Bill Nichols Six Modes of Presentation

1. Bill Nichols’ Six
Modes of
Doecumentary
{ Brian Thompson,
Laura Zalewski

2. Grouping the Voices of
the Documentary
 Each documentary has its own voice
 There are six modes of representation that function like sub-genres
of the documentary film genre itself
 Each mode arises through a growing sense if dissatisfaction among
filmmakers with a previous mode
 The six modes are:
 Poetic
 Expository
 Participatory
 Observational
 Reflexive
 Performative

3. The Poetic Mode
 Stresses mood, tone, and effect more than displays of
knowledge or acts or persuasion
 Began as a way of representing reality in terms of a series of
fragments, subjective impressions, incoherent acts, and loose
associations
 Draws on historical world for raw material, transforms the
material in distinctive ways
 Moves away from the objective reality of a situation to grasp at
an inner truth

4. Example of Poetic Mode
 Robert Flaherty’s Man of Aran
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc1SkNsYHig

5. The Expository Mode
 Addresses the viewer directly, through either a voice of God
commentary (speaker heard but not seen) or through a voice of
authority commentary (speaker is heard and seen)
 Voice of God commentary is useful because it has the capacity to
judge actions in the historical world without being caught up in them
 The tone of the commentator strives to build up a sense of credibility
through qualities such as distance, neutrality, disinterestedness, or
omniscience
 Relies heavily on an informing logic carried by the spoken word
 Emphasizes objectivity and well supported argument

6. Expository Mode Continued
 Commentary serves to organize the images and make sense of
them
 With spoken word as the emphasis of expository documentaries,
images serve a supporting role, illustrating, illuminating, evoking,
or acting in counterpoint to what is said
 Editing in this mode serves to maintain the continuity of the
spoken argument. Known as evidentiary editing
 The ideal mode for conveying information or mobilizing support
through a film

7. Example of Expository
Documentary
 Nature Documentaries
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN3afhibu
xU

8. Observational Mode
 Mode in which all forms of control that a filmmaker might exercise over
staging, arrangement, or composition of a scene are sacrificed to observe
the lived experience spontaneously
 Exemplified by the Direct Cinema Movement
 Attempted to accurately capture objective reality w/filmmaker as natural
observer
 Nothing is staged, so camera has to rush to keep up with the action, can
cause the footage to be rough or shaky
 Filmmaker is supposed to film the action as if he were a fly on the wall, do
nothing but observe

9. Observational Mode
Continued
 Films in this mode have no voice over commentary, supplementary
music, sound effects, intertitles, historical reenactments, or interviews
 This mode raises some ethical questions like:
 Is the filmmaker intruding on the behavior of others?
 Does the filmmaker seek out others to represent because they possess
qualities that may fascinate viewers for the wrong reasons?
 Example of Observational Documentary is Frederick Wiseman’s
“Hospital” (1970).
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_jZRlh5QTc