post 8-modes of documentary

1. Modes of
Documentary
a conceptual scheme developed by American theorist Bill Nichols…

2. Poetic
 A transformation of historical
material into a more abstract,
lyrical form usually associated with
the 192s and modernist ideas.
 There is no beginning, middle or
end.
 ‘Reassembling fragments of the
world’.

3. Expository
 ‘Direct address’
 Social issues assembled into an
argumentative frame
 Often mediated by a ‘voice of
god’ narration.

4. Observational
 Technology advanced in the 1960s
and cameras became much smaller.
This meant that life could be
documented in a less intrusive manner
leaving people to be filmed without
the camera impacting on their
behaviour.
 Sometimes described as ‘fly-on-the-wall’
documentaries as people forget
they are being watched as the
camera is not obvious.

5. Participatory
 Encounters between the film
maker and subject is recorded as
the film-maker actively engages
with the situation they are
documenting.
 This involves the film-maker
asking questions and sharing their
own experiences.

6. Reflexive
 Demonstrates consciousness of the
process of reading documentary and
engages with issues of realism and
representation.
 Acknowledges presence of viewer
and refers to the fact that they are
being filmed and that it is a
documentary.
 It also acknowledges judgements that
viewers could have and corresponds
to critical theory of the 1980s.

7. Performative
 Acknowledges emotional and
subjective aspects of documentary
and presents ideas as part of a
context having different meanings for
different people.
 Often autobiographical in nature,
e.g. the narrator/director starts to
become the subject of the
documentary (‘Supersize Me’).

8. Mixed
 A mixed documentary is a
combination of interviews,
observation, actual footage,
archival footage and narrative.
 The narrator links the
documentary together and
advances the narrative structure.
 Most newer documentaries tend
to be mixed.

9. Relevance and purpose
 The purpose of this research is to help us decide
what mode of documentary ours will be.
 This proved to be relevant because it gives us
insight into the different options we could use for
our documentary mode.
 We will most likely be using a mixed or expository
mode of documentary. Although, we will
conduct research to decide finally what the
mode will be. Mixed would be appropriate for
our target audience as 16-30 year olds (students,
teachers and parents) are a similar target
audience to other mixed documentaries
(Panorama).