The film Blackfish is a documentary about SeaWorld and the capturing of killer whales, mainly centering around a male killer whale named Tilikum. The film shows the processes of capturing killer whales in the wild and the practices of SeaWorld and other parks, Sealand of the Pacific and Loro Parque, and how Tilikum was involved in the deaths of three people. 

The documentary Blackfish is an expose. This is clear because the film is attempting to expose the practices of SeaWorld and the other parks discussed in the film. The filmmakers want to expose these parks for capturing the killer whales from the wild and using them to breed and using them for entertainment purposes in the ‘Shamu shows’, while housing them in pools instead of letting them be free in their natural habitats.

To expose SeaWorld, the filmmakers use documentary conventions such as interviews, statistics, and archival footage. They conducted and filmed interviews with former trainers and directors of SeaWorld, Sealand, and Loro Parque. There were also a few interviews with some of the family of the victims of Tilikum. The main statistic used in this film were about the lifespan of killer whales in the wild versus being in captivity. There is footage of SeaWorld employees telling visitors that killer whales have a longer lifespan while in captivity, around 35-40 years, than they do while in the wild. There were interviews with scientists and experts claim that the lifespan of killer whales in the wild is equivalent to the lifespan of a human. The other convention used in this film was archival footage that shows the capturing of Tilikum from the wild, training and performance videos of the Shamu shows that took place in SeaWorld. There were also clips from the news reports surrounding the killings of Tilikum and ads from the different parks.

The film delivered its exposition by using the videos, news reports, and interviews. The film started out with the former employees of SeaWorld talking about their dreams of working at the park and then they shifted to talking about the attacks by Tilikum. They would also show the interviewees answering questions about one thing and then shift to a new topic. Another tactic used in the film was using titles and texts. Some times things were said in text instead of aloud and titles were used to move onto new topics.

This film used primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. The primary source would be the clips of the Tilikum attacks. The filmmakers used these clips while they were edited and it was hard to tell exactly what happened in these clips. There was no sound from the videos, they used music for dramatic effect or they would use audio from the interviews to play over the clips. The secondary source was the interviews. A lot of the interviews were with the former employees of SeaWorld and they describe the things that they witnessed while they worked there. The tertiary source was the documentary and the filmmakers themselves. The documentary was the interpretation of SeaWorld and its practices based from the clips of the attacks and the interviews. Between the secondary source and the tertiary source, I found the tertiary source to be the most effective. I thought it was the most effective because the film itself is a compilation of the other sources to give us all of the information as a whole.

The filmmakers of Blackfish can be seen as both explicitly biased and implicitly biased. I believe they are explicitly biased because they value the life of both humans and whales the same. They could also be considered as implicitly biased because of their ‘environmentalist’ viewpoints in the film.

This documentary can also be viewed as propaganda, depending on the person watching it. SeaWorld itself wrote a review of the film stating that it is indeed propaganda against them, not just a documentary. I can see the ways in which SeaWorld has this point of view of the film, but at the same time, that’s not how I saw it. I just viewed it as a film trying to educate people on the real practices and techniques of a place that makes their money off of keeping these animals in captivity – which to some people would be considered propaganda, but I just saw it as them showing us the facts.