A point that keeps being emphasised and of which is of utmost importance when making and viewing documentaries is the fact that a documentary is a manipulated version of reality. A dcumentary is not a survelliance camera in a supermarket, as the reading points out, but a constructed and influenced and contrived film or work that regardles of whether the filmmaker has an agenda is in fact their view on that reality. All elements that must be deciding upon during the filmmaking process inclusing mise-en-scene, lighting, focal length etc are all manipulations on the reality they are trying to capture.

In the interview with Haslell Wexler, the point about the filmmaker envisaging how a shot will work and forseeing what needs to be shot in order for this to happen and overtly manipulating the shot in order to do so made me think about my documentary. At various steps along the way of producing our documentary we have been sharing examples of what we want the finished product to look like and because of this we have asked our interview subjects to do certain things or say certain things on camera. We also at times have asked people to act things out in front of us.