Documentary Production: S21 Khmer Rouge Killing Machine

S21 Khmer Rouge Killing Machine

S21 Khmer Rouge Killing Machine is a documentary about former prison guard during the time of Khmer Rouge or The Communist Party of Kampuchea or The Red Khmer leading by Pol Pot. Khmer Rouge is a communist party that activates in Cambodia during the booming of Communism in South East Asia allies with Communism party of Laos, Communism party of Thailand and together with People Liberation Armed Forces of South Vietnam or Viet Cong. This documentary is talking about the time that Cambodia is ruling with Khmer Rouge or the communist and the experience of people who live at that time. This documentary is presenting out in a style subjected POV so the spectator experience is focusing on the subject is the Victim and the prison guard and their experience.

Plot structure of this documentary is a normal documentary plot structure that starting with SETUP that inform people with a brief information of the story, in the S21 case it starts with a footage of the success of Khmer Rouge ignorer for the audience to know what is the background history of this documentary to the history of subject. Then it comes to the BODY, the body of this documentary is a story and experience of both former prisoner and former prison guard. The body part is the most important part for this kind of documentary because this part is a part that contains a lot of information about the subject of the documentary and this part is a part that builds up the emotion and informing on the incident of the character.

After the audience being informed by a lot of information about the subject life experience and the documentary has shown the SETUP and BODY of the documentary already now it comes to the last part of the documentary which is CONCLUSION when everything comes to the ending and the question both from the character and the audience will be answer. In the CONCLUSION part, former prison guard and the former prisoner came together for the first time and the guard being questioned to answer, so this is the part that we can see every former prison guard emotion and feeling that there have about the pass. This part is the most important in comparison to fiction film this is the climax where everything going to be sorted.

 In term of narrative structure, this documentary has nothing difficult but in term of historical referencing it’s very complex and also the emotion, mood, and tone of this documentary is quite complex because this documentary is talking about life and war, so when it comes to a story like most documentary will appear tone the supporter of one either side but for the S21 the maker is communicated story from two perspectives but be able to do it evenly, I believe that the reason is that the maker wants us an audience to make the decision to choose the side by our self.