The film itself is comprised mainly of 2 elements, interviews and reconstructions/evidence which are cut between to create a linear narrative from the prisons beginnings to the eventual closure of the facility. The interview portion of the film interviews the actual members of the military police that had first hand involvement in the abuse at Abu Ghraib, whether they took part in the actual abuse, watched, or took photographs; these interviews are filmed mid-close with the interviewees looking directly into the camera, the lighting is from all sides as their faces are fully illuminated and clear with a high quality camera used to preserve every detail with them against a blue background, they are answering questions and just generally talking about their experience at Abu Ghraib which is used to give their side to the situation and instead of just having a faceless evil as it could easily have been portrayed it gives a more human aspect to the whole thing and helps to understand the culture surrounding it and the whole aspect of military behaviour and what is expected of them. On the flip side of this is the reconstructions and the evidence that is shown (this includes photographs and videos taken by the military police at Abu Ghraib who committed the abuse) and this is used to counter the interviews and allow for the audience to know the whole story as opposed to just being shown either side of the story. The reconstructions in the film are done stylistically and effectively with them mainly providing a shocking backdrop to the words of the interviewees to help audiences put a picture to the stories being told and this is further backed up by the actual evidence used against them in trials.
To keep track of the timeline throughout the film they also use cgi to explain how the images were ordered by time and explain metadata while also using it to create a linear narrative to allow for audiences to coherently follow the film (this is further backed up by the reading of letters sent by interviewees during the situation which allowed for the information to be triangulated with the images.)
Overall I think this is a fantastic documentary especially in terms of creating a piece that is unbiased but also provides ample information to allow audiences to make up their own decisions on the incidents in a detailed and informed manner as opposed to just picking pieces from different situations.
