2. Fully Narrated
• A fully narrated documentary is a documentary
with a voice over. This is done to help the
audience gain a better understanding of what is
going on. Fully narrated documentaries use the
voice over of ‘God’, so that people take what they
hear as the truth. They also use direct address to
engage the audience. And the voice over then
goes along with the visuals that the audience is
seeing; meaning that everything is based around
the visuals. An example would be Frozen Planet.
The narrator is authorities about the topic.
3. Fly on the Wall
• Fly on the wall documentaries use cinema verities which captures
and brings the audience in. This makes the audience think it is the
real setting. However camera angles and editing effects the way the
audience sees things and what they are shown. A fly on the wall
documentary is mainly observational and there is little commentary
or narration. This means that this type of documentary is filmed as
it is and not staged. This helps to give chilling experiences for
certain topics, as it is showing you what has actually happened.
However, it is the editing that can give a final meaning to a situation
as you are actually only seeing what the creator of the
documentary wants you to see and so it cannot be taken as
complete truth as certain aspects will be missed out, which may be
important to you but not to what the creator wants you to see.
Light weight cameras where used to film right where the action was
taking place. This is also un-staged so the directors can not predict
the outcomes.
4. Mixed
• Mixed documentaries are a mixture of
interviews, observation and narration to help
to advance the argument the creator is trying
to put forward. In a mixed documentary as the
generalist speaks there are visual images that
appear over the spoken words. An advantage
of this is that it is representing an objective
reality and not just a selective construction.
5. Self-Reflexive
• When using a self-reflexive documentary, the
documenter speaks over to the camera to
really draw attention in to the audience.
However, when this is done some
documentaries can be criticised that this is not
about the subject it is about the documenter.
Also self-reflexive documentaries have been
criticised as being confusing to an audience as
they can be said to be drawing attention to
themselves for publicity.
