ABSTRACT
D uring the decades when television was developing fixed genres through corporatedepartments, it seemed possible to define the distinction between documentary anddrama. The latter employed actors to deliver scripted lines to a preordained narrative; the former used real people in the chaotic context of everyday life. Except that quite often those real people were asked to say specific things that helped clarify the storyline, one which was quite often predetermined. Some people still fondly preserve the presumption that true documentary can only be unmediated reality captured on camera and retailed with minimal post-production intervention. If that puritan definition were enforced, very few documentaries made could retain the label, maybe a few per cent of films so-called. Directors routinely ask people to do something again, from repeating what they have said to walking twice through the same door to allow shooting from a different angle. In the vast majority of cases, these basic filmic functions do not skew the intrinsic truth of what is being portrayed, but they do intrude the filmmaker’s brush into the picture, normally with the intention of making the storytelling better, more dramatic. In recent years, the genre boundaries have come crashing down and the distinctions make little sense. This chapter will suggest that they never did, and documentary film has always been in the drama business, while drama has drawn regularly and fruitfully from the documentary well.
