Documentary Mini Task

A documentary is a video or audio recording documenting a true story or an interesting topic.

The purpose of an expository documentary is to inform the audience about a subject. Contains original and archive footage. Camera crew are invisible to the audience, tightly scripted often a voice over narration. An Inconvenient Truth is an example of an expository documentary because it relies on verbal commentary

Observational documentaries record people in their natural environment, aims for a greater degree of naturalness. An example of an observation documentary is ’16 and pregnant.’ This is a good example because it is filmed in their homes and is about there lives at that point in time, we watch them living their lives there and then.

In Interactive documentaries the filmmakers presence is fully acknowledged, almost emphasized. Become the character and author. The film maker may or may not take sides if there is conflict. There can be problems with interactive documentaries such as access to people and locations. Sometimes they resort to filming in secret which will obviously cause legal problems as you need legal permissions. Access and privacy can effect the production, you need to get wirtten permissions to interview people and places you want to use, if you are not allowed these permissions then you will have to pick a different location and people which could lead to a complete change to the production.  "Kurt and Courtney" is an example of an interactive documentary.

In a reflexive documentary the film makers acknowledges the presenter in front of the camera and provide a narrative to the documentary. Tend to be the most truthful as they focus on realism and try to show things how they actually happen without editing. An example of a reflexive documentary is 'Man with a movie camera'  A cameraman travels around a city with a camera slung over his shoulder. We rarely see any of the footage, the camera man is the act of shooting.

In a performative documentary the film crew creates many of the events and situations to be filmed by their own intervention. A lot of re-enactments. An example of a performative documentary is Danube Exodus (1999) by Peter Forgacs. In a performative documentary the use of re-enactments and dramatizations are used to show the viewers what really happens so they can visualize what is or was going on. Problems with this is that people may be confused whether or not the clip is real.