Documentary Genre

Unit 27 LO2 – Documentary Genre – Help

Expository

Expository Documentaries, is a nonfiction film that emphasizes verbal commentary and argumentative logic. Expository documentaries use a voice of God narration, for example: As narrator, Queen Latifah is the voice of authority for Arctic Tale. Direct presentation of facts

Can include all kinds of evidence

An Inconvenient Truth is an example of an expository documentary because it relies on verbal commentary and argumentative logic to make a strong case for prevention of global warming.

Observational

Observational style documentaries have, No narration, minimal voiceover, sometimes not even interviews - just scene after scene of raw footage strung together in long takes, real time, synch-sound, in which the characters and their often-turbulent lives drive the film. You will almost never see or hear the filmmakers.

Armadillo is a purist observational masterpiece, the story of some young Danish soldiers and their platoon deployed on a tour of Afghanistan, no voiceover, no narration, not even any interviews.

Interactive

Interactive documentaries are often a personal project, a good example of this is ‘’Bear 71’ a documentary made by the executive producer of Bear 71. His name is Loc Dao, and he is the narrator throughout the documentary, this documentary is the 2012 interactive National Film Board of Canada web documentary. The Documentary is about a Grizzly bear in Banff National Park, who was collared at the age of three and was watched her whole life via trail cameras in the park.

Essayistic

An essayistic documentary is made very simply; it is simple because it is as easy as documenting on an essay. Uses ‘first person’ address, these documentaries include personal opinions and stories from a personal viewpoint. These documentaries sometimes can be objective towards a subject but does not try to be. A good example of this is, ‘The Forgotten Space’, it follows container cargo aboard ships, barges, trains and trucks, listening to workers, engineers, planners, politicians, and those marginalized by the global transport system. This Documentary uses descriptive documenting, interviews, archive stills and footage, clips from old movies. The result is an essayistic, visual documentary about one of the most important processes s that affects us today

Experimental

Experimental documentaries are usually made from a personal account; the filmmakers are experimenting with different forms of media to get a different ‘unique’ style of documentary for the audience. Also an experimental documentary is an artistic practice . Experimental documentaries have no limits at all they can be about anything, so there are a huge variety of experimental documentaries. One documentary ‘Mayhem’ by Abigail Child is about social order and how sexuality flows in an atmosphere of sexual tension, danger, violence, and glamour. Its is clearly a experimental documentary because of its vastly odd topic.

Performative

Performative documentaries are a mix of drama and documentary, they rely on recreations to assist the story behind the documentary.  A good example of this is, ‘Touching The Void’, the true story of two climbers and their perilous journey up the west face of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in 1985. All the footage is reenacted and there is a little bit of narration with the footage this also assists the storyline.