A level research: Documentaries

In preparation for making my own 5 minute documentary segment for the A level media studies project i decided to watch a few nature documentaries and blog about what i've learned. As despite my love and support for the planets health and environmentalist initiatives i have not actually watched many nature documentaries before starting this project.

For the first documentary that i was going to watch i chose "Our Planet II" narrated by sir David Attenborough which can be found on Netflix.

The first things i noticed was that there was vary little unnecessary rambling in the narration (as in there were fewer micro factoids than i expected). With the focus primarily being the creation of a story around the activities and challenges certain animals face on the daily. A swarm of locusts became a grand migration of a species, a buffalo venturing away from its herd and being pounced on by lions was a cautionary tale on hubris, and two walrus's trying to find an ice slab to rest on became a gripping story about a mother trying to keep her child safe. The reason i mention this is that the viewer is much more likely to retain information if the documentary offers more than just raw information, and the world around us together with the creatures inhabiting it are depicted as more than just a statistic which gradually goes down.

The masterful narration, music and cinematography all come together and are all equally necessary for the documentary to achieve this goal.

Something that i would also like to add is that when the viewer is watching the documentary they are filled by a feeling which is best described as "Sublime". As in not a synonym for just something being "good". But more so a serene and at the same time frightening feeling of how grand the world is and how small we truly are in the face of it all. In essence the feeling i felt watching the documentary was much more in line with how the 18th century philosopher and writer Edmund Burke used the word "sublime" in his works.

In short i will aim to (in theory) recreate the same engagement, informativeness and sublime grandeur in my project as i saw in the documentary i viewed.