FrackNation sets out to discredit the claims made in the feature length documentary film Gasland and does so quite effectively, using mostly the same journalistic techniques as Gasland itself: cherry picking evidence, cynical editing of interviews and conversations to show detractors in a negative light, misdirection etc. For example, there's a particularly irrelevant sequence in which a poor Polish grandmother speaks about the hardship she faces in paying her energy bills. It has nothing to do with objective debate about fracking whatsoever, but cynically manipulates the viewer's emotional response to the film's message (Gasland uses the same trick with sob stories of lost property values and health woes, unsubstantiated by evidence). It's curious that the majority of popular feature length documentaries follow the same basic formula: a highly persuasive attack on some phenomena or other drenched in enough ideological bias to make the editors at Fox News blush.
As is fairly typical for documentary films on such emotive subjects, people who agree with the filmmaker's point of view rate it highly and rave about the film's objectivity while those who are predisposed against that point of view disparage it as industry propaganda and attack the credibility of the filmmakers. If like me to start with no pre-formed opinions on the subject of Fracking, you may find yourself very much persuaded by watching either Gasland or FrackNation, but even if you watch both, you will not have received much in the way of balanced and objective information on the subject. To get that, you need to check other, less biased sources of information. I read articles on the subject from Wikipedia, New Scientist, the United States Geological Survey and a variety of news organisations and watched both movies, and the opinion I formed was as follows: the jury is still out. There isn't very much reliable evidence that fracking causes water contamination, earthquakes or any of the other things it is blamed for, but it does appear to also be true that there are some regulatory shortcomings and independent research doesn't seem to have caught up with the pace of development in the industry. In other words, fracking is probably a good thing but we need to do more to prove that scientifically.
I rated FrackNation 6/10 based on the fact that it made me think about the issues it raised and helped me to form an opinion on it's chosen subject, but in a way that was incomplete and in some ways unhelpful. It was fairly interesting to watch, but I strongly encourage anyone interested in this subject to consult sources of differing viewpoints.
As is fairly typical for documentary films on such emotive subjects, people who agree with the filmmaker's point of view rate it highly and rave about the film's objectivity while those who are predisposed against that point of view disparage it as industry propaganda and attack the credibility of the filmmakers. If like me to start with no pre-formed opinions on the subject of Fracking, you may find yourself very much persuaded by watching either Gasland or FrackNation, but even if you watch both, you will not have received much in the way of balanced and objective information on the subject. To get that, you need to check other, less biased sources of information. I read articles on the subject from Wikipedia, New Scientist, the United States Geological Survey and a variety of news organisations and watched both movies, and the opinion I formed was as follows: the jury is still out. There isn't very much reliable evidence that fracking causes water contamination, earthquakes or any of the other things it is blamed for, but it does appear to also be true that there are some regulatory shortcomings and independent research doesn't seem to have caught up with the pace of development in the industry. In other words, fracking is probably a good thing but we need to do more to prove that scientifically.
I rated FrackNation 6/10 based on the fact that it made me think about the issues it raised and helped me to form an opinion on it's chosen subject, but in a way that was incomplete and in some ways unhelpful. It was fairly interesting to watch, but I strongly encourage anyone interested in this subject to consult sources of differing viewpoints.