Quarantine, which is a 2008 American found-footage horror film, the director and co-writer
is John Erick Dowdle, the producer is Sergio Aguero, Doug Davison, and Roy Lee. the other co-writer is Drew Dowdle. This film is a remake of the Spanish film, which names REC. This film is based on the concept of documentary to shot this movie, it makes the film like aa real events, but it's not. The documentary is a movie movement that is non-fiction films, so the story in the film is the real events, like an animal documentary, not imaginary by the director.
Bill Nichols, he proposed a theory that looks at documentaries via the particular techniques selected by the filmmakers when they record the event. The documentary has six modes of representation, which is poetic, expository, observational, interactive, reflexive and performative. Poetic documentaries focus on opening up the possibility of alternative forms of knowledge to the straightforward transfer of information, the prosecution of a particular argument or point of view, or the presentation of reasoned propositions about problems in need of a solution. This type of film the mode will stress on the mode, tone and affect much more than displays of knowledge or acts of persuasion. About the expository, it is using the Voice-of-God to have a comment, and also like tell the story to the audience, it can seek to disclose the information about the historical world itself and to see that world afresh, even if these views came to seem romantic and didactic. The next one is observational, which is a mode of representation that allowed the filmmaker to record what people did when they were not explicitly addressing the camera. However, it also limited the filmmaker to the present moment and required a disciplined detachment from the event themselves. The next one is interactive documentary. It invited the subjects to participate with the filmmaker, it usually is an interview that to present in the scene. It will loke like the first-person storytelling that because it used the point of view shot. The other is reflexive documentaries, the filmmaker will expose the techniques employed for representation, challenging the documentary's means of revealing the truth. It keeps reminding the audiences that besides the certain issue, they are also watching the film, that is attempting to represent reality.
Quarantine, is a film talking about a news reporter, Angela Vidal and cameraman, Scott Percival to interview the firefighters. They are assigned to follow firefighters and given a department tour. They received the call from the apartment and start to rush to the apartment. When they arrived the apartment, the old lady attack the firefighter and they revealed that there has a kind of virus that makes the people become zombies. They started to try to escape the apartment, but the apartment has been cut off from outside.
Quarantine is a mockumentary film, which means that is a fictional film but the camerawork in this film will look like a documentary. There is some documentary mode used in this film as performative is the main mode in this film. This is a fictional story and filmed in a documentary way, which mean the event is not the reality. The film will not tell the audience what is the truth, but they can have an idea that while running the story. For example, the problem of the apartment will not be telling the audience in early of the story. However, when the story almost close to the end, the audience can have an idea of it. The next one is interactive. The audience can notice that the first scene, which is Angela and the cameraman interview the firefighter and ask some question to the firefighter and also have some interaction with them. She also speaking to the camera, it makes that it is a real interview. The last one is the reflexive mode, we can notice that it appear in the first scene, which Angela and Scott are testing the equipment and also the practice of the opening. Other than, when they felt in dark scenes, Scott will change the camera become night vision. It will be reminding the audience is looking at the video, and how it is the truth.
In conclusion, the documentary is a very interesting film movement, it has six of the mode which is poetic, expository, observational, interactive, reflexive and also performative. It has different of the concept and it also can mix them together to create a film like Quarantine, which main in performative mode and the following is interactive and reflexive. The documentary is one of the famous styles for this generation video, which we can see in social media. In my opinion, documentary is an interesting film movement, because the audience will think that it is the truth for a movement, and it also can increase the tension of the film.
