Types of documentary

Types of documentary

Expository Documentary (Jeppe)

This type of documentary attempts to expose either a person or a topic. This is a classic type of documentaries and involves a picture playing with someone narrating over it or explaining the story as it goes along. Main conventions of expository documentaries are to base them on facts and personal opinions, the video will involve rhetorical questions in order to try and persuade the audience. They often refer to a specific historic event or person, the commentator will speak directly to the audience meanwhile interviews or exclusive pictures are shown of the event or person.

Observational Documentary (Taylor)

For this type of documentary the equipment used can be informal, such as the use of handheld cameras. Usually there are no interviews in this type of documentary and also no voice overs. long takes are used in this type. an example of this would be MTV’s teen cribs

Reflexive and participatory Documentary (Abdul)

Participatory-This type of documentary employs interviews as testimonies from documentary subjects

Reflexive-This type considers the quality of the documentary itself by demystifying its process and considering the implications. In these types of documentaries they usually are involved with experiments where the viewer is just as interested about how they constructed the film than the actual content of it.  

Poetic Documentary (Maya)

Poetic documentaries are known for having the music develope the tone and mode of the film,music plays a key role in these types of documents as they are usually personal to the people involved as well as the target audience.it emphieses some ascpets of life via music and other things such as camera angles and the editing, this is seen as an artistic way of documenting.