Louis Theroux

Louis Theroux is a somewhat popular documentary maker with the BBC. Having caught some of his work on free-to-air TV on SBS, I thought it would be apt to mention him on this blog.

Theroux largely covers a large range of what is deemed as socially controversial issues, such as the lives
of prostitutes behind closed doors, asian catalogue brides, racist families, and more.
Here's an example of the one about Thai Brides.

His documentaries can be categorised as 'participatory documentaries', as the audience can see how he is in them, and the way he affects his subjects or interviewees. On the same note, this other documentary is on the similar topic of Thai Brides, but has much more of an expository style, with one side being shown, and a voice narrating the story to the audience.

We had to think about whether or not we wanted a narrator, or even an interviewer present in the span of our documentary on Westwyck.

However, it was more unanimous to go with a more observational style for the documentary as we wanted to tell a story of adaptive reuse, using Westwyck, but without any sense of us being in it.