For most of the history of factual, the subject was either too big, too small, too slow, too fast, too dark, too remote, too complicated or already finished. Shooting and cutting a scene was about making a single camera shoot look like multicam. Interviewers learnt to stop people from twitching and directors despaired over tense subjects walking like penguins.
Then broadcasters discovered the extraordinary power of real life on camera, with ordinary people under actual stress. The entire production chain was transformed by chips and software while new technology blew most of the limits away. Audiences became sensation junkies.
