the character interactions, the more intense, the more enthralling. The camera is a voyeur, a fly on the wall watching the intimidating drama unfold.
The cinéma-vérité style of Detroit (and Bigelow’s other docudramas) also leads to some possible criticisms. The first being that any moment of plot convenience or film-logic seems all the more out of place within the film’s realistic bounds. The far more common criticism is that of historical inaccuracy. Fictional retellings of historical events have the potential to define them, which is why it is understandable that scholars want them to be as accurate as possible. Nevertheless, Bigelow ends Detroit with a staunch disclaimer that the film has dramatized real events, based on witnesses and historical records.
With Detroit, Bigelow boils down tension to its most basic ingredients and gives audiences a raw moviegoing experience, one that could engage them with an event in history or repulse them with the depths of human cruelty.
-Cameron
Too Lemon 