About Documentaries

I spend a lot of time, too much maybe, watching google and youtube videos that claim to be documentaries about one thing or another. In fact I cover a lot of topics pretty much at random. 911, UFOs, The US Constitution, 2012, Gun Legislation, Political topics, Karate, How-to’s, well the list goes on. I’m not saying I’m an advocate of any particular subject mentioned, but I do feel it’s important to look at ideas from new perspectives. Such as the Gun Legislation, I look at both pro-gun and anti-gun stuff. Sure both sides quote statistics that prove their specific points but I’m interested in finding out what people perceive to BE the points in question. That said, I’d like to make a point about what I perceive to be a problem with a large number of these “Documentaries”.

The problem I see is this, the video makers do not seem to be able to make a single point stick without background information over-taking the actual subject of the video.
Suggestion, break the videos into smaller chunks to be referred to in separate videos or “Chapters” and then provide support documents where appropriate and available.

Here are a couple of example videos from what I have watched recently:
- The Obama Deception (by: Alex Jones and Infowars)
- Secrets of the Dollar Bill: Eye of the Phoenix (by: Antiquities Research films)

You can view those if you like, and have the spare time to do so. The Dollar Bill one is almost 3 hours long; as such I don’t recommend watching it near bed time. (I fell asleep first 2 times I tried to watch it)

In both of these videos the writers/producers spend over half of the time describing the workings of a third party. In the Obama film it’s about the people and organizations that influence Obama and therefore cause his supposed “Deception”. In the Dollar Bill one it talks about a man who was might have been influential to FD Roosevelt, and his life story as well as hundreds and sometimes thousands of years of history. Most of it speculation.

In both cases, both videos it would have been more -To the Point- if they had just said “this is bad for reasons 1, 2 and 3” See Videos 1,2 & 3 for information about those factors” and then supplied said videos and or other supporting documentation.

So in general I am frustrated by these so-called documentaries. To the point, if there is going to be more than 40% of the film spent on background information, then you need to make a second referenced document or video.

That's my opinion.