The original post: /r/television by /u/flyingjesuit on 2024-06-20 16:30:37.
Full disclosure I’ve only watched the first episode but it has got some glaring faults that have me doubting whether I should continue watching at all. I’ve never been to a Ren Faire, although I have overlapping interests (LotR and HP fandom for instance) that make it something I might be interested in doing some day.
I also want to give it credit where it’s do. The characters are interesting and the story is compelling. It’s the storytelling that I take issue with. I’m not a documentary buff by any means, and I’m sure the complaint I have is something that happens to a degree in any documentary, but it just seems over the top here. So much of the episode felt staged. Again, I know that that is probably a staple in some ways for the genre to the extent that any interview is a slightly staged/performative act. For instance, an example of an HBO documentary that I absolutely loved, Telemarketers, had some moments that felt a bit staged, but I forgave them in that instance because they weren’t egregious and the guys making the documentary were essentially whistleblowers caught up in a scandal who wanted to report on it to the world. They were amateurs who had a story to tell and were telling it themselves to the best of their ability.
That said, this documentary, imo, went too far. The production values are much higher than what I saw in Telemarketers, so it’s definitely not amateurish. But my main gripe is that the whole thing just feels like an infomercial for the company that runs these Renaissance Festivals. It feels more like reality tv than a documentary.
There’s a moment where one character gets some bad news while in Germany and we see footage of him stumbling in a daze as people in getups you’d expect to see at a Ren Faire say things in English as he allegedly stumbles around the fairgrounds. They are even saying things that they would have no reason to say in the context of being a performer or attendee at the festival, they’re saying things directly related to the bad news this character has received. Also, when he gets the phone call it doesn’t feel like the moment occurred as presented because the camera is absolutely jammed in the character’s face and he never once appears to notice this, he’s just staring blankly like he’s seeing his life flash before his eyes because of this bad news. Again it just feels so staged/performative. A shot like that is very effective in a drama, but in a documentary it feels so out of place.
There were also meetings filmed where it felt like we were hearing things people in a company would never want to get back to their bosses unless it was pre-arranged ahead of time. From a narrative perspective, these things served as exposition for the audience so that we could understand what was at stake and who the palyers were, what the conflict was, which is important in storytelling but again just felt so disingenuous and staged.
Going back to the moment the bad news was delivered, the character was at a performance put on by the German Ren Faire(his purpose for being there was to see how they operated and what they could incorporate into their own festivals). As we see him get the bad news, we see a sequence in the festival performance where several knights are shown falling to the ground, presumably dead, and this is meant to echo how the character is feeling about this bad news. We also have the audio manipulated in a way that suggests that the character isn’t hearing anything around him anymore, as if there’s a ringing in his ears or something. Again, very effective storytelling devices in a drama, but it feels out of place in a documentary. For the record, this to me is borderline. If this was as bad as things were in the episode, I wouldn’t bother to make this post and in a vacuum it might bother me a bit but not to the point where I question the credibility of the documentarians.
In short, if this were presented as reality tv I’d have no problem with it. If it were dramatized and presented as a tv show loosely based on real events and characters, even better. Again, the characters and story are interesting. King George is a wacko, there’s a bit of a Succession vibe to the plot and the characters vying to be the next “King” and the resulting conflict, the different claims they have to the throne are all interesting and make me want to see how things play out, but the delivery of it all feels bogus when called a Documentary. I think I remember seeing an article a year or two ago in this sub outlining a trend where the subjects of Documentaries are starting to only work with documentarians willing to give them a generous amount of final say in what gets used and how it’s presented. I think it mentioned the Michael Jordan Netflix Doc and maybe one about Hillary Clinton. Either way, it’s not good for the genre and I’d be interested to hear what others think, particularly those who watched more of it than I have. Watching it did you feel the way I do? Do you feel that way now looking back on it after having read this post? Do you disagree wholeheartedly? Are there examples of other documentaries that do this? Should I keep watching or does this infomercial/reality tv vibe permeate the whole thing?