1. C A T F I S H I S A 2 0 1 0
A M E R I C A N D O C U M E N T A R Y F I L M D I R E C T E D B Y
H E N R Y J O O S T A N D A R I E L S C H U L M A N ,
I N V O L V I N G A Y O U N G M A N , N E V , B E I N G F I L M E D
B Y H I S B R O T H E R A N D F R I E N D , C O - D I R E C T O R S
A R I E L A N D H E N R Y , A S H E B U I L D S A R O M A N T I C
R E L A T I O N S H I P W I T H A Y O U N G W O M A N O N T H E
S O C I A L N E T W O R K I N G W E B S I T E F A C E B O O K .
( O N L I N E D E F I N I T I O N ) .
Catfish Documentary!
2. Themes.
Lies, Travel, Love, Romance, Truth and Deception.
This is a closed documentary as the audience knows
everything at the end of the documentary and does
not need to research or question what happened next
as the creators cleared everything up by the end of
the documentary.
4. Camerawork.
The documentary uses Zooms in and out to show the
audience what they are actually trying to display and
they use images and pans of text messages/
Facebook posts to show what is actually happening
and to allow the audience to see that it is the truth.
5. Mise-en-scene.
The documentary uses the real people and real
situations to keep it as a documentary and to allow
the audience to see that everything that has
happened is real, they also use the exact locations
and timings as this is when the situation actually
happened and it has been used to make the audience
see what is really going on.
6. Sound.
The documentary uses both diagetic and non
diagetic. They use the diagetic sound to tell the
audience the story and to make them see what is
happening and to make the story as real as possible
by actually talking to the audience.
They use non diagetic sounds to create the mood by
using certain soundtracks. They also used facebook
message alerts to display that it is actually happening
when they are recording and that none of the story is
fake.
7. Editing.
The main editing technique is cuts to make it seem
as real as possible without transitions. They have
done this to make the documentary flow easily
without having fades and swipes making it seem less
real.
8. Archive Materials.
The documentary uses images of Facebook pages,
messages and paintings to set the scene and allow
the audience to see what level the ‘catfish’ has gone
to to make their lie believable.
9. Graphics.
At the end of the documentary images and text were
used to close the story and allow the audience to
understand some of the things they have been asking
themselves throughout the documentary.
