Documentaries aim to document real events using footage or reconstructions. They can use narration or rely on participants' perspectives. There are several types including fully narrated, fly on the wall, mixed, self-reflexive, docu-drama, and docu-soap. Documentaries employ techniques like observation, interviews, mise-en-scene, and dramatization to construct narratives that can be open or closed, linear or non-linear, single or multi-stranded in structure.