Plot vs Emplotment - Testing the narrative concepts of aesthetics and authenticity in the documentary short Far Away Land

This paper recounts the research and production of Far Away Land, a short documentary that uses recreations to illustrate a woman’s memory of drowning. The images used to illustrate the narrator’s experience will be interrogated to establish how they might enhance or take from the original story. The idea of plot vs emplotment will be explored in this paper to explore how the aesthetics and visualisations of recreations reflect, compliment and contrast with voice-over narrative. This paper also investigates the relationship between linking visual imagery to the narrator in the absence of an on-camera interview. Placing this short film in the lineage of documentaries that use recreation the efficacy of this style will be discussed in terms of delivering an authentic and aesthetic documentary film.