The documentary "American Experience: The Gold Rush" by PBS reveals why there was a surge of people coming to California during the mid-1800's. The documentary is able to provide the audience with a narrative while never showing any real footage of the event. It achieves a narrative by using two different approaches at the same time. The first approach, the narrator explains and shows throughout the film important events that happened in the 1800's using primary and secondary sources. For example, it uses photos, contracts, newspapers and other sources to give the audience assurance on how the gold rush occurred. The second approach, they create reenactments of scenarios that occurred to keep the audience entertained with the film; it helps the documentary from losing the attention of the viewers. The documentary uses different types of strategies to keep the audience entertained while showing them different forms of evidence.
A film must be based on a nonfictional event for it to be a documentary. The film uses different types of evidence to provide the audience with authentic information. Throughout the film,
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To push the narrative forward the documentary had to accomplish certain objectives. It first needed to prove to the audience that the gold rush did happen by showing primary and secondary sources. The last objective was to give the audience reenactments for entertainment and visual cues. The film provides enough facts to make it a documentary even though there no is no real footage of the California Gold rush. This is an accurate representation of the historical event because it is able to back up all of its claims. They may use actors to demonstrate how people were in the mid-1800's. However, it's just to give the audience a deeper understanding of that time because it's the closest thing to footage of the California gold