Documentary Conventions

• Many define documentary's as the creative treatment of reality, using recorded images and sounds from lived experiences.
• Documentary's incorporate facts to encourage an audience to draw conclusions.
• The are considered interpretive as they creatively interpret realities and people's concerns in relation to them. It is filmed reality, but a selective construction which is shot, scripted, edited and then transmitted. It is not the whole truth.
• Elements of Documentaries

  Observation - sequences where the film maker pretends the camera is unseen or ignored by participants, placing the audience in the role of eye-witness, providing evidence for the producer's argument.
• Elements of Documentaries

  Interview - the interviewer can be seen or unseen, heard or unheard. The speaker is questioned and replies to whoever has asked the question. This is often accompanied by pictures to support the replies.
• Elements of Documentaries

  Dramatisation - the documentary makers build in a sense of dramatic conflict to heighten engagement. Drama is often embedded in observational elements where audiences are eye-witnesses to dramatic events. Sometimes dramatisation are fictional sequences based on fact. They are used to advance the arguments of the film maker.
• Elements of Documentaries

  Mise-en-scene - the things within the frame of each shot. In fictional films this is created but in documentary's this is usually a result of what already exists. Composing the shot in a deliberate way, so that it contains the images the film maker wants the audience to see, makes the film interpretive in nature.
• Elements of Documentaries

  Exposition - the documentary's central argument. It is made of a description and commentary. It is what the film is saying about the topic.
• Documentary Styles

  • Fully narrated
  • Cinema-verité - mostly observational; fly on the wall style
  • Mixed - combination of interview, observation and narration
  • Self-Reflexive - subjects speak directly to the film maker; presence of camera is acknowledged
  • Docusoap - set in one location with a small set of characters (sub-genre for cinema-verité)
• Structure of Documentaries

  The structure is often dramatic and narrative in nature with a clear beginning, middle and end, with a focus of a character or conflict.

  Often there is a sense of movement to drive the action, which can be in the form of a journey, seasonal change, growth of a child, managing a life transition or a change over a historical time period.
• Structural patterns of documentaries

  • Chronological order of events
  • Order based on a journey
  • Classification order
  • Cause and effect order
  • Problem and sloution order (2040)