Codes and Conventions
Documentarys have a waide range of codes and conventions that we need to be aware of when we are creating our own.
- Documentarys use real facts howeveer some of these may be dramatized to make it more interesting to watch
- Interviews with experts aswell as people who know about the subject are used usually used to authenticate the views expressed in the documentary.
- documenarys use many ways to interest the audience, some of these include; cutaways, interviews and reconstuctions
- the main camera angles include close ups, and long shots
- cutaways are used to express what the interviewee/voice over are talking about
- narrative structure normally begins with and exposition to make them want to keep watching followed normally by a question which makes the audience question the documentary. Then finally an explanation to the origional exposition
- During interviews graphics are usually bold and simple.
- Interviewees are asked to look to the left of the camera so that they are not looking directly at it and are positioned on right
- many camera angles are used during the documentary with appropriate cutaways are nessecary
- reconstructions are used to see points of view
- Every documentary contains an opening title
- voice overs are used when needed to explain in detail or help the audience understand the documentary
- vox pops are used when nessecary to get the general publics opinion on the subject
- music and sound effects are used to create specific moods that they are trying to make
- During documentarys evidence is usually used to make it more factual
- Experts are used when trying to emphasise the facts in the documentary
Types of documentaries
There are six different types of documentaries, poetic documentaries, expository documentaries, observational documentaries, participatory documentaries, reflexive documentaries and performative documentaries.
Poetic documentaries These first appeared in the 1920’s, they were a reaction against both the content of the early fiction film. They did not follow continuity editing and instead organized images by means of associations and patterns, both in terms of time and space. No characters were used however instead, people appeared in these films as entities, just like any other person. Expository documentaries
This documentary type speaks directly to the viewer, often in the form of a voiceover or titles, proposing a strong argument and point of view. These films are rhetorical, and try to persuade the viewer. The commentary often sounds objective. Images are often not paramount; they exist to advance the argument. The rhetoric insistently presses upon us to read the images in a certain fashion. Historical documentaries in this mode deliver an unproblematic and objective account and interpretation of past events. Observational documentaries Attempt to simply and spontaneously observe lived life with a minimum of intervention. Filmmakers who worked in this sub-genre often saw the poetic mode as too abstract and the expository mode as too didactic. The first 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. The films aimed for immediacy, intimacy, and revelation of life situations. Participatory documentariesThese documentarys believe that it is impossible for you to film and not to influence or alter the events being filmed. What these films do is emulate the approach of the anthropologist: participant-observation. 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. The encounter between filmmaker and subject becomes a critical element of the film. Reflexive documentaries These documentarys don’t see themselves as a transparent window on the world; instead they draw attention to their own constructedness, and the fact that they are representations. They prompt us to “question the authenticity of documentary in general.” It is the most self-conscious of all the modes, and is highly skeptical of ‘realism.’ Performative documentaries These types of documentaries stress subjective experience and emotional response to the world. They are strongly personal, unconventional, perhaps poetic and/or experimental, and might include hypothetical enactments of 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. Performative documentaries often link up personal accounts or experiences with larger political or historical realities.
