Documentaries aim to document real events using actual footage or reconstruction. While footage may be authentic, directors still construct the presentation through camerawork, lighting, and editing. To make documentaries coherent and engaging, filmmakers borrow techniques from fiction like pacing and structure. John Grierson first defined documentaries in 1926 as the "creative treatment of actuality." John Corner later identified five central documentary elements: observation to place viewers as eyewitnesses, interviews, dramatization of events, carefully composed shots, and an expository argument or point of view. Documentaries can be fully narrated, follow a "fly on the wall" approach, use mixed techniques, or be self-reflexive acknowledging the camera.

1. Documentaries

2. Introduction:
• The purpose of a documentary is to document i.e. to report with
evidence something that has actually happened
• It can show this by using Actuality footage or reconstruction
• Even when filming consists of actuality footage, people are directed
and sets organised so there is still a high level of construction taking
place

3. • A good documentary should be about the topic and not the style of
presentation. However, the content alone without any intervention
from the producers would seldom be enough to make a
documentary coherent let alone interesting
• To give a product a sense of pace and structure they draw on many
of the characteristics of fiction in their use of e.g. camera angles,
framing, lighting and editing

4. Theorists
• John Grierson
1926: to describe a film made about life on a South Sea island he
defined documentary as the:
“Creative treatment of actuality”

5. John Corner -University of Liverpool
• 5 Central Elements of the Documentary:
• 1. Observation- usually the programme makers pretend the
camera is unseen or ignored by people taking part in the event. This
“unseen observation” places the audience in the role of thee
eyewitnesses to events.
• 2. Interview- TV Documentaries rely on interviews. The
interviewee is questioned and addresses the interviewer not the
audience
• 3. Dramatisation- All documentaries use a sense of Drama
through the observation element. The audience is an eyewitness to
dramatic events

6. • 4. Mise-en Scene – Documentary makers carefully compose shots
so they can contain the images they went the audience can see
• 5. Exposition – The line of argument in a documentary. The
exposition is what the documentary is “saying”. Corner believes the
exposition in a documentary may be either plain and direct or
indirect and hidden, it always exists nevertheless
John Corner

7. Types of Documentary
Fully Narrated
An off-screen voiceover conveys the exposition. The voiceover is used to
make sense of the visuals and dominates their meaning. Often referred to
as the “Voice of God”
Fly on the Wall
The cameras are left to record the subject without interference. Draws
on Cinema Verite.
Mixed
Uses a combination of interview, observation, actuality, archive and
narration in the exposition
Self-Reflexive
When the subjects of a documentary acknowledge the presence of the
camera and often speak directly to the filmmaker
Docu-Dramas
A re-enactment of events as they are supposed to have actually
happened
Docu-Soap
A series in which the lives of the people filmed are presented as entertainment or drama