MODES OF DOCUMENTARY

Poetic Documentary

- Does not use continuity editing, sacrifices sense of the very specific location and place that continuity  creates

- Explores associations and patterns that involve temporal rhythms and spatial juxtapositions 

- Social Actors rarely become fully-fledged characters

- Opens up possibility of alternative forms of knowledge to straightforward transfer of knowledge

Expository Documentary

- Arose from dissatisfaction with distracting entertainment qualities of the fiction film 

- Voice of god commentary, poetic perspectives sought to disclose information about historical world & see that world afresh, even if ideas seem romantic or didactic 

- Addresses viewer directly, w/titles or voices

- Advances argument about historical world 
- It takes shape around commentary directed toward the viewer; images illustrate  the verbal commentary builds sense of dramatic involvement around need for solution to a problem. 

-  Nonsynchronous sound prevails (historical circumstances)

- Editing generally establishes/maintains rhetorical continuity more than spatial/temporal  

  

Observational Documentary 

- Arose from available lightweight portable synchronous recordin equipment & dissatisfaction with moralizing quality of expository documentary. 

- It allowed filmmaker to record unobtrusively what folks did when not explicitly addressing the camera. 

- It stresses the nonintervention of filmmaker 

- Filmmaker cedes control of events more than any other mode. 

- Editing doesnít construct time frame or rhythm, but enhances impression of lived or real time. 

- This mode limited filmmaker to present moment and required disciplined detachment from events themselves. 

- It uses indirect address, speech overheard, synchronous sound, relatively long takes. 

  

Interactive Documentary 

- It arose from the availability of same mobile equipment & desire to make filmmakers perspective more evident. 

- It allows filmmaker to account for past events via witnesses and experts whom viewer can also see 

- Archival footage becomes appended to these commentaries to avoid hazards of reenactment and monolithic claims of voice of god commentary 

Reflexive Documentary 

- Arose form desire to make the conventions of representation themselves more apparent and to challenge the impression of reality which other three modes normally conveyed unproblematically. 

- It is the most self-aware mode - its reflexivity makes audience aware of how other modes claim to construct "truth" through documentary practice.

- It uses many of devices of other modes but sets them on edge so viewer attends to device as well as the effect. 

- It tears away veil of filmmakers illusory absence 

Performative Documentary 

- Like Reflexive Documentary, it raises questions about knowledge

- Endorses definition of knowledge that emphasizes personal experience (in tradition of poetry, literature)

- Tries to demonstrate how understanding such personal knowledge can help us understand more general processes of society (May "mix" elements of various documentary modes to achieve link between subjective knowledge/understanding of the world, and more general understandings, i.e. historical ones.)