Adam Curtis Documentary Work

Adam Curtis was born in 1955 and he is an English film maker. His most well know piece of work is a film he created in 2002 called The Century of the Self. The film look at how Freud's theories of the unconscious shaped the development of advertising. His work explores areas of political history, philosophy and sociology. He describes his work as journalism through the medium of film. Out of all of his works, his works have won 6 BAFTAs and he has been very closely associated with the BBC throughout his film making career.

Curtis' father was a cinematographer from Sevenoaks in Kent who worked with Humphery Jennings, meaning his family already had a link into the film and television industry. He completed a Bachelor of Arts in Human Sciences at Mansfield College, University of Oxford, in which he studied courses such as genetics, psychology, anthropology, statistics, politics and evolutionary biology. He also applied to work for the BBC and he was hired to make a film for one of the BBC training courses, which was comparing designer clothes in pop music video to the design of weapons. He then gained a job on That's Life!, a television program that often placed serious and humorous together in juxtaposition.

Some of Adam Curtis' most well known films include:

• Pandora's Box (1992)
• The Mayfair Set (1999)
• The Century of the Self (2002)

The thing that stood out to me most after watching a section from The Century of the Self was the use of the voiceover. The voiceover was very factual and also seemed to go on for a long time, but it kept my attention the throughout because there was also a lot of archive footage on screen during the voiceover which helped to keep my attention. There were also bits in the archive footage where somebody would be talking and for these bits the voiceover was cut out. These parts of dialogue weren't as factual as the voiceover, showing more of an emotion than a fact. I liked how strong the voiceover was in the piece and would like to try and make the voiceover in my documentary as strong as the one in this piece.