Conventions of a documentary.

1. DOCUMENTARY CONVENTIONS
LUKE MIDDLETON

2. Expository
This is the traditional form of documentary in which a non visible speaker performs a voiceover commentary that
explains the images and video that we are seeing. It is the type often related with wild life or historic documentaries, in
which the viewer might need the information about what they are seeing. The audience is not largely empowered by
this kind of documentary, finding them self in a secondary role listening to the version of events that the filmmakers
chose to prioritise.
Examples:
Planet earth
Blue planet
Frozen planet

3. Observational
This is what is associated with fly-on-the-wall type documentaries. They appear to have been filmed in real time, as if the
camera and crew have happened upon events while those involved are what would seem unaware of the filming going
on. The filmmakers consistently attempt not to interfere in what is happening. 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 make.
Example:
Panorama, behind bars: prison undercover

4. Interactive
A lot of 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 weaken the interviewees, making them look stupid or deluded. Their interpretation of events 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
Examples:
Educating Yorkshire
Educating Essex

5. Reflective
This is a style that is usually related 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 made, as the actual content. At the simplest
level the film may make no attempt to hide aspects of its making showing us the camera people for example.
Example:
Watchdog
catfish