Assessing Documentaries on Amazon Instant

May 11
10:51

2015

Jason Kassel, PhD

Jason Kassel, PhD

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Incredibly unappreciated are documentaries, the type of movie that gives us real information about the real world, informs us about what is going on out there and why we should take action against certain things. For some reason, although it is certainly the most real type of genre out there, a lot of people dislike documentaries. If you like documentaries, people always assume you are of the intellectual kind and that you drink fine champagne late at night while you celebrate the amazing amount of knowledge you have.

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Although us documentary lovers know this isn’t true,Assessing Documentaries on Amazon Instant Articles we do like to keep in touch with the world around us and know everything we possibly can about pretty much every subject there is. That is why we watch documentaries, but that is also why we have such a hard time choosing documentaries and realizing which ones are good and which ones are not. Our time is incredibly valuable, but so is information and a good documentary can really give us the type of information we love.

 

We need to ask ourselves, what makes a regular documentary, an amazing documentary? There is a huge number of factors that play along to answer this question, but possibly the most important one is that the filmmaker must remain impartial regarding the story so he won’t influence it in any way. We all know how words can be powerful, and in a documentary, they can change the whole perspective of things. Opposing the filmmaker, the people involved in the documentary should be the ones influencing and controlling the information represented in the documentary itself.

 

Although a documentary is made for the purpose of information and enlightenment, it shouldn’t completely satisfy the viewer in these terms. Don’t get me wrong, it should answer every possible question regarding its subject, even the ones the viewer never even wondered about, but it should also approach questions that are completely impossible for the documentary to answer, either because there is no answer, or because the answer is based on opinion or ethical matters. As such, the viewer should keep on thinking about the documentary after finishing it.

 

Another incredibly important thing is that a documentary should always have proven facts and every time it is considered relevant, it should quote and interview sources. As a matter of fact, a good documentary should contrast information coming from different sources, compare them and check the facts in order to inform the viewer. In these great documentaries, the camera tells the viewer who is really who and allows the viewer to take his own conclusions instead of jumping to them. After an amazing documentary, people are definitely smarter, they can’t cure cancer, but they certainly know a lot more about whatever the documentary was about.

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