Documentary Mini Task

A Documentary is a ‘real life’ video that shows information over a particular individual, activity or story.  This can be done in many different ways, ranging from a straight list of facts to a surreal mixture of video footage.

There are five main types of Documentary:

Expository Documentary- This kind of documentary shows a series of images, with a voice over giving them meaning; this narrator gives the information directly without much bias, as it serves to give a broad idea about the chosen subject. An example of this is ‘Valley of Dolls’ by Ayana Tsukimi. This is a short piece about a woman who creates life-sized dolls and places them around her hometown. Videos and images of the dolls appear on the screen, whilst the narrator speaks over the top explaining what is happening.  The people in the video are never addressed by the narrator when they are shown; they are simply talking to the camera.

A scene from 'Valley of Dolls' 

Observational Documentary- This style of documentary presents a ‘slice of life’ segment about the subject, showing videos of them. The director is never involved, so the audience is left to make up their own mind about it. This style tends to involve interviews and commentary from the people filmed. The Reinvention of Normal by Liam Saint Pierre- Dominic Wilcox, this is a observational documentary about a man who creates wild inventions to help with his everyday life and just for his own interest. The documentary features interviews with him, members of his family and friends. They are interviewed without anyone else there, just talking to the camera.

Opening of 'the Reinvention of Normal'

Interactive Documentaries- the filmmakers is present, talking about the subject and being fully on camera. It's often quite biased in opinions, and the filmmaker will sometimes argue with interviewees. Louis Theroux does this a lot in his work, where he challenges other people's thinking.

Poster for Louis Theroux's films

A reflexive Documetary: This is where the filmmaker is involved in the narration, it tends to focus on how the documentary is constructed just as much as what is presented.  Nick Broomfield's 'Driving me Crazy' does this, focussing more on the actual creation of the shots and what is shown.

Poster for Nick Broomfield

Performative Documentary: This style is very different, focussing greatly on how it is shown. Often these styles of documentary seem to be quite surreal or unnatural, placed in odd orders with music. An example of this is 'The Econfessional' by Tom Smith. This documentary looks at the stories of several different people, but cuts all of their interviews together to make it sound like one ongoing story.

Scene from 'the Econfessional

In my own work, I plan to do a observational documentary as i feel this is the one that will reflect my subject most accurately.
In Filmmaking, I feel that you should give the full story, if you want to argue your point of view then it should happen on camera with the knowledge that people may disagree.