Task 3: Historical context

An American Family (Craig Gilbert, USA, 1972) http://www.subcin.com/americanfamily.html

"AN AMERICAN FAMILY was television's first reality show, shot documentary style in 1971 and first aired in the United States on PBS in 1973. The show was twelve episodes long, edited down from about 300 hours of footage, and chronicled the experience of a nuclear family, the Loud family of Santa Barbara, California"

This is an american example of where the entertainment values of reality tv were mixed with the documentary style.

Police (Roger Graef, UK, 1982) http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/464502/

"Fly-on-the-wall documentary about the routine and life of the men and women of 'E' division of Thames Valley Police"

"Police was quintessential fly-on-the-wall fare. Favouring long takes over fast editing, and shorn of commentary, background music or interviews, the series offered instead the drama of real, unpredictable, life and challenged the fictional stereotypes that had dominated television police drama."

Reality TV can construct reality by showing alternatives and varied representations different to the repeated representations

"In episode three, 'A Complaint of Rape', a woman with a history of psychiatric treatment claims she has been raped by three strangers and is, in turn, bullied and cajoled by three male officers who dismiss her story out of hand ... As she is subjected to the most hostile questioning, the accusing officers fill the frame in penetrating close-ups and the viewer gains some sense of her double violation."

This example shows how the use of shots and editing have an emotional and shocking impact on its audiences, as the show "caused a public outcry and led to a change in the way police forces handled rape cases ... Police showed that the fly-on-the-wall doesn't just watch the world. It can change it too."

Sylvania Waters (BBC 1, 1993)

"highly selective and skillfully edited" page 209, staging the real

Titcut Follies (1967)

"Wiseman's cinema-verite masterpiece about the horrid conditions at a Massachusetts asylum for the criminally insane is very possibly the greatest documentary film of all time, and it is not the kind of film that you just sit back in your oversized bean bag chair to enjoy. Forget about
what youve seen in Hollywood films, this is the raw, hellish reality of living in a cement cell,
as indifferent and sadistic guards taunt and abuse the inmates. Watch in horror as a doctor
forcefeeds a patient through a nose-tube, while carelessly dropping cigarette ash into the mix.
Screaming, babbling maniacs galore... the lunatic is on the grass, indeed"

http://www.subcin.com/titicut.html