Factual documentary analysis

The factual documentary film that I decided to focus on was Virunga. It is about the national park rangers in Africa, risking their lives to save the endangered gorillas.

The film opens up to people crying at a burial. Right from the start you know it’s going to have an emotional and meaningful tone to the film. They then go through the history of Africa and the war using archive footage, this helps explain the history and gives that scene of the film a vintage feel. A lot of the film gave a sense of danger, they did this using hand held camera mid shots, making the shot look unstable. The film had a lot of aesthetically pleasing cinematic shots, but they still managed to promote the national park and the safety of the gorillas. They did this mainly through story telling and use of archive footage of the gorillas being hurt and in danger.

In the film they used quite a few extreme long shots, mainly of the national park. Extreme long shots are usually used “as an establishing shot at the beginning of a motion picture or at the start of a new sequence or scene” (Bowen et al. 2013). In this film they used to show the start of a new scene, however it also showed the enormity of the park and makes you feel very small in comparison as a viewer. When the gorillas are being saved and taken for help at the national park, they used close ups on the gorillas to show the frightened emotion from the torment they had previously been receiving, making you feel empathetic towards the gorillas.

Juxtaposition was something they used a lot when forming relationships between shots. One of the earliest scenes they do this in is when one of the rangers is talking about the war and there is a very dark tone, then it cuts straight to the next scene where the rangers are playing with the gorillas. They go from a negative tone straight to a positive tone. I think they did this to show the difference from the ranger’s life before the national park to what it’s like now and the joy that they get from the gorillas. Another scene they used juxtaposition well in is when there are shots of one of the rangers with a gun and it then cuts to shots of him teaching a child, they cut back and forth from these shots several times. I thought this was interesting as they are going from something really dangerous to something so innocent. It shows the different parts of their life and what they are willing to risk to save these gorillas.