Analysing Impossible Pictures: Computer Generated Imagery in Science Documentary and Factual Entertainment Television

[From introduction] The analysis of documentary film and television has been problematized in a number of ways in recent decades. The production environment has changed dramatically, for instance, with on the one hand an explosion in the spaces for documentaries to be screened and viewed around the world on dedicated channels, but on the other an increased exposure of documentary to the pressures of commercial screen production, competition for audiences, and concentration of production into the hands of a small number of companies with concomitant impacts on what kinds of documentaries can be made. Related to this, new genres have challenged the status and position of documentary as a primary site of factual screen content and increasingly hybridised formats have appeared blending elements of documentary with genres such as reality television, game shows, and even soap operas, into new types of factual entertainment (see Kilborn 2003 for a discussion).