The documentary genre aims to document real events using actual footage or reconstruction. While footage may appear untouched, documentaries still involve direction and construction. A good documentary focuses on its topic rather than style of presentation, but needs structure and pacing tools like editing to make the content coherent and engaging. There are five key elements of documentaries: observation, interviews, mise-en-scene, dramatization, and exposition. Different types of documentaries employ varying combinations of these elements through approaches like fully narrated, fly on the wall, mixed, self-reflective, docudrama, and docusoap styles.

1. THE DOCUMENTARY GENRE
BY JACK ETTINGER

2. DOCUMENTARY
• 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.
• A good documentary should be about the topic and not the style of presentation. However, the content ,
alone in any interventation.From the products , seldom be enough to make the documentary coherent let
alone interesting.
• To give a product a sense of pace and structure they draw on many of the characters from fiction in their of
use e.g. camera angles, framing lighting and editing.
• John Grierson-1926- To describe a film about life on a south sea island. Defining Documentaries as “Creative
treatment of actuality”

3. DOCUMENTARY FEATURES
John Corner of Liverpool University has a theory that There is five central
elements of the television or film documentary.

4. OBSERVATION
• Most documentaries contain sequences of observation. Usually the
programme pretend that the camera is unseen or ignored by the
people taking part in the events. This 'unseen' observation places the
audience in the role of eyewitnesses to the realities portrayed.
INTERVIEWS
• Television documentaries generally rely on interviews. The speaker is
questioned and addresses the Interviewer, not the audience.
MISE-EN-SCENE
• In the language of film and television, mise-en-scene is were things are
put into the shot. Objects and characters that can be seen in the
picture the documentary makers carefully compose shots So they
contain the images they want the audiences to see.

5. DRAMATIZATION
• All documentaries use a sense of drama through the observation
element. The audience are eyewitnesses to dramatic events that seem
to occur naturally in front of the camera. Some documentaries use
dramatization to portray people and events that the filmmaker cannot
gain access to in real life.
EXPOSITION
• The line of argument in a documentary is called the exposition. An
exposition is made up of description combined with commentary; the
exposition is what the documentary is 'saying'. John Corner suggests
the exposition in a documentary may be either plain and direct or
indirect and hidden. Nevertheless it always exists.

6. TYPES OF DOCUMENTARY

7. FULLY NARRATED
• An off screen voiceover conveys the exposition. The voice is used to make sense
of visuals and dominates.Thier meaning often to referred to as “the voice of god”
Examples
• Planet Earth
• Natural History
FLY ON THE WALL
• The camera’s are left to record a subject with out
interference draw's on the on cinema vierite
(Truth)
Examples
• Educating Yorkshire
• 24 hours in A&E

8. MIXED
• Uses a combination of
interviews, observation,
archive and narration in the
exposition.
Examples
• The Day John Lennon Died
SELF REFLECTIVE
• When the subject of a documentary
acknowledge the presence of the camera
and often speak directly to the maker.
Examples
• Who Do You Think You Are?
DOCUDRAMA
• A renactment of events as
they supposed to have
actually happened.
Examples
• Kings and Queens of England
DOCUSOAP
• Follows the daily life of a particular
individuals usually with in a
designated occupation
Examples
• Billion dollar chicken shop