Types of Documentaries from Introduction to Documentary by Bill Nichols (2001)

^^Types of Documentaries from Introduction to^^

^^Documentary by Bill Nichols (2001):^^

• The Expository Mode
• The Poetic Mode
• The Observational Mode
• The Participatory Mode
• The Reflexive Mode
• The Performative Mode

==These six modes establish a loose framework of affiliation within different filmmakers’ work, they set up conventions that a film may adopt; and they provide specific expectations in the viewers on what type of documentary they are going to watch.==

%%The Expository Mode -Voice of God:%%

Example: The Century of the Self, Directed by Adam Curtis

• Most associated with Television News programming
• This mode is what we identify with documentaries. It emphasizes verbal commentary – often using a narrator. Addresses the spectator directly, with titles or voices that propose a perspective, advance an argument, or recount history
• The expository documentary goes back to the 1920s but remains highly influential today. Most television news and reality TV shows depend heavily on their quite dated conventions, as do almost all science and nature documentaries, biographies, etc.
• The Century of the Self is a 2002 British television documentary series by filmmaker Adam Curtis. It focuses on the work of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud, and PR consultant Edward Bernays. In episode one, Curtis says, "This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy”

%%The Observational Mode –Window on the World:%%

Example: Hoop Dreams (1994), Directed by Steve James, Edited by Steve James, Frederick Marx, and William Haugse

• Attempt to observe aspects of the historical world as they happen
• Typically have no voice-over commentary, no supplementary music or sound, no inter-titles, no historical re-constructions, no behavior repeated for the camera, and no interviews
• Social actors behave as if no filmmakers were there

%%The Participatory Mode:%%

Example: Life on the Edge (BBC, 2020), Louis Theroux

• The filmmaker appears in the film, making clear that they are also a participant, this gives the audience a sense of what it is like for the filmmaker to be in a given situation and how that situation alters as a result
• The participatory documentary took shape with the realization that filmmakers don’t need to disguise their close relationship with their subjects by telling stories or observing events that seemed to occur as if they were not there
• The difference between observation and participation is that observation camouflaged the actual presence and shaping influence of the filmmaker
• Since making his television debut on TV Nation in the mid-90s, journalist and filmmaker Louis Theroux has become synonymous with documentaries involving subcultures and people on the fringes of society. In the first episode of this career retrospective, Louis looks back at his earliest documentaries and explores how some people’s most fervent beliefs can bring them into conflict with mainstream society. Louis has always been drawn to those whose beliefs seem unusual, confused, or, in some cases, abhorrent

%%The Poetic Mode – Subjective Artistic Expression:%%

Example: San Soleil, Directed by Chris Marker, Edited by Chris Marker

• Stresses the lyrical, rhythmic and emotional aspects of the real world
• Sacrifices film conventions, for example, continuity editing, and a situated time and space, to explore associations between images, objects, and patterns
• Sans Soleil (Sunless") is a 1983 French documentary directed by Chris Marker, a meditation on the nature of human memory, showing the inability to recall the context and nuances of memory, and how, as a result, the perception of personal and global histories is affected

%%The Reflexive Mode:%%

Example: Stories We Tell (2012), Directed by Sara Polley, Edited by Michael Munn

• Brings awareness to the process of making a film
• Speaks not only about the subject matter but about the problems and issues of representing it
• From a formal perspective – reflexivity draws our attention to our assumptions and expectations about the documentary form itself
• From a political perspective – reflexivity points toward our assumptions and expectations about the world around us
• Both of these rely on techniques that attempt to shake us and break our engagement with the film so that we are forced to think about filmmaking as a process
• Involves Expository; Voice-of-God narration; Images, archive, reconstruction, graphics
• In “Stories We Tell” Sarah Polley interviews her father and brothers and sisters in order to tell the story about finding out the secrets of her own identity that she was the product of her mother's affair

%%The Performative Mode – Filmmaker as Participant:%%

Example: Super Size Me (2000), Directed by Morgan Spurlock, Edited by Stela Georgieva and Julie Bob Lambardi

• The performative mode of the documentary raises questions about what knowledge is. It sets out to demonstrate how the specificities of personal experience provide entry into an understanding of the more general processes at work in society. This is done by stressing the emotional complexity of experience from the perspective of the filmmaker
• Films primarily address the spectator calling for an emotional response from us that acknowledges an understanding of the event, more so than asking us to gain knowledge from it
• Spurlock's film follows a 30-day period during which he ate only McDonald's food. The film documents this lifestyle's drastic effect on Spurlock's physical and psychological well-being and explores the fast food industry's corporate influence, including how it encourages poor nutrition for its own profit

%%Biographical Mode:%%

Example: Whitney (2018), Director Kevin Macdonald, Editor Sam Rice -Edwards

• The documentary feature Whitney is an intimate, unflinching portrait of Houston and her family that probes beyond familiar tabloid headlines and sheds new light on the spellbinding trajectory of Houston's life
• Using never-before-seen archival footage, exclusive demo recordings, rare performances, audio archives and original interviews with the people who knew her best, Oscar-winning filmmaker Kevin Macdonald unravels the mystery behind "The Voice," who thrilled millions even as she struggled to make peace with her own troubled past

%%Historical Mode:%%

Example: When We Were Kings (1996), Director Leon Gast, Edited by Leon Gast, Taylor Hackford, Jeffrey Levy Hinte, and Keith Robins

• Is about the famous ‘’Rumble in the Jungle’’ heavyweight championship match between Muhammed Ali and George Foreman. The fight was held in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) on October 30, 1974