Research into existing products - The Russian Revolution

The Russian Revolution is a historical documentary about the battle between the royal Romanovs and Lenin's Ulyanov family lead to the Russian Revolution which was fueled by the hanging of his brother due to terroristic acts he committed. This documentary was written and directed by Cal Seville and is available on the online streaming site Netflix.

The documentary is chronologically put together, picking out the important dates and reviewing their importance. Before these the transition between dates, the editor has included a graphic which flicks the digits of the date from present to the date in question. These graphic splits up the documentary allowing the audience to take in the information that has been given and in addition allows them to remember the key dates.

The documentary begins with archived footage of a church bell being destroyed and pictures of Jesus being burned. This symbolizes how Christianity was being persecuted during the Russian revolution. The director, Seville uses archived footage to give historical knowledge to the audience about the revolution. Accompanying the archived footage, there is a voice-over, commentating and narrating the story of the revolution. Furthermore, the authoritative voice-over persuades the viewers that the narrator has specialist knowledge on the subject. The whole documentary is made up of archived footage, pictures & paintings accompanied by a voice of God explaining the circumstances.

The documentary includes many interviews of authors that have written about the Soviet Union, Lenin & Stalin. The interviews with experts tells the audience that the information being presented has been researched and authenticated. Text accompanies the interview in the bottom left hand corner, illustrating to the viewers who the interviewee is and their occupation. This allows the audience to research the person in the clip if they wish and it allows them to know the person is trusted source.

In terms of editing, the editor has used many J-cuts where the sound of 2nd clip is heard whilst the 1st clip is playing. It allows the audience to get a feel and better understanding of the environment. Between each shot, the editor has gone for straight cuts instead of using effects to give a serious tone to the documentary.

The audio used in the clip is very classical, the instruments like the violin for the background music can be heard and this background music has a very serious tone throughout the documentary. The serious tone of music cements the idea that this documentary is very important. Moreover, the classical instruments used in the background would be very much like the ones used in the 1910s as Russia is very closely associated with classical music.

This documentary is in the mode of Bill Nichols' expository as features many of the characteristics devised into to that category. The documentary features a 'voice of God' throughout the documentary who explains the Russian Revolution. Furthermore, this documentary's purpose is to educate people about the Russian Revolution so that people can learn from other's mistakes.

By exploring the historical type of documentary, we decided that this type of documentary would be hard to obtain footage with our given resources, time and money. In addition, historical documentaries rely upon lots of archived footage and the specification only allows 20 seconds worth of archived footage therefore we would not be able to create an extract of a historical documentary.