ALEX COOKE

Types of Documentaries Research

Fully Narrated

A fully narrated documentary has a voice over the documentary to guide the audience to gain a better understanding of what is going on. Fully narrated documentaries often us direct address and the voice over goes along with the visuals that the audience is seeing; meaning that everything is based around the visuals. Fully narrated documentaries use the voice of 'God' and so people take what they hear as the truth.

An example would be Planet Earth.

Fly on the Wall

Fly on the wall documentaries use cinema verite which captures what seems like a natural setting to the audience. A fly on the wall documentary is mainly observational and there is little commentary or narration. This type of documentary is filmed as and when it happens and is thus not staged. However, it is down to the editing that can give a final meaning to a situation as you are actually only seeing what the views of the creator of the documentary and so it cannot be taken as complete truth and hence has a few negative points.

Self-Reflexive

Within a self reflexive documentary the documentary maker or creator talks to the camera to try to draw the attention of the audience. Self reflexive documentaries have many negatives and are often said to being confusing to an audience as they can be said to be drawing attention to themselves for publicity. Additionally they have also been criticised for the documentary being about the person rather than the subject or the content that they are supposed to be talking about.

Docu-Drama

A docu-drama is a re-enactment of real life events as they happened for example 9/11. However although docu-drama's claim to relive the truth, some critics often claim that they can only ever hope to deliver fiction because they cant really know what went on or how people acted or felt unless they have done extensive and meticulous research.

Docu-Soap

Docu-soaps originated in the UK and within a docu-soap it follows a group of people around. There is a lot of dispute over whether a docu-soap is actually a documentary or not. However, documentaries are based on eavesdropping but are extremely popular both with the audience and documentary makers as they require no cast, very little crew and are cheap to make.