Documentries

Documentary films contain aspecsts of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record.Viewers should feel like eyewitnesses to events shown in the film.documentaries typically have far lower budgets which makes them attractive to film companies "a factual film which is dramatic "It can also be something that stands out from the other types of non-fiction films for providing an opinion, and a specific message, along with the facts .Not all documentary films are factual . During times of war and other and other periods of social stress, film-documentary was often used as propaganda.

Documentary mode ; is a scheme developed by American documentary theorist Bill Nichols that distinguishes conventions of various documentary filmno styles. Nichols identifies six different documentary 'modes' in his schemes Which are : poetic, expository, observational, participatory, reflexive, and performative.

6 Different types of Documentary Modes  

Poetic documentaries-

The poetic mode of documentary film tends toward personal perspective/ own interpretations of its subject. documentaries in the poetic mode show traditional narrative content: individual characters and events remain undeveloped, in favor of creating a particular mood or tone. This is particularly noticeable in the editing of poetic documentaries, consisting of unrelated shots linked together to illustrate a rain shower in Amsterdam.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPD2C0K38jY
Appeared in the 1920’s,  moved away from continuity editing and instead organized images of the material world by means of links and patterns, both in terms of time and space. Well-rounded characters—'life-like people'—were absent; instead, people appeared in these films as someone of real existance, just like any other, that are found in the material world. . Their disruption of time and space—a favored by the fiction films of the day—can also be seen as an element of the cinematic narrative.

Expository Mode-
Documentaries speak directly to the viewer, either using voiceover or titles, showing a strong argument and point of view. These films are rhetorical, and try to persuade the viewer. (They may use a rich male voice.) The (voice-of-God) commentary often sounds ‘objective’+ omnicient.. The rhetoric makes us read the images in a certain way. Historical documentaries in this mode deliver an ‘objective’ account and interpretation of past events.
 The expositional mode is the term of visual practice and story-telling devices,emphasis on rhetorical content, and its goals of information/ persuasion.
 Film features, news stories, and various television programs rely heavily on its utility as a device for transferring information clearly.


Observational documentaries-  observational docs date back to the 1960’s; the technological developments which made them possible include mobile lighweight cameras and portable sound recording equipment for synchronized sound. Often, this mode of film includes voice-over commentary, post-dialogue and music. The films includes of individual human character in ordinary life situations. documentaries attempt to simply and spontaneously observe lived life .

Participatory documentaries- believe that it is impossible for the act of filmmaking to not influence or alter the events being filmed. What these films do is to approach the participant-observation of the life of a group by sharing in its activities.  Not only is the filmmaker part of the film, we also get a sense of how situations in the film are affected or altered by her presence. Nichols: “The filmmaker steps out from behind the cloak of voice-over commentary,(Almost like any other because the filmmaker retains the camera, and with it, a certain degree of power and control over events.)” The meeting between the filmmaker and subject becomes a critical element of the film.

Reflexive documentaries-  draw attention to the constructedness of documentries, and the fact that they are representations. How does the world get represented by documentary films? This question is central to this sub-genre of films. They make us “question the  general realness of documentary in general.” It is the most self-conscious of all the modes, and is highly full of ‘realism.’ It may use Brechtian alienation which prevents the audience from losing itself passively and completely in the character created by the actor, and which leads the audience to be a consciously critical observer.
Overall to summarise it is to...
“to aid the audience in their understanding of the process of construction in film so that they could develop a sophisticated and critical attitude.” (Ruby 2005)


Performative documentaries-  stress subjective experience and emotional response to the world. They are strongly personal, unconventional, perhaps poetic and/or experimental, and can be events designed to make us experience what it might be like for us to possess a certain specific perspective on the world that is not our own,
e.g. that of black, gay men in
Marlon Riggs’s Tongues Untied (1989) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103099/ or
Jenny Livingston’s Paris Is Burning (1991). This sub-genre might also lend itself to certain groups (e.g. women, ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians, etc) to ‘speak about themselves.’
Performative docs often link up personal accounts or experiences with larger political or historical realities.
Perhaps the most famous filmmaker currently working in this documentary mode is Michael Moore.


HISTORY OF DOCUMENTRIES

Cinéma vérité, or direct Cinema, is a important style of documentary film making that makes us use hand held cameras to record true events in as uncensored a way as possible. The style is made by there being little evidence of the film maker's presence.There is also alot of use of voice over narration.
The style includes following a person during a crisis with a moving, often handheld, camera to capture more personal reactions. There are no sit-down interviews, and the shooting ratio (amount of film shot compared to the finished product) is very high.  The filmmaker's intention was to represent the truth in what he or she was seeing .

Newsreels short subject segments covering specific topics. Voice over narration frequently used.
 indicated the development of divergent styles in longer form
re-enactments of events that had already happened, not attempts to show events as they were in the process of happening. E.G , battle footage from the early 20th century was staged; the cameramen would usually arrive on site after a major battle and re-enact scenes to film them.i.e
. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev6FIlexpsE

Mockumentary is a type of film or show in which events are presented in a documentry format. These are often used to analyze or comment on current events and issues by using a fiction made setting, or to make humor of the documentary form .They may be either seem like comedy or in a dramatic form, although comedic mockumentaries are more common. Mockumentaries are often presented as historical documentaries, or with people discussing past events, or even cinéma vérité pieces following people as they go through various events.  E.G .A  early example was a short piece on the (("Swiss Spaghetti Harvest" ))that appeared as an April fools joke on the British television program Panorama in 1957 - it told a strory of a family in Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from a spaghetti tre