Documentary Modes
The Scottish filmmaker John Grierson was first to use the term ‘documentary’ for a number of films, which featured ‘real’ people and places. Robert Flaherty’s films Nanook of the North (the Inuit of northern Canada), Moana (a Polynesian family) and Man of Aran (a fishing community off the west coast of Ireland), all of which depicted marginal and fast disappearing cultures, are early examples of the form. In a famous phrase Grierson defined documentary as the ‘creative treatment of actuality’. While documentaries deal with different areas of ‘actuality’ or ‘real life’, their ‘creative treatment’ of the subject matter has varied enormously.
Documentary filmmakers have developed a range of modes of shaping and presenting their material. The table shows some of the more common forms found in documentary films. It is worth noting that television continues to develop new variants of non-fiction programmes – from reality TV shows such as Big Brother to ‘docusoaps’ like Vets in Practice.
Documentary Codes:
- Re-enactments
- Interviews
- Narration / Voice Over
- Actuality
- Stock / Archival / File – footage
- Photographs
- Footage of places/landscapes/cities
- Documents
- Graphics / Animation
- Music
- Sound effects
- Montage
- Location sound
- Subtitles/ Titles/ Text / Captioning
- Special effect e.g. slow motion etc.
Expository
Observational / Fly-on-the-Wall
Reflexive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOvrkkj_T-I
Poetic
Drama Documentary
Mockumentary