Aims of Docudrama
Re-tell events from national or international histories or to Re-present the careers of national and international figures
In order to review or celebrate these people and events
Features
-Opening statements and captions make clear the factual basis of docudramas
Disclaimers state that some events are changed or telescoped, and some characters may be amalgamations(merged) or inventions
-Hybrid form that “uses the sequence of events from a real historical occurence or situation and the identities of the protaganists(characters) to underpin a film script intended to provoke debate”
-Usually follows a “cinematic narrative structure” and employs the standard naturalist/realist performance techniques of screen drama
-Fictional and factual modes are mixed on the assumption that the television audience can recongnize their modality, based on the audience’s familiarity with the television’s codes and conventions
Conventions already include the elements of hybridity between factual and fictional performance because of the necessities of documentary programme-making
-Misleading to present documentary as a kind of programme-making that represents an authentic reality in an unmediated way, perhaps contrasting it with the staged situations of docu-drama
The making of documentary already includes the likeli-hood if not necessity of manipulating the real to shoot it
After the shooting the procedures of editing often involve a level of manipulation
(Sequences shot at different times can be linked together to give the impression of continuous action and cutting between the sequence shot in different times give impression that it happened simultaneously)
-Docudramas has its primary and acknowledged focus of interest, to inform its audience and make events accessible
Televisions can function as a window of the world, most obviously in news, current affairs and documentary programming
Factual genres have a special claim to present the public world outside, giving access to that world for its audiences
Docu-dramas having both aspects of documentaries and dramas
Subset of Documentary: Expected to emphasize immediacy
Function of screen as a window, and representations of the public world outside domestic space
Attractions of Drama: Intersted in intimacy, character, psychology
Establishment of mirroring comparitive relationship between the viewer and people featuerd in the programmes
-One of the variants of docudrama mode is where a past hystorical event is analyzed in documentary mode
Including witness testimonies of actual people involved, with added fictionalized performance and visual effects
-Testimony and witnesses have become crucial to docudrama
Because the use of interviews with real people or fictional subjects alongside dramatized reconstruction
=> emphasizes the moments of crisis and transformation