Film Journal 2/12

Recently, the Discovery Channel aired a documentary about finding the tomb of Jesus Christ (presumably). It seemed like a fairly well made documentary, it was certainly interesting, though I'm no religion major (I do know someone who is though... ;) ).

But one thing bothered me: when they first open the tomb, they start to climb in and the
camera cuts to inside of the tomb watching them enter it. The previous shot showed no cameraman inside of the tomb and even the scientists themselves were just in the process of entering for the first time themselves.

It's reasonable to believe they went back and reshot that to make it more cinematic, so I'm not suggesting foul play here. I'm just confused if reality TV is the culprit here, demanding we mix regular fictive films where this sort of thing could happen with on-the-fly shooting/single takes on single-camera reality shoots... or has it just always been this way, ever since the exact same thing was done in the making of Nanook of the North over 80 years ago.