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TV Doc Styles
1. TV Documentaries: styles and
influences
Direct Cinema
Style of documentary produced in 1960s.
Came about as result of widespread availability of cheap, portable
lightweight audio-visual equipment
Aimed at objectivity: no narrator, simply fly-on-the-wall filming of
events and people, leaving it up to the audience to draw
conclusions.
Approach is in direct contrast to the tradition of the ‘Authored
Documentary’, which is clearly the opinion of an individual.
Rules of Direct cinema:
Documentaries were not to include interviews
There were to be no rehearsals prior to filming
No staged events or commentary
No film lights
No dissolve edits to be used
2. Examples: D A Pennebaker ‘Don’t Look
Back’ (1968)
Albert and David Myles ‘Gimme Shelter’
(1970)
Direct cinema lead to observational (‘Fly on
the wall’) documentary style which has
remained a popular genre. Has had a
massive influence on contemporary TV:
Reality TV, docu-soaps, video diaries
3. Cinema verite
Style of European film-making in the early
1960s using documentary techniques such
as hand-held camera to convey life in as
realistic a way as possible.
Similar to direct cinema but CV believed
that the film makers opinions should be
expressed – art as propaganda. CV also
used interviews whereas DC didn’t.
Linked to ‘Social Realist’ tradition in fiction
film
4. Institutional Documentaries
Use direct cinema techniques to give
a fly-on-the-wall insight to the day-
to-day workings of hospitals, airports.
Popular genre which is often
informative, humorous and
sometimes critical in the way in which
these places of work are represented.
Have given way to the popular
docusoap genre in recent years.
5. Docusoaps
Take ordinary, common experience and look at it through
the eyes of the public. Are called docu-soaps because
they are similar to soap operas in terms of:
Fast editing
Multi-strand narratives
Part of a series and often end on a cliffhanger ‘next
week on…..’
6. Docusoaps
Are very popular: ‘The Cruise’ averaged 11
million viewers, ‘Driving School’ peaked at
12.45 million viewers. Common
characteristics are:
Emphasis on entertainment rather than
instruction
Based around personalities who often ‘play
up’ to the camera, and talk directly to
camera. They often become celebrities
themselves eg Jeremy Spake in ‘Airport’
7. Prominent, guiding voice-over often
by an established actor
Focus on everyday lives and problems
rather than underlying social issues
Selective editing: some scenes are
known to have been ‘set-up’
8. Public Affairs Documentaries
Probably the most traditional of
documentary formats – ‘Panorama’,
‘Dispatches’
Usually shown by Public Service
Broadcasting channels, eg BBC, Channel 4,
and normally investigate/explore current
affairs issues.
Can often be polemical – drawing attention
to a perceived wrong - and can have
significant impact, for example ‘World In
Action’ investigation leading to release of
The Birmingham Six.
9. Video Diaries
Again, descended from Direct Cinema –
seen by audiences as reliable and truthful
as the subject is filming themselves.
An off-shoot of this are the documentaries
which use surveillance technology as
entertainment (infotainment), with
audiences enjoying their voyeuristic nature
eg ‘Police, Camera, Action’, ‘Cops With
Cameras’
10. Drama Documentaries
These are documentaries exploring a
social issue or drawing attention to a
miscarriage of justice but they are
scripted and acted dramas. EG
‘Hillsborough’, ‘Roots’ (1977). Filmed
equivalents would be a biog-pic such
as ‘Ghandi’
11. Theatrical Documentaries
Film documentaries released in the cinema.
Is a tradition of cinematic documentaries about pop
stars, sport, etc (eg ‘When We Were kings’, ‘In Bed
With Madonna’)
New trend for provocative film documentaries, fronted
by a charismatic narrator who appears on screen eg
Michael Moore ‘Farenheit 9/11’, ‘Bowling for
Columbine’ or Morgan Spurlock ‘Super Size Me’.
These are a return to the concept of the ‘Authored
Documentary’, where the piece is clearly scripted and
presented as the viewpoint of a particular individual.
