Documentary Genres/style analysis

Expository

• Style created by a 'voice-of-god' - narration which is directly addresses the viewer.
• Voice over anchors the maining of the images being shown.
• Images illustrate what the narrator is saying.
• These documentaries are usually centered around a problem that needs solving.

Observational(fly-on-the-wall)

• This style began with the 'direct cinema' techniques.
• Lightweight camera equipment allowed crews to film right where the action was.
• Creating dramatic excitement.
• Avoids voice oversor commentary.
• Camera is as unobstrusive as possible.
• Close to a 'window on the world' idea.
• The audience is allowed to see an unmediated reality.
• Indirect address to the audience.
• Diegetic sound.
• Relatively long takes, demonstrating nothing has been cut/edited out.
• Focus on a specific individual, during crisis or drama.
• Event offend unfold in front if the camera.
• Led to a greater interest in the personal and the intimate.

Problems with the style :
Im possible to create a genuine 'window on the world', focus on personal issues means many are superficial and apolitical, they are edited like other documentaries so they are full of bias and subjectivity.

Docusoaps

• Docusoaps are a hugely popular hybrid.
• Long-running documentary series.
• Fictional soap opera follows a group of characters chosen for their quirkiness and entertainment value.
• Docusoaps have been based in institutions.
• They were made possible by lightweight camers equipment.
• Have an episodic, soap-like structure.
• Several interviewing plot lines.
• There are a relationship between characters.
• If the characters play up to the camera, we know it is part of the style.
• Everyone accepts the breaking of the natuatlist illusion.
• The 'shallowness' of the genre has prompted criticism.
• The intrest of the genre is ordinary but they create and promote 'stars' because of the success.
• The genre doesnt tell us anything about society
• Sometimes the characters become nationally know personalities.
• Audience get to know the characters.
• nothing serious happens to the main characters so the genre remains toungue-in-cheek.

Reality TV

• Factual TV characterised by a high degree of hybridsation between different programmes.
• Referred to as 'infotainment'
• Combination of entertainment and the provision of useful information.
• Often in prime-time and re-and-post-watershed slots
• 'Reality TV' hs become used to describe the most high-impact of the new factual televsion.
• A mix of 'raw', 'authentic' material with the seriousness of an information programme.

Reality TV is characterised by:

Camcorder, surveillance or observational camera work; first-person or eye-witness testimony; studio or to-camera links and commentary from presenters.

• Popular term to describe programmes that use 'ordinary' people filmed in a first-person or confessional style.
• Unmediated and direct as possible

Interactive

• Acknowledges the presence of the camera crew.
• Generally in the form of a interview.
• The audience is constantly reminded of the exsistence of the multiple viewpoints.
• 'Voice of God'
• Seen as being more honest becuase there is no attempt to disguise the camera and crew.
• Manipulation of the audience.
• Interviewer sets the agenda by asking 'loaded' questions and choosing who to interview.
• Interactive mode is clearly as constructed as other genre of documentary.

Drama-documentary

• Reconstruction and re-enactments are as old as documentary itself.
• Reconstruction was done patly because of the technology avaible at the time.
• Gained new recognition in the 1990's.
• Use by television journalists.
• Arouse much debate , because they are evn more open to bias and interpretation than other documentaries.
• Factual programmes.
  

'docudrama' - a fictional story that uses the techniques of documentary to reinforce its claim for realism e.g. The office.
'dramadoc' - a documentary reconstruction of the actaul events using techniques taken from fiction cinema e.g. Historical documentaries.

Current affairs

• Journalist-led programmes whose aim is to addres the news and the political agenda in greater depth than news bulletins.
• Emphasis is on the investigatory and the political, seeking out atrocity and political scandal.
• Organised around journalistic report.
• Reporters frequently appear in vision but there may be a voiceover by the 'voice of the programme'.

Documentary dilemmas

• Documentary footage is rarely broadcast unedited and once they have given permission to film, documentary subjectss are in the film-maker's hands.
• Film-maker balances their resonsibility to those who appear in the programme with their legal obligations.
  
• The relationships between programme makers and their subjects varies; they can be reporting on their subjects, investigating them, or observing them; they could be interpeting what they do and have to say, or arguing their subject's cause.