Kevin Macdonald was born in Scotland in 1967, grandson of Emeric Pressburger,
screenwriter/producing partner of 'Michael Powell in The Archers'.
Pressburger was the subject of Macdonald's first film as director, the TV documentary The
Making of an Englishman (Channel 4, tx. 1/1/1995). He went on to make several more
documentaries for cinema and TV, often on cinematic personalities.
Macdonald first came to fame with the Oscar-winning feature-length documentary One
Day in September (1999) about the 'Black September' Palestinian terrorist attack on Israeli
athletes at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972.
Macdonald followed up with another, even more powerful, dramatised documentary.
Touching the Void (2003) was adapted from Joe Simpson's book about his ordeal in the
Peruvian Andes in 1985.
(taken from the BFI - British Film Institute- http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/874295/ )
Some of my favourite documentaries are those directed by Kevin MacDonald like 'Life in a Day' & 'Christmas in a Day' as I love the editing style, whereby many different clips are put together to create the idea of viewing the whole world in one day.
These types of documentaries can be known as the "poetic mode".
Conventions of poetic mode documentaries include a variety of different shots, little or no narration or voice over, fast-paced editing. Also, there is often no particular narrative, instead they portray an aspect of something i.e. a day.
Dawn Porter...
This is a screenshot of Dawn's official website page. Her documentaries appear to be fun and unique, and each one is about a completely different topic (unlike MacDonald, whereby he makes similar documentaries e.g. "... in a Day"). However, the topics that Porter covers are rather critical subjects which are 'problems' or issues in our modern society, like eating disorders ("Super Slim Me") and breast cancer. I think that this makes the documentaries relatable to their target audience.
These documentaries fall under the expository-mode category. (?)
Here a some examples of Dawn's documentaries...
The two documentary makers / types are very different, and I can not yet decide whether to make a poetic/observational documentary like Kevin Macdonald's, or a more expository documentary like Dawn O'Porter. I will research into both types further before making a final decision.
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