Over the past month we have been inspired to reflect on the possibility of truth telling in documentary filmmaking. As a student filmmaker I never thought to seek out what truth really meant, but over the passing months I have come to realise how much truth isn't actually true, when it comes to documentary making. The knowledge I have learnt on this subject matter will play a major role over the rest of my career as I strive to make myself a better filmmaker. The 3 blogs I have chosen to tackle, challenged my understanding of; What truth actually is? How point of view effects the truth? and What can I do as a filmmaker to achieve the most truthful film? The first steps I took into understanding what truth really is, was to first seek to understand the word. Looking at the multiple different theory's of truth, I discovered that all truths relied upon two things:-
Truth is something that can only be discovered to be true in the future but 'real' truth can only exist in the present. Meaning, peoples minds change throughout their lives, making truth adaptable to the changes that happen in our environments over time. Its only once we are in the future when we've acquired more knowledge on the given subject, does it reveal itself to be the truth or a lie (within their present time). This follows on to the second point; that truth is solely based upon ones own understanding of the world we live in. How it's from your own experiences/views/understanding of the subject in question, that will portray what you believe as the truth. My own mind can also create fake truths that don't even exist but our mind tricks us into believing them to be real, causing even our mind and what we remember to be questioned. Using this information, it pointed me towards the idea that truth can only be captured in that moment; The smells, taste, sounds, feelings, scenario and what lead you to that moment, cannot at this present time be captured on film effectively enough to call it 'Truth'.
Using this, I focused my second blog to search deeper into the understanding of point of view in documentary filmmaking; how not only does the filmmakers own POV effect the outcome of the film but also the audiences own understanding of the subject plays a role. People are susceptible to being told lies and in visual storytelling, it's even harder to tell if what you're being shown is real or not compared with seeing it for yourself in reality. I've noticed that people who share a strong viewpoint towards a subject material within a film, will be more susceptible to fall for any lies or bent truths, if it reflects their own current way of thinking. For me, trying to discover what truth really is, has opened up my mind to the prospect that there is no 'whole' truth in documentary films. That a documentary film really is only a one sided story on a particular subject and it's only through gaining multiple POVs, that it will give us a better understanding of that truth. I believe that we will never achieve an absolute truth in our lifetime, but we may be able to capture some elements of visual truths and stories caught in that moment of time presently. Which leads me to my final blog: trying to discover what truths are told in documentary.
I found that one of 'truths' biggest attributes is honesty. I discovered that a lot of documentaries would actually bend or break truths in order to try and deliver a bigger underlining message that needed awareness. I found that there is a scale to truth telling in film in a form that the more honest the documentary film is with an audience the more truthful it became. The most truthful documentary someone could create would be the one remaining closest to a totally neutral/unbiased argument. Reality itself is built upon opposites, the 'two sides to every story' (Ying/Yang), and it's only once you combine truths from multiple sides in unison, can we create the closest attempt of a perfectly truthful film; to not feed an audience your version of the truth, but allow the audience to go away and draw up their own mind on what they want to believe as truth. The best and most truthful films are the one's that leave you with more questions than answers; real documentary is the 99.99% boring stuff that happens off camera in reality, while documentary 'filmmaking' is shaping the 0.01% into a story using only the best bits - which in reality, doesn't come close to truthful storytelling.
My conclusion is there is no such thing as an infinite truth. I believe as we evolve, we strive to understand and develop our understanding of what the truth really is. Thanks to technology (with a huge part being the emergence of the internet), the likes of the media and our governments are now struggling to hide the truth from us, with most people now no longer taking everything we watch/read for granted. As technology advances and we evolve ourselves as a race, I believe film will play a major role in shaping the code and conventions of truth in telling. One thing will never change however is our own individual viewpoints of the 'truth' and we will not always share the same truths with the rest of the world, but this is what makes us who we are. The more access we have to information, to seek our own knowledge and understanding on a subject, having the freedom to generate our own understanding/version of the truth is what truth really is.
Making it Knowledge + Time = Truth!
