This document defines and describes different types of documentaries. It explains that documentaries focus on real people and events to allow audiences to form their own opinions. There are five key elements of documentaries: observation, interviews, dramatization, mise-en-scene, and exposition. The document also outlines six common types of documentaries, including fully narrated, direct address, fly on the wall, mixed, self-reflecting, and docudrama styles.

1. Documentaries
Isobel Bastow

2. What is a documentary?
Essential to a documentary is it focuses on
questions, actual people and events, often in
a social context, placing the audience in
apposition to form an opinion on who or what
we are seeing. The term ‘documentary’ was
coined by John Gierson in 1926. The purpose
of a documentary is to document something
that has happened. It can be shown using
actual footage or reconstruction. It can use a
narrators voiceover to anchor the meaning or
rely on the participants themselves, perhaps
with occasional interjection by the narrator.

3. Features of a documentary
According to John Corner (of the University of Liverpool)there
are 5 central elements of a documentary.
These are:
Observation (fly on the wall)
Programme makers
Pretend the camera is unseen or ignored by the people
takingpart
Indirect address to the audience
Unseen observation

4. Interview
The interviewer is either seen or unseen
Sometimes pictures are dubbed over the speaker, in
supportof what they are saying
Interviews can be structured in two ways, either
runnedfully or cuts inbetween
The interviewee addresses the interviewer instead of the
audience
Interviews can be used to make a contrast between the
observation sequences.

5. Dramatisation
Although documentaries use a sense of drama, this feature
isspecifically used to portray parts of people and events that the
filmmaker cannot gain access to in real life. These sequences are
based on fact.
Mise-en-scene
This is what the directors and filmmakers put in the scene, e.g, lights
and props.
Exposition
The line of argument in a documentary.

6. There are six different types of
documentaries:
- Fully narrated
-Direct address documentaries
-Use an off-screen voiceover to convey the exposition
-Voiceover helps to make sense over pictures
-Dominates the meaning
-Narrator often gives sense of authority about the topic
-Critics have called the style ‘voice of God’
-Fly on the wall
-Rely totally on observation
-No commentation or narration
-Cameras left to record people with viewers forming their own conclusion
-Mixed documentary
-Uses combination of interview, observation and narration to advance the argument
-Narration is often from within the frame (commonly seen on the news)
-Self-reflect
The subjects of the documentary acknowledge the presence of the camera and speak directly to the film maker. This
style makes a point of drawing attention to the film makers role in constructing a view of reality.
Docudrama
A re-enactment of events as they were supposed to have happened. In this style, the elements of argument and
exposition are combined with those of fictional narrative, the resulting story is based on fact.