The World in Here

Abstract

One of the contentions of this book is that if you look at the subject matter of animated documentaries and think about why animation is used in place of the live-action alternative, a tendency can be traced wherein animation compensates for the shortcomings of live-action footage. Either the footage does not exist (as in Chicago 10, because cameras were not allowed into the courtroom in 1968) or it is impossible to film the subject (such as Walking with Dinosaurs, where the prehistoric subjects precede the existence of humans let alone motion picture cameras, or in many of the interview documentaries discussed in Chapter 3, due to considerations of anonymity). There are reasons that go beyond logistics and participant privacy, however, for why animation is chosen as a representational strategy in documentary.