Types and styles of documentaries

1. Types and styles of documentaries

2. Types of documentaries There are nine different types of documentaries with which you should be familiar. They are: News Travel Social Research Scientific History Propagandist Edited Biographical

3. News documentaries • Objective presentaions of everyday news.

4. Travel documentaries • Presentation of the travels to well known or unknown places.

5. Social documentaries • The problems on the life and future of the community or gorups presented in this type of documentaries.

6. Research documentary • Presentation of the researching subject in a very pure way.

7. Scientific documentaries • Generally presenting the findings and results of a scientific research by using examples to make understandable.

8. History documentaries • The aim of history documentary is presenting the historical event as real as possible to make knowledge about the past.

9. Propogandist documentaries • The propagandist films made to the explicit purpose of persuading an audience of a point.

10. Edited documentaries • An edited documentary film presented the past events with composition made out of the other documents and especially old movies

11. Biographical documentaries • Presenting a special individual

12. Documentary styles There are four documentary styles with which you should be familiar. They are: • Expository • Observational • Interactive • Reflective

13. Styles- Expository • A very traditional form of documentary in which an unseen speaker performs a voiceover commentary that literally explains the images that we are seeing. It is the form often associated with wild life or historic documentaries, in which the viewer might feel in need of information about what they are seeing. The audience is not particularly ‘empowered’ by this kind of approach, finding itself in a subordinate role listening to the version of events that the filmmakers choose to prioritize.

14. Styles- Observational • This is the mode associated with ‘fly-on-the-wall’ type documentaries. They appear to have been filmed in ‘real time’, as if the camera has happened upon events while those involved are seemingly unaware of the filming going on. The filmmakers correspondingly attempt not to interfere in what is underway. We do not hear their questions and we do not see them. There is no voiceover telling us what to think or what conclusions we should draw.

15. Styles- Interactive • Many documentaries feature a certain amount of interactive mode filmmaking. Such sequences will involve those being filmed responding to questions asked of them. In such interviews, the questions of the filmmaker may be left in or edited out. This may be a way that individuals in a film can make their own case, but it is also a mode that can act to undermine the interviewees, making them look foolish or deluded. Their interpretation of events or personal account may be rendered to seem trustworthy or untrustworthy depending on the context of surrounding shots or the nature of the statements being made in their own right.

16. Styles- Reflective • This is a style that is usually associated with more experimental documentaries, ones in which the filmmakers are interested as much in the process of making a film, of how reality can be constructed, as the actual content. At the simplest level the film may make no attempt to hide aspects of its construction - showing us the camera people for example.