Introduction to Documentary

There are different sub genres when it comes to factual productions:


• Documentary
• Factual Entertainment
• Specialist Factual
• Ducodrama
• Docusoaps
• Scripted or Formatted Reality






Figure 1 (Guzman, S. 2013)




In order to make our documentary, we first need to understand them. Documentary is factual film about ‘real life’. Aufderheide explains that we “expect that a documentary will be a fair and honest representation of somebody’s experience of reality”. (Aufderheide. P, 2007). A documentary normally has a narrative structure as shown in Figure 1. Sticking to this structure keeps your audience interested and creates a narrative that can be easily followed. Because of this, every genre of film uses this structure. Documentary has been around for many years and been “defined and redefined over the course of time, both by makers and by viewers” (Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction, Aufderheide. P, 2007. p. 6). There are sub genres within documentary which experiment with how the viewer thinks and allows the director and DoP to be creative with how they tell the story.


· Poetic documentaries – “They focus on experiences, images and showing the audience the world through a different set of eyes. Abstract and loose with narrative, the poetic sub-genre can be very unconventional and experimental in form and content. The ultimate goal is to create a feeling rather than a truth.”


· Expository documentaries – “A sharp contrast to poetic, expository documentaries aim to inform and/or persuade — often through omnipresent ‘Voice of God’ narration over footage devoid of ambiguous or poetic rhetoric.”


· Observational documentaries – “they aim to simply observe the world around them… The style attempts to give voice to all sides of an issue by giving audiences first hand access to some of the subject’s most important (and often private) moments.”


· Participatory documentaries – “Participatory Documentaries, while having elements of Observational and Expository, include the filmmaker within the narrative. This could be as minor as the filmmaker’s voice being heard behind the camera, prodding subjects with questions or cues — all the way to the filmmaker directly influencing the major actions of the narrative.”


· Reflexive documentaries – “Reflexive Documentaries are similar to Participatory in that they often include the filmmaker within the film — however, unlike Participatory, they make no attempts to explore an outside subject. Rather, they focus solely on themselves and the act of them making the film.”


· Performative documentaries – “Performative Documentaries are an experimental combination of styles used to stress subject experience and share an emotional response to the world. They often connect personal accounts or experience juxtaposed with larger political or historical issues.” (Aldredge, J. 2016).

For our documentary ‘Diverse Greenwich’, we wanted to do more of a performative documentary so we are focusing on someone’s experience as it is about students moving to Greenwich to study from abroad.

Diverse Greenwich:

https://vimeo.com/194350166