Using Archive Footage in Documentaries
A powerful storytelling technique I love is a 'silent narrative' (is that a technical term..?) – or in other words, removing dialogue and just using visuals and music to express emotional meaning. This approach can be particularly effective in documentaries, where historical events are often portrayed through archive footage.
However, filmmakers often miss an opportunity to tell a more emotionally resonant story by using historical archive footage simply as b-roll, or a visual representation of something said in an interview. A more effective technique is to use archive footage to create scenes that visually represent an emotional theme. This is another version of that old storytelling mantra: show, don't tell.
Setting the Stage: Priming the Audience
Before delving into a wordless sequence or scene, it's crucial set the stage. The audience needs to be thinking of an idea or theme or in the right emotional frame of mind, so that there's a context for the wordless sequence. This can be achieved by your documentary subjects planting seeds of thought or emotion through dialogue or commentary, laying the groundwork for what's to come.
Crafting a Wordless Narrative
In crafting a wordless sequence, every frame serves a purpose. Carefully we can build a picture, piece by piece, gradually showing how war transformed the railways. This visual story guides the audience through the incremental steps that lead to large-scale conflict, hopefully giving them a deeper, more tangible connection to this history. The juxtaposition of imagery and music gives each frame emotional weight, culminating in a simple depiction of soldiers boarding trains, but an image that is now loaded with significance.
Embracing Ambiguity: The Power of the Unspoken
The strength of a wordless narrative lies in its ability to evoke complex emotions without explicit explanation. Rather than spoon-feeding information, leaving room for interpretation invites viewers to engage more deeply with the subject matter, fostering a richer understanding of the themes.
It's not enough to tell an audience about something and expect them to feel its full emotional weight, you have to take them on a journey. That can be difficult to do but it's powerful if you get it right.
We often don't understand something by approaching it directly, it can take an indirect approach to fully grasp a concept or emotion. A few documentary films that employ this technique masterfully and have been a big inspiration for me are Koyaanisqatsi and Love is All by Kim Longinotto
Leaving things unsaid is powerful. When we crystallise feelings into words often they sound cheap, like a greetings card. It's far better to let imagery and music do all the heavy lifting.
Elevating the Story
I can understand in factual filmmaking that it can feel like there is this need to tell people how things are, like "these are the facts" but, often, the emotional truth of something lies in the gray area between the facts. I think it's more powerful to present simple ideas and leave space for the audience to understand the complexity through how they feel. There's depth in ambiguity.
When incorporating archive footage or B-roll, filmmakers have an opportunity to transcend mere visual representation. By weaving together imagery and music, they can enrich the narrative, guiding the audience on an emotional journey, which hopefully, has a more profound impact.
Often, powerful storytelling lies not in the words spoken but in the silent spaces between — the place where emotions are felt rather than articulated. So, the next time you want to use archive footage in your documentary, remember the potency of the unspoken and the depth it can lend to your narrative.