Meaning

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 2 discusses how the elements discussed in Chapter 1 create meaning, including through their varied recombination and juxtaposition. It shows how the choice of staging, lighting, and production design of interviews can convey powerful messages that influence how the audience views the testimony of the interviewee. By choosing uniform backgrounds (via building a set, green screen, or other means) a documentary can bring visual uniformity to its production and also create a specific tone. The chapter explains how most documentaries are dominated by words, with pictures offering only confirmatory meanings. Many examples are given of the dominance of words, and of the highly specific nature of the word/picture combinations chosen in many documentaries. It shows how documentaries use words in varied ways, including in order to prime the audience to arrive at a specific interpretation of the subsequent scene. Words may dominate even when narration is not used, because interview audio can function in the same way, and verité footage also often uses word logic to define meaning, even though it may seem utterly spontaneous and chaotic. In verité scenes cutaways may be harvested from elsewhere in the cut in order to insinuate certain apparent meanings when joined with words. The chapter contrasts the “closed meanings” created by many documentaries dominated by words with the “open meanings” of documentaries with much longer takes and a greater use of master shots.