[Forgeties79]

I’m a little confused, I think pretty much all audiences know there is a degree of fiction to any of these works and that you have to take various work with different sized grains of salt.

Are you saying that no movies should be allowed to claim they are trying to tell a true story, and that documentaries aren’t neutral/accurate enough and are therefore invalid? I’m just trying to figure out the scope of your claim and implications here so I get that could be off base.

Might be simpler to ask: What would you consider a good documentary? What would you consider a movie that is based on a true story and does an accurate-enough job? What do consider or use as a metric when deciding these works are good or accurate?

[lotsofpulp]

>Are you saying that no movies should be allowed to claim they are trying to tell a true story,

No. Freedom of speech and all that, unless it was a libel/slander thing.

>and that documentaries aren’t neutral/accurate enough and are therefore invalid?

Sufficient documentaries have been sufficiently inaccurate such that it behooves me to consider them all fictional.

>What would you consider a good documentary? What would you consider a movie that is based on a true story and does an accurate-enough job? What do consider or use as a metric when deciding these works are good or accurate?

I don't know off the top of my head, I would have to do research. But that's the point, if I am doing research, I might as well read books/journals/websites/articles with source information.

>I think pretty much all audiences know there is a degree of fiction to any of these works and that you have to take various work with different sized grains of salt.

I don't know about that. For example, Carol Haskins received a large amount of hate and death threats from the way Tiger King was edited. And people like to "know" things, anything that confirms their biases or makes them feel like they are smarter, they are going to latch onto.

I think the rule of thumb should be videos should be assumed to be fictional unless rigorously vetted, or at least that is what serves my purpose for having the most accurate model of the events. The objective is not to educate the viewer, it is to entertain the viewer.

[Forgeties79]

You can’t name a single movie that meets your requirements? Not even one documentary that felt more or less “accurate”?

I guess I’ll ask this then: what would a documentary have to do to be considered accurate enough for you that it can be used to educate? I just don’t really know where the lines are for you it all feels rather vague. If we’re demanding objectivity and accuracy, then there needs to be some clear metric(s) otherwise no one can say they are or aren’t.

[lotsofpulp]

I guess what I mean is if education is the goal, then a written medium is far better than a video. Real life has too much nuance to be able to accurately re-create, plus the more expensive the production, the more it needs to earn a return incentivizing the entertainment aspect over the education aspect.

Obviously written works do not present more information, but they can provide only the known information (which I guess a documentary composed of the actual recordings and interviews of the events can provide). And obviously written stuff can also be fabricated and blah blah, but assuming all of that, I just presume the fidelity of a video re-creation of an event is less than that of a written one.

One example I just thought of that led me to this assumption of discounting all videos is the way Captain Phillips is portrayed. The recent movie Blackberry is also highly fictional.

https://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/blackberry/

I know these aren't documentaries per se, but they all require digging to get to the truth v fiction parts, so why bother digging? If I want to be entertained, I watch the video. If I want to be educated, I look up written sources I think might be credible.

[Forgeties79]

I don’t know how one can assume that the written word is somehow more reliable or accurate than a video. What difference does it make if you interview me and show me talking on camera vs. using the stuff you wrote down as text? One could even argue that it’s inferior in that regard, because you remove all tone and body language as well as put someone between me and the person presenting the information. And as you said you are just capable of editing and text as you are with video, so it doesn’t protect you from that sort of manipulation either.

I still don’t understand what the bar is or what you consider necessary for something to be deemed “accurate.” Writing as a medium has all of the same pitfalls that video does and then some. This feels very vibes-based.

What’s an example of a written text that you would say is accurate in a way that a documentary can’t be? Do you consider any media of any kind to be factual or accurate in any way? I’m just not sure how one can go about life considering all forms of media inherently deceptive to the point where nothing can be treated as anything more than mere entertainment.

[lotsofpulp]

>What difference does it make if you interview me and show me talking on camera vs. using the stuff you wrote down as text? One could even argue that it’s inferior in that regard, because you remove all tone and body language as well as put someone between me and the person presenting the information.

It isn't, which is why I specified:

>(which I guess a documentary composed of the actual recordings and interviews of the events can provide)

>I still don’t understand what the bar is or what you consider necessary for something to be deemed “accurate.”

The bar is lack of dramatization. I gave multitudes of examples of videos based on various real life happenings, but they don't do a good job representing actual happenings. The "based on" is strictly a marketing term, but no one should be under the impression they are getting any actual data from watching it, hence it is entertainment.

A documentary with various interviews, actual footage, blah blah is of course better, but many documentaries include dramatizations, and are edited to have "twists and turns" in the story to captivate the viewer. A documentary that sticks only to the known facts is probably pretty dry and boring (although I am sure they exist). There are myriad "true" crime documentaries (including podcasts) that leave out key details about the case because including them would make the story boring.

However, I am sure there are far more accurate documentaries, and I have heard this is one of them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_Zachary:_A_Letter_to_a_So...

But back to the point, broadly speaking, probability wise, if I sit down and some video media says it is "based on" or it is a "documentary", I would be wise to be skeptical, and I guess that goes for the written word these days too.

[Forgeties79]

> A documentary that sticks only to the known facts is probably pretty dry and boring (although I am sure they exist)

My point is that they don’t and can’t, objectivity is a myth. You and I (and everyone) are literally incapable of being truly objective. So the only conclusion i see is you don’t think any media is able to inform or educate. If you do, then you need an actual bar beyond “must be objective.”

“Dramatization” is just one tool some documentaries, not all, lean on and isn’t well defined. Are you talking about dramatic reenactments? Or introducing any drama of any kind? Isn’t drama sometimes just inherent to the subject?