This shows that even though the mass media itself could be thought of as not having a direct link to influencing the public, it does have a link or role to the way the public's ideas are formed around a certain topic. This is the basic idea around the whole of the article, but I also think this is an important issue that can be related to the making and production of a documentary, because the filmmaker's views and opinions are laid out in film form for the audience to take into consideration. (Michael Moore, for example, puts accross his opinions very well in his documentary Bowling For Columbine and many of his other documentaries.) Furthermore, the opinions and views from the filmmaker can easily influence the public, but, as the article states, it is the way the media is put out to the public (e.g. in what forms, with facts and figures that support/do not support it) that crucially influences the public's opinions. Therefore, if a documentary maker was to put their opinions into their documentary, the audience would either be influenced by or at least acknowledge another view on a certain topic that they may not have considered.

Raul Ruiz: An Annotated Filmography - Great Events and Ordinary People (Des grands evenements et des gens ordinaires: Les Elections, short feature, France, 1979) [here]
Adrian Martin

From the article, I gather that the documentary regularly references itself, a common form of the reflexive mode of documentary, but it does this in a humourous way. It uses "hare-brained [conventions] of TV reportage", showing reality as a "pre-fabricated televisual cliche". The way it uses these techniques criticises and makes fun of TV media forms and conventions, whilst also portraying what Ruiz himself wants to put across in the film.

The central subject is either the documentary film itself or the political questioning of who actually won the election and why. However, because the election did not go the way the producer thought it would, Ruiz changed the documentary content and instead recorded a "diary of sorts", where he recorded ten days of supposedly "random material", which was shown for two thirds of the documentary. The last third had an "eruption of footage from other films, as if invading the diegesis of the one we have been watching and following". I found this interesting to note because of the way Ruiz suddenly changed the content and style of the documentary, and yet it still seemed to work and the documentary still seemed to flow.

I also found it interesting to note that in the reading, Martin states that "Ruiz locates the wayward truth of documentary in its contradictory extremes: the only things that strike us as real within the real of audio-visual spectacle are those moments either when nothing is happening (the ordinary) or history is inscribing itself hysterically (the event)". For this to be said, Ruiz must have shown any situation that may be regarded as 'real', which is in fact a common question that is raised within the realm of documentary, and by documentary filmmakers and critics. However, the definition of 'real', according to Martin, in this documentary is either showing the complete "ordinary" or documenting the "event", but in a humourous way.

In and out of this world: digital video and the aesthetics of realism in the new hybrid documentary
Ohad Landesman, New York University

This piece questions the authenticity and definition of 'realism', and how it has changed during the technological era because of the way we now view and screen films. It states early on that "when fast-paced editing in tightly scripted big-budgest blockbusters becomes the norm, an alternative nostalgic longing for the real crystallizes the two everlasting aspirations in cinema: the utopia of authenticity against the antidote of falsification". In simple terms then, it is the audience who crave to watch the 'real' on the big screen, yet because Hollywood blockbusters are everywhere, produced thousands of times during the year and sold to us in countless ways, such as billboards, TV adverts and websites, it is no wonder that the line between the 'real' (fact) and the 'story' (fiction) becomes harder and harder to see, especially with the rise of new technology.

This could mean for documentary, however, new cinema techniques are being introduced - dramadocs and docuramas are becoming more and more popular. However, then the question remains - 'what is truthful about a documentary? What is truth? What is a documentary?'. It is hard to distinguish between the truth/real and the staged, so where is the line drawn between blockbuster films and documentary films?