1. Six Different
Types Of
Documentaries

2. Poetic Documentaries
This sort of documentary was first produced in the 1920’s. Unlike many other types of
documentaries poetic documentaries allow the audience to interoperate what they
are seeing and allows there imagination to take over. It is open for them to take in
what they are seeing and make judgement for themselves. They tend to have no voice
over's , just sounds and music both dieagetic and non dieagetic. From the use of
editing of scenes, images and clips it creates a story which you can follow, but things
aren't as always simple as what they seem. The use of music is a huge factor in which
changes your mood and tone whilst the story is being told.
Here is a poetic documentary called Baraka
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH_N_ca27dU&feature=related

3. Expository Documentary
This documentary is much more opinionated, and direct. It will generally have a voice over
of the clips shown and will narrate what's going on in the documentary. Generally
influence how you think and feel through out. In this type of documentary the narrator
will speak whilst looking at the camera to make eye contact with their audience watchers.
This is because they will be generally speaking in a persuasive form of tone and put across
their opinion on what’s been saw. Therefore they are trying to persuade the audience to
think and feel how they are feeling because they think we should all feel the same as
them. In most of expository documentaries it will be a male voice because in the media
industry it is seen as the ‘voice of God’ as God is seen as male and all powerful.
Panorama
Euro 2012: Stadiums of Hate
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01jk4vr/Panorama_Euro_2012_Stadiums_of_Hate
/

4. Observational Documentary
This documentary is to try and show how people really live and react to situations without
being set up. Its the natural environment of things, what ever is being shown is real and a real
situation. They try and film what every they can sometimes it leads to poor camera shots which
seems less professional however it is just showing how things really are.
This sort of documentary isn't to try and turn and sway peoples opinions as such but to give
them a wider understanding and an insight to something they might have judged before looked
into. Its job is to simply observe a lived life with a minimum of interruptions. By doing this the
audience gets a real insight into the life instead of a fake and set up one. Filmmakers who
worked in this sub-genre often saw the poetic mode as too abstract and the expository
mode as too didactic
Channel four documentary My
Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
http://www.channel4.com/program
mes/big-fat-gypsy-
weddings/4od#3325442

5. Reflexive Documentary
This type of documentary is awareness of the process. Its mode acknowledges the constructed
nature of the documentary and shows it to the people conveying to the audience that its not
the necessarily truth but a reconstruction of what the truth is. The audience is aware that what
is being shown is not the whole truth but it is the mode of the documentary. Reflective
documentries don't see themselves as a transparent window on what the world can see but
instead they draw attention to their own contractedness and the way they are represented.
The Man With The Movie Camera Dziga
Vertov (1929)
http://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=8Fd_T4l2qaQ

6. Performative Documentary
A performative documentary shows the emotions and subjective aspects of its documentary
and shows all different types of ideas to create its context. This means its open for the
audience to interoperate what they want and take different meanings from what's being
shown. These types are often autobiographical. They are very personal and unconventional
and they can include hypothetical events to make the audience experience what it may be like
for us to possess a certain perspective on the world that is not our own. They can have a
poetic feel to them so can confuse the audience.
Here is an example: Supersize me Morgan
Spurlock
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=mQj2u4ap5bo

7. Participatory Mode
Unlike the documentary mode of observational, the participatory mode engages between the
film maker and the issue/ subject in the documentary. The filmmaker himself becomes a big
part in the events being recorded. The filmmakers involvement in the documentary is
acknowledged and is often celebrated. Participatory documentries believe that it is
impossible for the act of filmmaking to not influence or alter the events of being filmed.
Not only is the filmmaker part of the film, we also get a sense of how the situations in the film
are affected or altered by the presence of the film maker.
Martin Bashir: Michael Jackson's "Secret World"
part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsETlx9BCio