Primary Styles of Documentaries

Primary Styles of Documentaries

Expository Documentaries

• Heavily researched
• They aim to educate and explain things such as events, issues, ways of life, worlds and exotic settings we know little about
• Production elements can include interviews, actuality, graphics, photos and narration

Observational Documentaries

• They strive for cinematic realism
• Carefully edited
• No interviews, commentary to the camera or narration

Participatory Documentaries

• When the encounter between the object and the filmmaker is recorded and the filmmaker actively engages with the subject
• Aims for immediacy
• Presents the filmmaker's point of view

Reflexive Documentaries

• Challenge expectations about the form
• Gives the impression that the film is being assembled right before our eyes
• Often include fake clips, improvised dialogue and a "shaky cam"

Poetic Documentaries

• Aim to create an impression
• Emphasizes cinematic values to create visual poetry
• Shot design, composition and rhythm are hallmarks of the genre

Performative Documentaries

• Emphasizes the filmmaker's own involvement with the subject
• The filmmaker shows a larger political or historical reality of a subject through his own experience
• The filmmaker becomes a personal guide who shows it and tells it like it is with emotion