Expository Documentary

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Expository Documentary

• Expository documentary is a mode of documentary
  which focuss on social problems within the
  world.
• It emphasises rhetorical content.

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• It usually uses a voiceover (can be god like)
  which is used to drive the narrative.
• This is a much more spoken in relation to poetic
  who leaves the audience to gather the information
  via visual interpretation.
• Nichols described the editing in expository
  documentaries as evidentiary editing, a
  practice in which expositional images
  ...illustrate, illuminate, evoke, or act in
  counterpoint to what is saidwe take our cue
  from the commentary and understand the images as
  evidence or demonstration (Nichols 2001)

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Example of Expository

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vwnjx6KETmi4 The
  inconvenient truth.

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Observational
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• Unlike the content of poetic documentary, or the
  rhetoricalness of expositional documentary,
  observational documentaries tend to simply
  observe, allowing viewers to reach there own
  conclusions.
• The camera is unobtrusive. Allowing the events to
  occur naturally.
• Pure observational documentarians proceeded under
  some bylaws no music, no interviews, no scene
  arrangement of any kind, and no narration.
• The fly-on-the-wall perspective is championed,
  while editing processes utilize long takes and
  few cuts.

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Example of Observational

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vzNNSJcGnRNw- Big
  brother

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Poetic Documentary

• Poetic documentaries typically show excessive
  amounts of creative camera work and experimental
  editing (montages) in order to connect or
  translate a mood or emotion onto the audience.
• Poetic Documentaries often have a style of
  editing that offers discontinuity in graphic
  qualities, violations of the 180 degree rule, and
  the creation of impossible spatial matches.
• This is Sergei Eisensteins theory of montage. He
  states that "A Dialectic Approach to Film Form"
  when he noted that montage is "the nerve of
  cinema", and that "to determine the nature of
  montage is to solve the specific problem of
  cinema".
• Soviet montage theory shows an approach to
  understanding and creating cinema that relies
  heavily upon editing (montage is French for
  "putting together").
• An example of this that is commonly used in
  filmic documentaries such as Robert Flahertys
  Nanook of the North, is juxapostional editing.
• This style of editing is the process of showing
  one thing and another which are unrelated and
  through combining the two or making a sequence,
  creates a new meaning.

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Expository Documentary

• Documentary forefather John Grierson offers an
  explanation for the move away from poetic
  documentary, claiming filmmakers, got caught up
  in social propagandaWe got on to the social
  problems of the world, and we ourselves deviated
  from the poetic line. (Sussex 1972) The
  expositional mode diverges sharply from the
  poetic mode in terms of visual practice and
  story-telling devices, by virtue of its emphasis
  on rhetorical content, and its goals of
  information dissemination or persuasion.
• Narration is a distinct innovation of the
  expositional mode of documentary. Initially
  manifesting as an omnipresent, omniscient, and
  objective voice intoned over footage, narration
  holds the weight of explaining and arguing a
  films rhetorical content. Where documentary in
  the poetic mode thrived on a filmmakers
  aesthetic and subjective visual interpretation of
  a subject, expositional mode collects footage
  that functions to strengthen the spoken
  narrative. This shift in visual tactics gives
  rise to what Nichols refers to as evidentiary
  editing, a practice in which expositional images
  ...illustrate, illuminate, evoke, or act in
  counterpoint to what is saidwe take our cue
  from the commentary and understand the images as
  evidence or demonstration (Nichols 2001) The
  engagement of rhetoric with supporting visual
  information founded in the expositional mode
  continues today and, indeed, makes up the bulk of
  documentary product. Film features, news stories,
  and various television programs lean heavily on
  its utility as a device for transferring
  information.

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Poetic Documentary

• Continuity editing is not used, which means that
  a sense of specific location is lost.
• Emphasis of visual association, tone or rhythm -
  Images are juxtaposed to create meaning
  Kuloshov effect.
• Descriptive passages are often used.
• Actors often dont become full characters.
• Demonstrates different possibilities in the
  transfer of knowledge.
• However, there is a lack of specificity in poetic
  documentaries.
• Examples of Poetic documentary makers Ivens,
  Bunuel and Dali, Fischinger, Menken, Flaherty.
• Example Man of Aran (Flaherty, 1934)

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Joris Ivens
Robert Flaherty
Man of Aran (Flaherty, 1934)
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Interactive / Participatory Documentary

• How it came to be When more mobile equipment was
  available, filmmakers could make their
  perspective more evident they become part of
  the events recorded.
• This mode engages with individuals more directly
  whilst not using exposition interview styles.
• Archive footage is often used to avoid
  re-enactments / staging and voice of God
  commentaries.
• However, it relies a lot on history and can be
  too intrusive in it methods.
• Examples of directors Rouch, de Antonio, Connie
  Field, Michael Moore, Broomfield.
• Example Kurt and Courtney (Broomfield, 1988)

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Connie Field
Michael Moore
Kurt and Courtney (Broomfield, 1988)
13
Reflective Documentary

• Makers of Reflective documentaries consider the
  quality of the documentary, they consider its
  process and its implications on their audiences.
• For example In Dziga Vertovs Man with a Movie
  Camera (1929,)
• He has footage of his brother and wife
  shooting footage and editing, respectively. The
  goal of shooting these images was, to increase
  the audiences understanding of the process of how
  film is constructed.
• Another example is Ruby Mitchells ...No
  Lies (1974,)
• which was different to Dzigas man with a
  movie camera, as it questioned the
• observational mode, Rubys no lies
  commented on observational techniques and their
  capacity for capturing authentic truths. In this
  way, the reflexive mode of documentary often
  functions as its own regulatory board, policing
  ethical and technical boundaries within
  Documentary film itself.

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Reflective Mode

• (Vertov, Godmilow, Raul Ruiz) 
•   Reflective mode makes the convention
  representation more obvious and apparent, it also
  challenges the impression of reality which other
  three modes normally conveyed unproblematically. 
  
•   Reflective mode is the most self-aware mode -
  its reflexivity helps audience acknowledge how
  other modes claim to construct "truth" through
  documentary practice.
•   It uses many of devices of other modes but sets
  them on edge so viewer attends to device as well
  as the effect. 

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Performance Mode

• (Resnais, Julien, Riggs)
• 1.Performance mode is like a Reflexive
  Documentary, it also raises questions about
  knowledge
• 2. Performance mode emphasizes personal
  experience (in tradition of poetry, literature)
• 3. Performance mode tries to show the
  audience how understanding such personal
  knowledge can help us understand more general
  processes of society
• 4. performance mode mixes elements of
  different documentary modes to achieve a link
  between subjective knowledge/understanding of the
  world, and more general understandings, i.e.
  historical ones.