Psihoyos Documentary Techniques

Louis Psihoyos is an American photographer and documentary film director known for his still photography and contributions to National Geographic. The Cove documentary describes how the director assembled an “Ocean’s Eleven”-like team of specialists to infiltrate and expose a secret, brutal, for-profit dolphin-killing operation in Japan. It endeavours to secretly uncover the ruthless killing and hunting of the thousands of dolphins by the Japanese each year as well as focussing on the work of Ric O’Barry, who spent 10 years as a dolphin trainer, most famously for the 1960s TV series Flipper, only to renounce that he would work and dedicate himself to fighting the dolphin captivity industry. The purpose of the documentary is to inform the audience

The first scene is a combination of maps, diagrams and written information throughout the middle of an interview. There is a film technique of colour and graphics in the map which shows the location of the business, the transport, and the destination of culled dolphins in red which manipulates the audience by using colour techniques of red to represent blood and multiple transport areas to give idea and meaning that this illegal activity is worldwide and is more than it seems. Another use of colour is the white text on a black screen that writes about some facts about this killing of dolphins. The white text depicts the innocence of the number of dolphins that have died, on a blank black screen that emphasizes this by surrounding the white in darkness and evil which gives subliminal messages and emphasizes illegal and immoral

These techniques include use of different camera angles and hidden cameras in an operation to find out what is happening and the unchanged truth about this illegal activity. The operation was aimed to hide a number of cameras in different locations and views as to record the illegal activity in action without the need to interfere. The cameras are hidden in trees around the cove, on the hillside and even in the water. Once again the colour technique is used of the water turning red as the dolphin blood fills the cove. This produces a strong reaction in the audience as to see so much blood stirs up a human instinct and accentuates the message. Evidence of this is of the underwater camera which appears blue in water but then a few seconds’ later tinges with red and becomes fully red as the dolphins are murdered and blood fills the cove. This scene uses different camera angles such as wide shot, aerial shot and more as it techniques to successfully deliver a stronger message. It uses these techniques to depict workers as superior and the dolphins as innocent. To end with, the hidden cameras in the trees view the bodies of the dolphins pulled ashore and the lake of red blood in the bird’s eye view angle. This disturbing scene views from all angles the operation of the illegal activity of dolphin