I absolutely love a good documentary but there are so many crappy staged or embellished ones out there you have to wade through to get to the good ones.

Currently watching Finding Amelia. This one the fella believes she crashed in Papua New Guinea and that an Australian military patrol actually found the Electra during World War II.
It’s pretty cool all the equipment they use, I mean the money they spent on this is impressive. I have not finished it yet so I am not sure how it ends specifically. Granted I know they did not find it.
But anyway they are in these crazy thick jungles and they have a metal detector and are walking around and find a small river.
Ohhhh, goodness what do we find visible in the water from a bit of a distance away a slab of metal that just happens to have some numbers on it and they are able to determine it’s not from the Electra but from a downed bomber in World War II.
HIGWASH!!!!!! There is not a chance a piece of a World War II bomber would be visible in the water. Then they are walking around in the crazy thick jungle with the metal detector and it starts to go off. They start digging a little bit and hot damn they dig up a rusty part of a can.
Wooo hoo we’re on the right track because the Japanese would have never had such a ration can and it was absolutely an Australian Biscuits and Gravy ration can!!!!!!!
Please!

It’s a pretty cool theory if the Australian patrol stuff is accurate. It’s just frustrating when they throw that clearly embellished fluff in there.

Agreed, but it'd be a short and boring "documentary" if they came on and just said we didn't find shit.

Blame Geraldo. I think his peak was Al Capone's safe.

That's not a "Documentary"...

That's "Reality TV".

Discovery doesn't make many true documentaries these days. It's all reality TV shlock like this.

Robert Ballard actually found her plane recently. I saw it on the internet.

Gilligan's Island is usually more believable.

My daughter was telling me about some National Geographic documentaries she watched during a high school history class. The example she used was “It was like a video about the Ice Age and all they said was it was cold and icy.”

I asked her for a specific example, watched it for myself, and she was right. Lots of CGI, lots of opinion, and very little science. About 5 minutes of educational content out of the 45 minute video.

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:
About 5 minutes of educational content out of the 45 minute video.

Or as we used to say in the Army, “Ten minutes of information crammed into a two-hour meeting.”

But in this case blame the viewers who put up with such stuff. I have given up on more than one YouTube channel because the producers obviously feel they must have videos of a certain length regardless of how much they really have to say.