Why This Website
I launched Pocket Docs out of concern that artificial intelligence is increasingly used to create fictitious content passed off as true.
I also noticed that the term “documentary” is often misused or misunderstood. A documentary is an exploration of reality in order to convey it to others. By this definition, documentaries are observational, not generative.
A documentary is not advocacy; its purpose is not to promote or celebrate an idea, product, or place. If it promotes anything, it should be thoughtful discussion.
But the average person can no longer distinguish between authentic content and advocacy disguised as truth, and soon, even experts may struggle.
How can we assure people that what they see on a screen really happened? We can’t. Seeing is no longer believing.
Citizens need to be able to observe and confirm for themselves, become their own fact-checkers. But proof must be evident.
One clue is the camera.
Unlike a trail or surveillance camera that passively records, the documentary camera gazes; it probes and explores. In doing so, it leaves footprints. It wobbles. It shakes. Sometimes it needs to refocus. It is not perfect. Its imperfections are the loops, whorls, and arches of the fingerprint of authenticity.
I become suspicious when things look just a bit too slick. If appearance can be manipulated, how about content? There is a saying, “Perfect is the enemy of good.” It can also be the enemy of truth.
I have reason to be a skeptic because I’ve been fortunate to have had diverse careers in my work life. I was in professional theatre, broadcast television, documentary filmmaking, organizational consulting, academia, and group relations psychology. As diverse as they seem, they share a common function: exploring experience and communicating it to others. The documentary filmmaker explores reality and conveys it to others, while the psychoanalyst strives to make the unconscious conscious. Social change is often a defense against the anxiety of scrutiny. Similar functions, different roles.
Learning to Let It Happen
I learned that early in my film career.
My first non-broadcast film was commissioned by LIFE magazine. It was to be a promotional film using documentary vignettes to show advertisers how LIFE related to family interests. We filmed families in different activities, LIFE-like, in pure observational documentary style. My greatest concern was how to film what LIFE was famous for — a disaster or news event—and show it through the experience of a family.
We were out in Los Angeles filming a man teaching his five-year-old daughter how to ride a horse when we heard that a few miles away a brush fire was racing down a canyon burning houses and causing families to evacuate. Al Maysles, who was filming, and I raced to the police line and I talked my way into hitching a ride on a fire engine to the scene. (In those days, LIFE could get you anywhere.)
Families were frantically racing to packing or grabbing whatever valuables they could and rushing off to safety. It was very emotional
We started filming.
One man caught my attention. I sidled over to hear him trying to persuade the police, firefighters, and his wife that if he were allowed to get on the roof with a garden hose, he knew how to save their house and possessions. He convinced the firefighters, the police, his wife, and me. Balancing our gear, Al and I followed him up the ladder.
As flames wicked down the hill, igniting one house after another, he sprayed his roof, quenching glowing embers and sparks as they landed.
His house, with the three of us on the roof, was the only one on the block that survived.
He continued spraying while, looking around at the smoldering landscape and, very calmly, said, “My poor neighbors. Their homes, their possessions, all ruined… My insurance company ought to buy me a Martini for this.”
You cannot make that up. And neither can AI.
It tied the bow of truth around the story.