You are watching the television programme Who do you think you are?, in which a famous person traces their family background. They start by visiting an aged relative. You see the famous person in their car talking about what they expect to learn from this visit and why this is important to them. You next see the car pulling up to the house of the aged relative and the famous person getting out and going to the front door. Inside the house, you see the aged relative go the front door, open it, and say “What a surprise”.
It is not a surprise, of course. There is a cameraman in the house, probably supported by a producer, a lighting engineer and a sound engineer. The scene will have been carefully set up. The scenes outside the house and in the car (perhaps filmed on a different day) will also have been rehearsed and then edited. The whole scene, in other words, is a skilful fraud. But it is fraud we are used to in factual programmes just as much as in film and television drama. This is the ‘naturalistic’ model, or the pretence that we watch people behaving spontaneously in the complete absence of all the cameras and the teams of people that make the pictures and sound happen. We are so used to this fraud that we no longer see it as such. When we see a lone presenter walking across the moors or up a mountain, we believe she is alone on the hills. Yet we see pictures of her taken from a helicopter, or pictures of her struggling up to some peak taken by a cameraman waiting for her on that peak. We are led to believe the commentator has walked the whole distance by themselves and found their own accommodation or pitched their own tent. The true surprise occurs when a commentator on television does mention his cameraman or production crew.
The frauds can go further. Wildlife programmes intersperse shots of animals in the wild (usually taken by highly-skilled camera team after weeks of careful work) with pictures of similar animals in zoos. This is all to give the impression that when we see an animal such as a polar bear go into its lair in the wild, we are then seeing the same polar bear in its lair feeding its cubs even though these later shots are actually of a different polar bear filmed in a zoo. ‘Reality’ television programmes involve set piece arguments provoked by a presenter, all to give the impression that the performers before us present a shocking insight into the raw side of life. More shamefully, contests on children’s television programmes have been fixed to produce the most entertaining outcome.
This does not occur because the people who produce television are any more dishonest than the rest of us. Rather, they would probably justify these deceptions on the grounds that they help viewers comprehend an underlying truth (what family history tells us of the past, what a particular long walk is like, how polar bears feed their young, and so on). But they also do so to conform with the public’s expectations of television, derived in turn from films and other drama which, with very few exceptions, obey the ‘naturalistic’ model. This is so well-established that a whole genre of comic television programmes exists in which a presenter points out examples where the mechanics of film-making have accidentally been made evident (a visible sound boom or a shot of a camera crew in a mirror). These programmes are supposed to be funny because they show a breach of a sacrosanct social convention.
This is very different from drama on stage, in which it is more evident that we are watching actors portraying characters and following a script written for them. A good actor can make the audience forget this, provided the audience are engaged. Television, by contrast, requires less engagement by its audience and less suspension of disbelief. Indeed, the naturalistic model and the lack of apparent difference between factual and fictional programmes is a cause of morbid confusion for some television viewers, who send flowers when a character (not an actor) in a soap opera dies. Others have interpreted science fiction films and television programmes as the truth and truly believe that a race of intelligent reptiles have taken on the appearance of world leaders, or that the moon landings were an elaborate fake. For them, television (whatever they are watching) is the true reality, while their daily lives are but flickering images on the walls of the cave.
It is not a surprise, of course. There is a cameraman in the house, probably supported by a producer, a lighting engineer and a sound engineer. The scene will have been carefully set up. The scenes outside the house and in the car (perhaps filmed on a different day) will also have been rehearsed and then edited. The whole scene, in other words, is a skilful fraud. But it is fraud we are used to in factual programmes just as much as in film and television drama. This is the ‘naturalistic’ model, or the pretence that we watch people behaving spontaneously in the complete absence of all the cameras and the teams of people that make the pictures and sound happen. We are so used to this fraud that we no longer see it as such. When we see a lone presenter walking across the moors or up a mountain, we believe she is alone on the hills. Yet we see pictures of her taken from a helicopter, or pictures of her struggling up to some peak taken by a cameraman waiting for her on that peak. We are led to believe the commentator has walked the whole distance by themselves and found their own accommodation or pitched their own tent. The true surprise occurs when a commentator on television does mention his cameraman or production crew.
The frauds can go further. Wildlife programmes intersperse shots of animals in the wild (usually taken by highly-skilled camera team after weeks of careful work) with pictures of similar animals in zoos. This is all to give the impression that when we see an animal such as a polar bear go into its lair in the wild, we are then seeing the same polar bear in its lair feeding its cubs even though these later shots are actually of a different polar bear filmed in a zoo. ‘Reality’ television programmes involve set piece arguments provoked by a presenter, all to give the impression that the performers before us present a shocking insight into the raw side of life. More shamefully, contests on children’s television programmes have been fixed to produce the most entertaining outcome.
This does not occur because the people who produce television are any more dishonest than the rest of us. Rather, they would probably justify these deceptions on the grounds that they help viewers comprehend an underlying truth (what family history tells us of the past, what a particular long walk is like, how polar bears feed their young, and so on). But they also do so to conform with the public’s expectations of television, derived in turn from films and other drama which, with very few exceptions, obey the ‘naturalistic’ model. This is so well-established that a whole genre of comic television programmes exists in which a presenter points out examples where the mechanics of film-making have accidentally been made evident (a visible sound boom or a shot of a camera crew in a mirror). These programmes are supposed to be funny because they show a breach of a sacrosanct social convention.
This is very different from drama on stage, in which it is more evident that we are watching actors portraying characters and following a script written for them. A good actor can make the audience forget this, provided the audience are engaged. Television, by contrast, requires less engagement by its audience and less suspension of disbelief. Indeed, the naturalistic model and the lack of apparent difference between factual and fictional programmes is a cause of morbid confusion for some television viewers, who send flowers when a character (not an actor) in a soap opera dies. Others have interpreted science fiction films and television programmes as the truth and truly believe that a race of intelligent reptiles have taken on the appearance of world leaders, or that the moon landings were an elaborate fake. For them, television (whatever they are watching) is the true reality, while their daily lives are but flickering images on the walls of the cave.
And most "documentaries" are padded out to last 25 or 50 minutes and could easily be 5 or 10 minutes long. Incidentally, one of the first documentaries, NANOOK OF THE NORTH, was staged.
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