Review a Doco

Take a look at the following documentaries. Choose a documentary that you like most or like least and write a review about it. After writing the review, please post your review under comments according to your selected documentary. An example of a documentary review can be found here.

Please use the worksheet here as a guide.





While it seems easy to write a documentary review, there are many difficulties involved. You have to keep your mind open, and view it with an open mind. Look at it as it is written, and not because you may not like the actor or director. Remember millions of people will take your opinion seriously and a documentary reviewer can make or break a documentary.

Task
1. Outline some basic information about the documentary:

• name of the documentary
• prominent stars of the documentary
• basic setting (time and place)
• type of documentary (Advocacy for social concerns, Biography, Career Profile, Community History, Research/Factual, “How To” etc.)

2. Write a plot summary. You'll want to tell the reader what the documentary is about without giving away the ending, or revealing any plot twists that would be enjoyable for the reader to discover while watching the documentary. In other words, avoid spoilers.

3. Discuss various aspects of the filmmaking. The important thing here is to be specific and give examples. If anything is bad, good, poor, awesome, or any other subjective adjective, keep asking yourself "why?" and "how?".

    * acting
    * direction
    * If you've seen other documentary by this same director, consider similarities/differences.
    * editing
    * costume design
    * set design
    * photography
    * background music

4. Compare this documentary to other documentaries. If it has similarities to another documentary, is this one better or worse, and why? You could also make recommendations based on other documenatries, e.g. "If you liked ABC and XYZ, you'll enjoy this documentary."

Adapted from original post here.