Voiceovers are commonly used in documentaries to narrate events and facts for the audience. Real footage of unaltered events is also a key convention to convince viewers they are seeing reality. Technical elements like natural lighting and sounds are employed to enhance the realism. Additional context may be provided through archive media and interviews with subjects, while text is used to convey pertinent details efficiently.

1. Codes and
Conventions of a
Documentary

2. …What makes a documentary a documentary?
Voiceover
A voiceover is typically used to engage an audience into finding out key facts about the
certain documentary. In some ways, the documentary encourages the audience to think that
they have some kind of specialist knowledge into that documentary, as voiceovers are
another form of direct address. A voiceover is also usually used mostly throughout the whole
of the documentary, typically in wildlife documentary's such as ‘Planet Earth’ narrated by Sir
DavidAttenborough. However realityTv programmes such as ‘Keeping up with the
Kardashians’ do not use voiceovers as much in their documentary's as real life footage is
shown of the non-fictional protagonists throughout.

3. Real footage of events
Documentary's are usually seen as non-fictional although there are debates around
this. However one of the main conventions of a documentary is that all events
presented to the audience are all seen to be real. Documentarians often go to great
lengths to convince us that everything we see in a documentary is real and unaltered
in anyway, although editing and voiceovers can affect the ‘reality’ we as the viewers
see.

4. Technicality of Realism
Technicality of realism is an important convention within a documentary as it
includes things such as natural lighting and sound which creates a better effect for a
documentary and interviews as it presents a sense of realism to the intended
audience.

5. Archive footage/stills
This presents authenticity to a documentary and also adds further
information which the film maker may be unable to obtain
themselves.

6. Interviews
Interviews are used to add additional information about the documentary, for
example, crime documentaries usually use interviewees to gain further information
about the certain non-fictional storyline they are creating a documentary about.
Interviews are also used to authenticate the views expressed within the documentary.
Sometimes, they will disagree with the message of the documentary.

7. Use of text/titles
Majority of documentaries use words on screen to anchor images in time and
space. Labels, dates, etc tend to be believed unquestioningly and are also a
quick and cheap way of conveying information into a documentary.

8. Sound
Sound within a documentary can include diegetic and non- diegetic sounds
to create a particular theme within the documentary, non-diegetic sounds
can add effect to a documentary such as music. Sound can also be used as a
bridge between scenes or even at the beginning or the end of the
documentary where the credits appear.

9. Set-ups
This is the set up of a typical scene.The way in which the scene has been made to
look naturalistic might have actually been set-up by a camera crew. It’s a cheap
way to gain footage quicker rather than waiting around for something to happen
‘naturally’.