The documentary horizon is a virtual terra incognita, studded with promise and peril for the resourceful analyst. And the stakes have never been higher. (Michael Renov, in Gaines and Renov 324)
In a television environment where potential audience ratings remain integral to any program's success (whether news or entertainment, commercial or public broadcaster), the boundaries of the documentary's form and practice have been undergoing significant shifts. Ten years since Renov made this statement, and ten years since the reality TV format really took hold of television schedules, the documentary's stake remain high. This essay discusses the “edutainment” format of historical reality TV from a production perspective, looking at one Australian case, the living-history series The Colony (2005).
In offering to provide not only entertainment but information and history education, some makers of historical reality TV claim the mark of documentary practice. According to the director of Australia's first living-history series, The Colony, the genre is “pure observational documentary with constructs” (Scheelings, rushes, emphasis added). The series producer of The Colony, asserts: “The living history method doesn't just tell history; it also records the experiences of those who relive it” (quoted in Gibbon 342). From the claims made by the makers of historical reality TV, in the series publicity and through the programs themselves, the audience is promised an interesting documentary-like investigation from which to better understand our past.
In considering this premise, it is relevant to ask questions about living-history production that are traditional to documentary film critique. How was the program made and by what principles did the professionals working within it operate? What has led me to take up the issue of production process over the more familiar analyses of program content is my practical involvement in The Colony series as a documentary filmmaker.
In 2004 I was employed by the Australian public broadcaster Special Broadcasting Service Independent (SBSi) Television to produce a behind-the-scenes documentary about the production of The Colony. During the six-month production period of The Making of The Colony documentary and The Colony living-history series, the anomaly presented by the different roles—”portraying a reality” and “creating the illusion of a reality”—came to a head. Complex ethical and philosophical issues confronted both endeavors, and the nature of these reflected a theme central to a long-standing debate surrounding documentary film: “How real is it?”
This essay tackles this fundamental documentary question of authenticity in relation to the Australian case of The Colony and The Making of The Colony. In offering an account of the production process of one historical reality TV series, I hope that some ray of light can be shed on the ever-hybridizing world of documentary and history program making as it is practiced in contemporary television.
Set in the period 1800-1813, The Colony was the result of three years of research and development by the Australian documentary production company Hilton Cordell Productions. Designed for public and educational broadcast, the six-part historical reality TV-style series was the first of its kind in Australia and an international coproduction financed by the Australian SBSi, the Irish Radio Telefis Eireann (RTE), and the United Kingdom History Channel. Hilton Cordell also received financing from state government through the New South Wales Film and Television Office and also, somewhat controversially, from the major supporting arm for national documentary production, the Film Finance Corporation (FFC). The support received from the FFC resulted in an outcry from within the Australian independent documentary sector (Meade), as eligibility for these funds specifically excluded reality TV projects. Despite The Colony's obvious link to reality TV, Hilton Cordell was able to maintain its claim that because of the educational merit of the living-history format, it rightly belonged to the documentary genre and it was consequently financed as such by the various supporting bodies. I refer to this FFC funding in more detail later in the essay.
During The Colony’s 2005 premiere on Australian television, an online chat forum was posted on the SBS Web site to facilitate daily discussion and promotion of the series. After the broadcast, a DVD set of the series and a companion book were marketed for educational use in the history classroom. In the foreword to the book, an academic historian involved in the series, Michael McKernan, sanctioned the series as a worthy exploration into what one could imagine the past to have been like (quoted in Gibbon 8).
Five volunteer families were chosen to participate in this historical social experiment: a family from England and another from Ireland to represent newly arrived 1800s free settlers; one white family from Australia to portray the first generation of established emancipated convicts; and two Aboriginal Australian families to exemplify the traditional owners of the area—the Koori Clan of New South Wales. In addition, single men and women from around Australia volunteered to take on the roles of convicts, providing the three white settler families with two indentured slave laborers each. From two thousand hopeful applicants, thirty-three participants were selected to take part. The contract the volunteers entered into with Hilton Cordell required them to join The Colony in the “spirit and intent” of the early settlement, to “relive” this period of Australian history for four months (Scheelings, film). This time was later reduced to three months, as it became obvious to Hilton Cordell that another month was unnecessary for the six-episode television series. After firsthand experience of living-history deprivation, the volunteers were happy to comply with the reduced sentence.
The idea for a documentary film showing the making of a living-history television series was initiated by Hilton Cordell, which had wanted the film to be a promotion of its series, known in the industry as an electronic press kit (EPK). The company pitched this documentary along with the series, intending to produce the film itself until budget limitations made it untenable. Keen for a behind-the-scenes film to go ahead, SBSi Television, in agreement with Hilton Cordell, took on the responsibility for The Making of The Colony by commissioning it as an in-house production. This new contractual agreement between Hilton Cordell and the public broadcaster stated that the documentary's crew was to be granted full access to film all aspects of The Colony's production, and SBSi was to be the final arbiter and copyright owner of the completed film.
The major difference that this revised agreement and consequent shift in ownership created for the behind-the-scenes film was the form that the documentary would take. Unlike Hilton Cordell, SBSi was not interested in an EPK for The Colony; rather, the broadcaster wanted a documentary in the truer sense of the word—a nonfiction film portraying what it was really like, the ups and the downs in making a living-history series. This was the behind-the-scenes documentary that SBSi commissioned, that I was employed to produce, and in which Hilton Cordell agreed to participate.
When I began work on the project, Hilton Cordell was already two months into preproduction for The Colony. My role was to document the remaining six months of the endeavor, which consisted of three more months of planning and preparation, operating out of Hilton Cordell's Sydney-based office, and three months in production on an isolated plot of land along the Colo River in the Hawkesbury region of New South Wales.
The documentary was to portray Hilton Cordell's production journey, based on observation and interviews; the direction of the film's narrative was decided in collaboration with the SBSi commissioning editor and executive producer, with whom I consulted regularly. SBSi agreed that Hilton Cordell was entitled to use footage from The Making of The Colony rushes as well as the completed film for its series, including postbroadcast use in its DVD release. The documentary could also use both footage and music from The Colony series. Hilton Cordell was permitted to sell The Making of The Colony documentary to other broadcasters (namely, RTE and the U.K. History Channel) as the seventh episode in its series and was able to retain any profit gained from such a sale.
The Colony premiered in Australia on Australia Day (January 26) 2005, and The Making of the Colony was to follow six weeks later, as the final episode of the series.
Although there is a strong behind-the-scenes documentary tradition revealing the machinations involved in fiction filmmaking,1 no such established film subgenre exists following the process behind television production. This gap has been filled with fictional, often satirical portrayals of television practice.2 Thus, when I was first asked to produce The Making of The Colony, I believed it was a project that would present substance and relevance through its potential to offer a documentary film account not just of television practice but of the most recent and all-encompassing phenomenon on television: reality TV.
Though historical reality TV has obviously sprouted from reality TV roots, many of its makers have tended to disassociate it from the controversially “no-brow” genre, epitomized by the likes of Big Brother and Survivor. For instance, on the Web site of an American Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) series, Colonial House (2004), the series producer invites the public to explore the online publicity to “find out why this is not ‘reality’ TV” (Colonial House).3 Similarly distancing the reality TV format, the director of a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) “extreme history” series, The Ship (2002), stated the “deeper purpose” of the series, as recounted by the Australian historian involved in the program, Iain McCalman: “[The director informed me that] ours would be a hybrid genre, balancing serious historical inquiry with the contingent psychological and social dramas of an experiential retracing. … The words ‘reality TV’ were noticeably absent from his [the director's] enthusiastic blueprint” (McCalman 478). Other program makers have distanced themselves from reality TV by aligning their work more closely with that of documentary practice. The director and coproducer of The Colony claim it is “observational documentary” (Scheelings, film), whereas the series producer furthers the documentary assertions by referring to the educational merit of the format, saying: “[The Colony] aims to explode myths and illuminate the historical truth. … As factual filmmakers we are dedicated to illustrating the historical accuracy of the time” (Australian Television Archive).
As I mentioned earlier, loud protest arose from within the independent film community in Australia regarding the limited government funds allocated for documentary filmmaking being given to what was essentially viewed as a reality TV series. These complaints were met with the counterclaim by the producers of The Colony that “three years of research” with a “serious intent”4 to “illuminate the historical truth of life in Australia's early colonial days” was proof enough that their series was a legitimate history documentary series (Hilton Cordell Productions quoted in Meade). Though few scholars would consider this a documentary in the traditional sense of the term, within the television industry a “serious intent” toward “historical truth” appears to have given rise to the new history documentary hybrid—”living history,” “extreme history,” “hands-on history.” Call it what they will, the claims are the same and the aim is for the product to be accepted as both a legitimate historical inquiry and one aligned with the tradition and practice of the documentary. The historian McCalman recounts the confident guarantee made by The Ship's director: “As participants in one of the most expensive BBC historical productions of recent times, we would, the director assured me, have an opportunity to revolutionize the practice and pedagogy of history” (477).
Without exception, from the assertions made by the makers of historical reality TV and from the claims made in the programs themselves, the format promises to be an interesting if not invigorating investigation into the past, while offering a better understanding of our condition in the present. As the series producer of The Colony stated, “We don't have much Australian history on television, especially of this period, so to bring Australian history to a wide audience was always the dream behind this thrilling project” (Scheelings, film). An alternative view to living history as pedagogy was expressed by one wearied television reviewer when The Colony was broadcast; she described the proliferation of reality TV as having “erupted, throwing up a cloud of dust so great no light can penetrate,” inevitably having an effect on public broadcasting, where “the non-commercials aim to add class using history” (Cunningham).
Though it is a bold and, some argue, contentious move for government funding bodies and public broadcasters to commission reality-style shows such as The Colony as a documentary series, it is not altogether unprecedented. As public broadcasters look more and more to quantitative indicators to measure success, the content and quality of programs are increasingly judged according to their accessibility and potential for popularity with a mass audience (Hill, Kilborn and Izod, Nichols). What cannot be so quickly transformed by the desire for high ratings, however, is the documentary tradition.
Envisioned and defined as “the creative treatment of actuality” by the pioneer of the documentary film movement, John Grierson (13), this film form was to represent reality in the public service of edifying society. Within this premise the cause of the everyday person was taken up, as one early documentarist and cinematographer, John Grierson's sister Ruby Grierson, famously demonstrated in Housing Problems (1935) when she took the cumbersome film and sound equipment to the residence of her film subjects living in substandard housing conditions and instructed them to “tell the bastards what it's like living in slums!” This kind of consciousness applied to filmmaking brought to the screen a realization about real life, and along with it an ethical commitment to participants and audiences alike, that had not previously been accomplished through the cinema.
Individual personal purposes or motivations aside, most documentarists acknowledge that they are united by this undeniable and fundamental common heritage, founded in a strong social movement. So, whatever the forces dictating documentary production at any given time, it is according to the documentary tradition and not purely the demands of the day that the “community of practitioners” (Nichols 15) advances and negotiates the development of the genre. The members of this community do so in discussion with one another, both directly and indirectly, and through their own films (Kilborn and Izod 171-172; Nichols 15). This open forum of debate and discussion among practitioners is an integral component of the documentary film movement, and ongoing critical peer review is central to the healthy development of the form.
As the contemporary documentary movement evolves in a globally consumer-driven television environment, however, the founding idea and raison d'etre of the documentary film is in peril of becoming sidelined by a perceived necessity to be a marketable commodity. In the desire to make a successful television product, or “great TV,” what is increasingly becoming less essential among the “community of practitioners” is the integrity of the genre and the inherent professional protocols that come with that craft. As the Canadian filmmaker Geoff Bowie comments in the narration to his documentary on Peter Watkins,5 “There was a time when the documentary was about seizing a reality and a commitment to social change.” In detailing the integrity that characterizes Watkins's work, and the exclusion from television he experienced as a result, Bowie describes the current documentary movement as he sees it: “Filmmakers mutate as the suppliers of products and brands” as they strive to produce marketable documentary merchandise. With a new impetus to meet the needs of television executives, the traditional roles of the documentary to address the needs of society and to work in the public's service are in danger of being marginalized. As a result, the “community of practitioners” could be accused of losing a sense of the documentary purpose, where its members are uniting not over a shared social conscience, but over a shared desire to sell their commercially designed products; this is ultimately at the expense of documentary participants, whose personal experiences are, in essence, the commodity being sold. In adopting such an allegiance to commercial practices, documentarists inevitably will be inclined to forgo the original purpose of the form and in so doing change the practice and the nature of the genre itself. In discarding the traditional imperatives of the craft, as Bowie comments on this contemporary film movement, the fallout is that “rather than revealing reality, the documentary is covering it over.”
The priority for The Colony was to make history accessible and entertaining for a mass audience while maintaining the premise that it was not reality TV but a seriously intentioned history documentary series, as it had been pitched and commissioned. The priority for The Making of The Colony was not to promote the series, but rather to give an accurate behind-the-scenes account of living-history television in production. Despite these intentions, it became apparent early on that both productions faced significant obstacles that threatened the likelihood that they would achieve their respective objectives. Making a serious history program by following a reality TV format creates its own complications; and providing a genuine account of this production process for the behind-the-scenes documentary was not without its own particular challenges.
Any representation of history is going to be somewhat ironical, and it was inevitable that The Making of The Colony would end up being the ironical eye of living-history production, showing the distance between the history as it was created, which involved illusion, and the production as it was executed, which also involved illusion. The problem that my role presented for the series producer and director of The Colony was that they wanted the challenges inherent in living history to remain hidden from the audience. Although the documentarist assumes the presentation of reality to be the goal, this was not Hilton Cordell's aim for The Colony. And though other reality TV programs typically make known the construction and the artifice that exist as part of the television process, The Colony's series producer and director paradoxically believed that their higher-brow living-history, social experiment documentary (and “not Big Brother in historical costumes”) series would be discredited if they were to be up-front about a lot of the illusions that existed (Scheelings, rushes).
The aim of the series, as stated by its series producer, was “to make history come alive” (Scheelings, film), and showing how this was done was not part of that intention. In fact, it was believed that revealing the process behind the production would be in direct opposition to what the series was trying to accomplish. The director felt that if The Making of The Colony portrayed a different version of events from those The Colony showed, the integrity of scenes portrayed in his living-history series would be undermined. “People don't want to know information, they just want the drama,” the director informed me; this was his justification for censorship and for prohibiting filming of specific scenes for the documentary. It was important to Hilton Cordell, which wanted The Colony to be accepted as a documentary series, that my documentary account did not conflict with its own. This was obviously an impossible requirement, however; as our roles were very different, the depiction of events would also differ.
For example, The Colony begins energetically with dramatic, traditional Celtic-style music over magnificent aerial shots of a thirty-three-meter brigantine traversing the open seas. Closer shots present the time-traveling participants in period dress, and the iconic Australian actor Jack Thompson's voice-of-god narration begins: “Two centuries ago the British Empire pulled off a deed of mythic stature. It planted the seed of a new civilization on the edge of an invisible and fantastic land, Australia, eight months’ hard sailing from home.” The audience is then introduced to those who will “travel back in time to relive the birth of the Australian colony” (The Colony). Over sweeping aerial shots of the land they will inhabit, viewers are further informed: “Here in this isolated valley, they must plant crops, raise livestock and build houses. For four months, they'll face hardship, history and each other in the colony of 1800.” This beginning of what promises to be a fascinating journey follows the participants as they row down the picturesque river in longboats to disembark finally on the land that will be their remote, historically reconstructed world. The narration continues, “Our colonists are to be given their stores and enter four months of total isolation. By the end, we'll know which of our families and their convicts are tough enough to have cut it on the new frontier.” The participants are met by the historian McKernan, who has been appointed three roles in the production: onscreen historical authority, “riverboat trader,” and supplier of the colonists’ rations, or “government stores.” In this opening scene he assigns the families their convict labor before departing, promising to return in ten days with more government stores. The participants then continue on their journey to “the past,” walking the one-kilometer (two-thirds of a mile) stretch lined with native melaleuca trees, carrying their 1800s rations and belongings into the prepared valley that will be their settlement. Captivating images of the historically costumed group amid the native Australian bush are accompanied by light violin and harmonica playing in traditional Celtic style: a beautiful scene that is soothingly mythical, awe-inspiring, and picture-perfect.
In filming the behind-the-scenes activity for The Making of The Colony, I needed to document the actualities of that production day. This arrival scene was the biggest event on The Colony’s calendar, and the logistics were extensive, with helicopter shots, boat-to-boat shots, the transfer from sea to river, and the participants arriving on the land for the first time. Hilton Cordell's planning for the arrival scene had centered on the crucial two-day sea voyage and the river passage. Once these sequences had been filmed, the participants safely transported to the land, there was no plan in place for the filming of the next sequence: the newly arrived colonists entering their settlement for the first time. This was the first time on set for some of the freelance crew, and they had not been briefed on the best position for filming. While this was being negotiated, the colonists joined the production crew for a modern-day packed lunch of assorted sandwiches, chocolate biscuits, and fruit juice. The director felt that I should not film this, as he believed it would disappoint the audience's expectations of living history to know the participants were given a twenty-first-century meal upon their arrival.
After lunch the colonists were required to wait while the logistics for the film crew were organized. The director continued to express his reticence about my filming this next activity, this time because he thought that an audience would be upset to find out that there had been production delays before the participants could enter their historical settlement. Showing the production process, he felt, would “destroy the magic” for a television audience (Scheelings, film). The production designer was also showing signs of anxiety, but for very different reasons. As instructed by the director, he had prepared the chests full of period items for the families’ four-month sojourn and, knowing the weight of the load, was concerned for the participants’ safety during this arrival scene: “I just can't watch them carrying all this stuff. It's so heavy! They've got to carry it all the way up the valley, the poor buggers. It's distressing!” (Scheelings, film). Meanwhile, as the camera crews found their positions, some needing to climb up the valley's steep ridges with their heavy equipment, the director explained to the series producer how he viewed this next scene: “To me, it's just a beautiful mood sequence with music, you know, with great shots and introducing the convicts over the close-ups” (Scheelings, film). While the director conveyed his vision, he did not notice that the colonists had begun walking toward the valley. The first assistant director caught his attention: “Um, … should we, we're not ready for this yet are we?” The director, looking up from his imaginings, confirmed, “Umm … no.” The first assistant director then ran toward the colonists, arms flailing above her head as one does when warning of imminent danger: “Everybody! Everybody! Just stop there for a minute, please! We're not quite ready for you yet! We want to catch this wonderful moment on camera!” (Scheelings, film).
In an interview later, the first assistant director described her role at that time: “We don't want to spoil the illusion of a reality for the participants, but we have to get cameras in place to be able to get the shots” (Scheelings, film; emphasis added). Once the first assistant director had caught up to the colonists, she gave them a crash course in the rules of making television, and she explained the route that they should take once the cameras were ready. In case they were confused about where to go, she reassured them, “I'll be in the bushes going, ‘That way! That way!’ “After some hours being instructed when to stop, when to start, what to carry and where, and the route that should be taken, the colonists finally made it to their historical microcosm settlement with all their 1800s belongings.
These weary travelers, after arriving on land at lunchtime, the English and Irish families having begun their living-history experience with a rough sea voyage two days earlier, had a couple of hours in which to orient themselves to their new environment before nightfall. The production crew needed to get the remaining shots required for the day while there was still light, so, a little bewildered and unsure of what was expected of them next, the participants tentatively explored their new surroundings as the director instructed them. With cameras at the ready to capture their every response, the participants were directed to inspect the “abandoned” slab hut, a replica of a settler dwelling, which the new arrivals obediently entered. Looking around, showing polite consideration as if in someone else's home, they admired without touching anything, frustrating the director, who began gesticulating with furious conductor-like movements for them to get more involved: “Pick things up!” “Look inside!” “Shake it!” “Open it!”
Unaware of the effect that fatigue and the production demands had had on the participants thus far—by this stage, it seemed as though they were taking care not to do anything wrong—the director perceived their reticence as a lack of initiative or gumption. With his vision for certain television scenes unfulfilled, he aired his exasperation: “They think that they have to ask permission before they can do anything! They have it in their heads that they have to be told what to do for some bizarre reason!” (Scheelings, rushes). Needless to say, in reality there was no violin or harmonica playing, and the atmosphere was somewhat less serene than that portrayed in The Colony. Some of these behind-the-scenes events from that day appear in The Making of The Colony. It is not damning of Hilton Cordell but rather offers an accurate account, showing the kind of stress that a production like this puts on those in charge and how this stress is managed. I suggest it would not be an unfamiliar scene to anyone who has worked in the television industry.
The Colony’s director, however, expressed his conviction regarding what The Making of The Colony was documenting: “If an audience knows what goes on behind the scenes, they will hate me and they will hate SBS because they will feel gypped” (Scheelings, rushes). Interestingly, he was not referring to anything I had filmed that could rightly provoke criticism; rather, the impetus behind this statement was the repercussions he believed would result from revealing the little everyday artifices involved in television production and historical re-creation. It was already a highly contentious issue that The Making of The Colony would show some of the logistics behind television production, but what was regarded as almost insupportable was its potential revelation that the series incorporated other intrusions from modern life.
For example, cutthroat or straight razors were unanimously pronounced unsafe for the participants to shave with and, as the director wanted the men to remain clean-shaven, modern razors were distributed. The director felt it would “destroy the magic” for an audience to know of the participants’ historical infidelities. In a similar vein, one of the women's long skirts had been set ablaze by an open-flame oil lantern, which led to a request for battery-operated torches, a request agreed to by the production company. Again, not seeing this as part of the investigation being made into living history, the director felt it would anger the audience to know of the twenty-first-century exchanges, and he felt strongly that neither The Colony nor The Making of The Colony should reveal the switch. I was also not permitted to film the Koori Clan being given fish by the production company because Hilton Cordell wanted to portray the Kooris as having been fishing at the river. If I showed something different, the company felt the integrity of its series would be threatened. Because of the frozen appearance of the fish, the SBSi commissioning editor advised Hilton Cordell during editing to be up-front about such constructions in The Colony, advice that the makers chose not to take.
Another twenty-first-century intrusion into the historical reenactment was a modern-day renovation that, though gratefully received by the colonists, was a feature queried by the SBSi commissioning editor on his visit to the set during The Colony’s preproduction:
SBS [laughing, looking over at director]: What's the story with the dunnies?
DIRECTOR: The dunnies?
SBSI COMMISSIONING EDITOR: In particular the throne!
DIRECTOR: We have a contract with the owner that we weren't allowed to dig long drops because supposedly there's a high water table and he's done all the calculations on how much thirty people would shit in four months and has insisted on organic toilets which has cost us $15,000. And there they are!
SBSI C.E.: And what about the throne itself [laughter]—the twenty-first-century throne [laughter]?
DIRECTOR: I don't know. That's just what they came with and we haven't thought further to replacing that.
SBSI C.E.: I would have thought you'd have the old wooden seat or you know the old bench with the slat.… They're going to have this massive culture shock when they come out of the slab hut and walk into the dunny [laughter]! (Scheelings, rushes)
My role in revealing the everyday realities involved in the historical illusion that was being created in The Colony was perceived as an ongoing and contentious problem for Hilton Cordell. Requests to turn my camera off and attempts to stop the filming process were so frequent during the course of making the documentary that the footage captured of such access denials could fill a television program in and of itself. Hilton Cordell's fears that the documentary would “destroy the magic” being created by revealing the illusions that were inevitably present was ultimately an intractable concern. While The Making of The Colony condemns neither the living-history production nor the production company Hilton Cordell, it does show a balanced view of the obstacles that such a venture presents, and it raises some pertinent ethical and philosophical questions inherent in both reality TV and documentary practice. The most prominent issue to arise was the relationship between filmmaker and film participant.
In a self-reflexive way, The Making of The Colony documents the resistance made by some of the film's subjects (the director and producers of The Colony) to being filmed. For example, a few weeks into production, the series producer called a meeting with the SBSi commissioning editor to discuss The Making of The Colony, to which he wanted to call an end. I was permitted to film the meeting, which would determine the future of the documentary. Below is a snippet from that discussion:
SERIES PRODUCER: We've invested a lot of time and money and energy [in making The Colony series], and the concern is that The Making Of will destroy all of that, destroy the magic that's been created.
SBSI C.E.: Yeah …?
SP: I mean, we're making magic out there and … [the director's] … main concern is that it will be destroyed for them, for an audience, to see what went into making it.
SBSI C.E.: So what's the problem specifically?
SP: Well … [the director's] not enjoying it basically.
SBSI C.E.: Well that's not her job to make him enjoy that, that's not the job of a documentary filmmaker.
SP: No I know that, but he can always say he doesn't want to be a part of it anymore.
SBSI C.E.: Well to a point. He knows there's a contract to do The Making Of as well.
SP: Yeah, well okay. Well, we just want to make sure that SBS will not put something to air that will undermine their investment and commitment to this series. (Scheelings, film)
By including this conflict as part of the narrative, The Making of The Colony reflects on the fine line between intimacy and exposure, revelation and exploitation, and allows the viewer to consider these ethical dilemmas, which are inherent in any documentary process, even more so when the film participant does not want to be part of the film anymore. The documentary goes on to explore the participant-filmmaker relationship and the balance of power as it existed within the living-history production. Here the film participants are not competing for a prize, as in most other reality TV shows, and they are also not afforded the capacity to live their own lives as documentary film participants. The coproducer of The Colony explained the level of control that the production company had in every detail of the participants’ constructed world: “They call us ‘the company’ and we are the government to them in many ways” (Scheelings, film).
Though these time travelers were expected to uphold the “spirit and intent” of the show by adopting the illusion that they were living in the early 1800s as free settlers on their own land, when they did assume this persona they encountered one of the ironies of their position. As the director of photography stated, “We had to tell people, ‘No, this isn't really your farm, it belongs to someone else. This is actually a TV show, and we're here to film you going through this experience, so you can't really tell us to ‘fuck off.’ “Dissatisfied with the lack of self-determination within this small and inescapable confine, some participants on The Colony began to question the living-history process and the role they were expected to play in it. One participant in particular did not like what he perceived to be an aggressive filming approach taken by the director, and this meant ongoing clashes between the two. It was a serious enough problem, in the director's opinion, to warrant having this participant and his family removed from the show, despite their being halfway through the production. The international funding arrangements meant removing one family was not an option. To resolve the issue, the series producer came on location to advise all the participants of the living-history obligation to which they had signed on: “We're here, and you, because this is a TV show ultimately; TV stations are paying all of our bills. And the ‘spirit and intent’ side of it is that you've agreed to let us film you going through this experience—that's why we're all here. So it is not kosher basically for you to say: ‘We don't want you to film’ “(Scheelings, film).
The participants agreed that this was “fair enough,” and had no objection to this original agreement, but one participant wanted to clarify the extent to which access was a matter of course and when privacy might be afforded in an extenuating circumstance, giving the following example:
Participant: People were upset here and the cameras started following them, which made them more upset and then followed them even more, so is that part of it? You tell me it is.
Director: We don't instigate [participant's name]. If something is happening, it's happening. We are making a TV program here!
The second unit director on The Colony reflected on this issue, of allowing your film participant privacy versus the need to show things as they are, by describing the biggest obstacle experienced in both The Colony production and The Making of The Colony documentary:
The great problems we've got on The Colony and that [the director] is particularly sensitive about as we all are, and rightly so, is that [one family] are trying to set an agenda of what's on camera and what's off camera and obviously that's completely against the “spirit and intent” of The Colony for what they signed up to allow us to film—which is everything and anything that they're doing. And it has been quite clear and obvious to us that The Making Of crew are supposed to have been granted total access to the making of The Colony, but he [the director] is also trying to, you know, create the agenda of what you can and can't film in terms of the negative and positive aspects. So we had a good laugh at the fact that what's happening to him as a director is also happening to him as talent, and that irony has also been noticed. It's quite amusing. (Scheelings, film)
Though determined to show the moments of triumph and failure of the time-traveling participants in their attempts to relive history, the producers and director of The Colony did not have the same conviction with regard to their own journey into living history. In The Making of The Colony, Hilton Cordell wanted a one-sided portrayal of themselves, to show all the high points of their production with no challenges along the way. As I mentioned earlier, an EPK for the series was not the film SBSi had commissioned, but rather a more honest, behind-the-scenes account of The Colony’s production, a documentary in the traditional understanding of the genre. This distinction ultimately resulted in Hilton Cordell's insisting the film be suppressed.
While SBSi did not agree with the rationale or the need for suppression, believing the documentary to be a “balanced” and “compelling” account, it nevertheless appeased the fears of Hilton Cordell by choosing not to exercise its contractual rights, agreeing not to screen The Making of The Colony as the final episode. Not satisfied, Hilton Cordell wanted the documentary suppressed indefinitely.
The SBS Web site forum devoted to the series was inundated with discussions from The Colony cast and crew when it was revealed that The Making of The Colony would not be aired. Over a few days the exchange became an online event to the extent that it was considered necessary to erase the discussion history and block contributors from logging back onto the public forum. The message was clear: it was not a topic open to public discussion. Hilton Cordell went on to obtain the master tapes from The Making of The Colony production, with which it would construct its own behind-the-scenes version for DVD release.
Another matter of note is that some of the participants in The Colony who were unhappy with how they were portrayed by Hilton Cordell tried to exert control over the screening of the series. Taking legal action, they requested the series be either reedited or suppressed from broadcast. The Colony participants were unsuccessful, and the series screened as scheduled. As is usual in participant-filmmaker balance-of-power relations, once the personal release contract is agreed to by the film participant, he or she signs away all future rights to veto the film's public screening. That Hilton Cordell was able to claim for itself these rights that its own film participants were denied is an exceptional case. The suppression of the in-house, publicly funded documentary, The Making of The Colony, also indicates the extraordinary influence that one company can have on a public broadcaster, which raises questions about independence in the public broadcasting sector.
Documentary film remains one of the most effective ways to enhance understanding on a mass level. For this reason, if for no other, it is worth the effort to make sense of the documentary now, to linger on the history that shaped it, and to dwell for a while on its possible future. (Ellis and McLane 326)
Though the documentary tradition remains identifiable, the role of the documentarist is as diverse as the individuals making the films. What is clear, however, is the inherent assumption that a documentarist intends to represent actuality and, moreover, to do so with integrity of purpose. Notwithstanding this, as commercial success plays an increasingly important role in the production of documentary films, the documentarist's original responsibility is in danger of being overshadowed by the perceived need to make “great TV.”
In the case of The Colony, the series producer's statement “we're making magic out there and The Making of will destroy all that” was used to justify his intolerance of public knowledge of—let alone discussion about—the production process of his “documentary” series. For this to be accepted by the broadcaster, SBSi, as a legitimate reason not to screen the behind-the-scenes documentary fuels the contention that a commercial imperative (even in public television) is overriding social values that once defined the documentary form, not to mention public broadcasting. Furthermore, when open debate among the “community of practitioners” is silenced according to the personal wishes of one company, an essential part of the practice that has always characterized the profession is denied. These issues raise the question of where the contemporary documentary film is now situated.
The motivations that began the documentary tradition incorporate a commitment to the truth, not a determined suppression of what is real. The assumption that anything “too real” needs to be hidden from the audience is a troubling notion. The genre was never intended as a magic act, and revealing illusion does not destroy the craft, but rather is what defines it.
Commenting on American and British historical reality TV shows, and referring to the documentary tradition to which some of those program makers assert their format belongs, the film scholars Ellis and McLane say, “Few would claim that this is documentary” (333). Voicing a similar sentiment, a Sydney Morning Herald TV reviewer stated that the obvious hurdle for the makers of The Colony was knowing “the difference between documentary and reality TV, and being sure which side of the line you sit on” (Idato). The attempt to make an educational history program by using a reality TV concept while proclaiming documentary practice, creates not only a path of ambiguity and confusion but also, in Hilton Cordell's case, a disproportionate fear of exposure for not delivering on original claims. These findings are not isolated to The Colony but appear to relate to a broader trend in television production. As the historian Iain McCalman concluded from his involvement in a BBC “extreme history” series, “If we'd been allowed to be openly reflexive about the imperatives of the present or sceptical about our ability to recapture the past, the series might have been enhanced.… Instead, it seems to me to have succumbed to an identity crisis, unsure whether it was historical documentary or reality TV” (McCalman 484).
Reflecting on some of the problems that arose in the production of The Colony and The Making of The Colony I think it necessary that a new distinction be made on top of “serious intent” to differentiate the documentary from the ever-forming reality hybrids. My findings suggest that the employment of integrity in revealing reality and reflexivity in that process would take us a step closer to genuine documentary and historical inquiry. The willingness to be transparent and to make methods public—or at the very least accessible—should be what separates the documentary from other factual forms. Online public forums created to discuss television programs are currently centered on the content and not the process of production, and this does not come close to answering the necessary questions that need to be asked of documentary outcomes. To understand how “living history” can contribute to documentary tradition and practice as well as history pedagogy, revealing and discussing rather than trying to hide the challenges and perceived failures would better serve audiences and program makers. Such transparency would also align it closer to the disciplines of documentary film and history pedagogy.
Despite the observations I have made here, The Colony was categorized and nominated by the Australian film and television industry as a contender for “most outstanding documentary series” at the 2006 TV Week Logie Awards. As the film scholar Bill Nichols has said with regard to defining the documentary: “At one level we might say documentary is what those who regard themselves as documentarists produce. This begs the question of who defines the documentarists, or, perhaps better, acknowledges that this group is largely self-defining” (15).
I do not discount the merit of truth and exploration in historical reenactment, but they need to be balanced and understood within the context and priority of telling the story of history, and, without careful planning of both, we are left with this new documentary genre resembling something more like a poor man's Survivor. The intention of “living history” to make a worthwhile contribution to history education and to the craft of the documentary is not in question. How it can ultimately achieve this aim, however, warrants careful consideration.
1. Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991) and Burden of Dreams (1982) are the best-known examples.
2. Network (1976); The Truman Show (1998); Series 7: The Contenders (2001) are some examples.
3. Though the information provided does not offer the promised findings, the reader is nevertheless urged to support the production: “Be more adventurous. Help bring programs like COLONIAL HOUSE to your PBS station … pledge online!” (Colonial House).
4. This phrase, “serious intent,” used as a means of separating documentary from reality TV, originates from a paper that the film scholar Brian Winston presented at the Australian International Documentary Conference in 2003.
5. Peter Watkins is the pioneering British filmmaker of the documentary historical reenactment, best known for Culloden (1964) and The War Game (1966).
Anstey, Edgar, and Arthur Elton, dirs. Housing Problems. Documentary film. British Commercial Gas Association, 1935.
Australian Television Archive, www.australiantelevision.net/colony/about.xhtml.
Bowie, Geoff, dir. The Universal Clock: The Resistance of Peter Watkins. Documentary video recording. Prod. Yves Bissailon. National Film Board of Canada, 2005.
Colonial House. PBS, www.pbs.org/wnet/colonialhouse/.
The Colony. Six-part TV series. SBS Television, 2005.
Cunningham, Sophie. “Television in 2005.” The Age, January 1, 2005.
Ellis, C. Jack, and A. Betsy McLane. A New History of Documentary Film. New York: Continuum, 2005.
Gaines, Jane M., and Michael Renov, eds. Collecting Visible Evidence: Volume 6. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
Gibbon, Belinda. The Colony: The Book from the Popular SBS Living History Series. Sydney: Random House, 2005.
Grierson, John. Grierson on Documentary. London: Faber, 1966 [1946].
Hill, Annette. Restyling Factual TV: The Reception of News, Documentary, and Reality Genres. London: Routledge, 2007.
Idato, Michael. “Armed and Dangerous.” Sydney Morning Herald, January 4, 2005, www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/01/03/1104601280868.xhtml.
Kilborn, Richard, and John Izod. An Introduction to Television Documentary: Confronting Reality. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997.
McCalman, Iain. “The Little Ship of Horrors: Reenacting Extreme History.” Criticism 46.3 (2004): 477-487.
Meade, Amanda. “Real Life Gets Respectable.” Australian, July 1, 2004, www theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,10001429-27648,00.xhtml.
Nichols, Bill. Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
Scheelings, Aurora, dir. The Making of The Colony. Documentary film. SBS Television, 2005.
———. The Making of The Colony. Documentary film. Rushes. SBS Television, 2005.