Robert Flaherty's movie "Nanook of the North," Margaret Mead's "Trance and Dance in Bali," and Robert Gardner's "Rivers of Sand," are the cornerstones of ethnographic films. Even though each work utilizes different shot types, camera angles, editing, narrative and sounds are diverse in many ways, there is one underlying commonality: the desire to achieve a sense of realism. The classification of "realism" seems to alter and evolve as the films, and time, progress and isn't easily visible within each film. To witness each film's attempt of realism, we must dive into Flaherty, Mead and Gardner's films to break them down into their basic parts, using specific sequences. Beginning in sequential order, Flaherty's "Nanook of the North" is the origination of how ethnographic films- and documentaries as a whole have been made. Having been filmed in the 1920s, however, makes the film seem more cinematic than documentary. In particular, I noticed that the music distracts viewers from focusing solely on the imagery and adds to our emotional investment, rather than critical analysis. An example of this is the sequence of the hunt for the great seal. After finding a blow hole in the ice, Nanook waits patiently for the moment to fling his harpoon. Using intense music buildup after this shot, Flaherty does engage the viewer in a more cinematic way, but doing so takes away from the film's realism (there's no musical buildup in real life). There are some instances and techniques used by Flaherty, in contrast, that convey a sense of realism in his film. Long takes with no editing or minimal cuts allows events to occur in "real time" (The building of the igloo window for example). Medium shots help the viewer to experience the action most accurately as if they were living among the Eskimos (the scene of Nanook listening to the music box, child eating fish oil) Close-up shots, especially with intimate scenes, allow viewers to connect more the characters and increase believability (close-ups of Nanook in beg