Documentaries first began when films were invented by the Lumiere brothers in 1895. The camera they used could only hold 50 feet of film stock and their films were short, unedited clips capturing life around them. Their most famous clip was called 'Un Train Arrivee' filmed in 1895. The clip simply shows a train pulling into a station, but people could see a moving image for the first time.
Documentaries as we know them today began with 'Nanook of The North' made by Robert Flaherty in 1922. This was the first feature length factual film ever made. Flaherty had staged most of the scenes for the camera to try and make it more interesting and exciting for the audience. Documentaries became bigger and bigger, the documentary 'Nightmail' made in 1936 began as an informational film about a mail train from London to Edinburgh but the filming emphasised the different elements of film such as movement, rhythm, light and sound. Critics accused Grierson of celebrating machinery more than human beings in this film.
As technology became more and more advanced, the quality of the documentaries being produced increased as well. Cameras became able to hold more and more film and started to capture better images by taking more frame per second.
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