Whitney Donaldson

When we initially started the A2 Media Studies course, I learnt exactly what a ‘documentary’ was; they are predominately informative, created to explain facts about a chosen topic, document important happenings or represent different attitudes to their target audience in an interesting format. This is best summarised by its dictionary definition:

Dictionary definition: a film or TV programme presenting facts and information, especially about a political, historical, or social issue

We then learnt some generic conventions of the documentary genre:

Reconstructions (re-enactment of events) Actuality (footage of real life events) Exposition (narration usually pervasive, information passed on to try to persuade

audience) Voiceover (narration that overlays visuals) Interviews/vox pops (convergence with people which shows their opinions) Archival/stock footage (secondary footage, archive used to show historical

events/saves extra filming)

This was demonstrated well by the exemplar documentaries we watched. For example ‘Super Size Me’ and ‘The Rolling Stones, Gimme Shelter’ included:

Archival/stock footage

Actuality

VoiceoverInterviews/vox pops

Exploring Documentaries…

Actuality

Whitney Donaldson

After this we learnt about some specific types of documentaries

Institutional Documentariesits direct cinema techniques give a ‘fly on the wall’ view of places of work eg airports, hospitals or schools

Cinema Verte created in the early 1960s, reminiscent of direct cinema however uses interviews to express the filmmakers vision

Direct Cinemaformed in the 1960s, no narration/commentary/rehearsals; the ‘fly on the wall’ style allows the viewers to come up with their own deductions

Docusoapslooks at uses everyday experiences from the public’s perspective Video Diaries The subject records themselves MockumentariesParodies the documentary genre/an area of life Theatrical Documentariesfilm documentaries broadcast for cinema viewing; these

are typically about sports/celebrity culture

Finally, we learnt about Bill Nichols’, ‘Documentary modes’ (theory established in 2001)

Nichols was an American theorist who differentiated specific conventions of different documentary styles

Whitney DonaldsonExpository mode