The document discusses various types of audio documentaries used in podcasting, drawing on concepts from film documentaries and the works of Bill Nichols. It categorizes documentaries into six types: poetic, expository, observational, participatory, reflexive, and performative, each with distinct characteristics and narrative styles. The document emphasizes the subjective nature of documentaries and the role of the podcaster in constructing reality through editing and perspective.

1. Types of Audio Documentaries
For Podcasting

2. Source
Based
on the concepts used for film
documentaries
Bill Nichols books
◦ Introduction to Documentary (2001)
◦ Representing Reality (1991)
http://alexburtonjournal.blogspot.com/20
07/11/documentary-form.html

3. What Documentaries Are
supposedly
revealing reality
impossible to truly re-present reality
construct a narrative - some fictional
elements
choices made in editing

4. When You Listen …
reality
is edited, sometimes re-sequenced
and artificially framed
identify podcaster’s purpose to decode
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6
possibly a moral or political perspective?
maybe just an event recorded?
share information, demonstrate authority?
sales pitch?
types – Bill Nichols

5. Types of Documentaries
Poetic
documentaries
Expository documentaries
Observational documentaries
Participatory documentaries
Reflexive documentaries
Performative documentaries

6. Poetic Documentaries
Organized
by associations and patterns
fragmentary, impressionistic, lyrical
Fragments aesthetically reconstituted

7. Expository Documentaries
speak
directly to the listener
an authoritative commentary
propose a strong argument & point of
view
try to persuade
seek to sound ‘objective’

8. Observational Documentaries
Record
lived life with minimum
intervention
immediacy, intimacy
revelation of individual human character
in ordinary life situations
little or no music, sound effects, or
technical alterations

9. Participatory Documentaries
emulate
approach of anthropologists
participant-observation
recorder part of the recording
get a sense of how situations affected or
altered by recorder’s presence.
“truth of the encounter”

10. Reflexive Documentaries
draw
attention to their own
constructedness
most self-conscious of all the modes
highly skeptical of ‘realism’

11. Performative Documentaries
subjective
experience and emotional
response
strongly personal, unconventional,
perhaps poetic and/or experimental
can have docudrama elements
can reveal marginalized group’s
experience

12. Examples of Types of Documentaries
Poetic
documentaries
◦ http://www.moreabouthenry.com
Expository
documentaries
◦ http://rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/redeye/2013/
12/tips-simplifying-holiday-season
Observational
documentaries
Participatory documentaries
Reflexive documentaries
Performative documentaries