I find that Orson Welles, being the jack of all trades that he is, took it upon himself to make the doc different from others, applying his film background into the mix. Many of the transitions between sequences/Orson Welles' spiels about art forgery, are disguised by clever cuts and illusionistic framing.
You can find the whole movie on Youtube, the links for all the parts will be posted at the end of the post. In this video, at 2:29, you will find a great example of the planning that was put into this doc. Everything before it, the intro piece, is also a good example of the cinematic planning Welles infused in his take on a documentary.
The TV documentary that I took a look at this week is a Discovery Channel special entitled, “Natural Born Dealers.” This documentary takes a look professional buyers/sellers. This episode followed Jeremiah Pasternak flowing through a swap meet and looking for “steals” on expensive/aged product.
Besides the fact of doc techniques used, I was really interested on our subjects knowledge of random pieces of knowledge about all types of product ie, Furniture, carnival vendors, maps, antique gadgets etc.
“Natural Born Dealers” utilizes all the essentials of a documentary: interview, b-roll, and show and tell footage. As Jeremiah commented on furniture that he found interesting, the show, “showed” the furniture, front and center. The show was based around the “day in the life” look, the camera op following Jeremiah the swap meet and interacting with the fellow sellers. All in all, the tv doc was, well, like any other TV doc I’ve seen in my lifetime. It did the job, nothing spectacular, nothing that sticks out, beside the odd family/company they got going on.
