What is a Documentary?

The term 'Documentary' was coined in 1926 by John Grierson. In the 1930s, him and his team at the General Post Office (GPO) were able to define it as "The creative treatment of actuality". The purpose of a documentary is to document a past, present event with evidience and may question what could happen in the future. Modern Documentaries will use actual footage, commentary, interviews and reconstructions to support various sides of the arguement. However, in the time John Grierson defined them, they were made for cinema audiences because television had not yet been invented and were supposed to boost the morale of audiences in war times. Many of these documentaries would have had government interst invested into them. Documentaries are often problematic and address the main question of the program early on. This is so many other sub questions can be asked during the middle of program. This is one of the factors that allows the audience can make their own judgement at the end.

It is important that an audience is always able to question a documentary which claims to be "real". Some documentaries use reconstructions of fake events that could happen in the future as a way to advance an audience's judgement. Sometimes, this also speads fear into an audience but the viewer may be intruiged enough to watch the film until it reaches its conclusion. As John Connor stated in 1995, documentaries must still be respected for their factual acount of past events. "What distinguishes a documentary is the portrayal of the recorded sounds and images of actuality".

The BBC's 'Panorama' is a well known type of documentary and is often studied by other production teams because it offers of view, however serious the issues in which it tries to address. Panorama's most well known method of exploring 'the creative treatment of actuality' is by sending undercover reporters to the location in question. Along with narration and interviews, this is the program's key method of trying to get the audience to make their own judgement and creates a point of view.

Other documentaries use reconstructions as one way to ask the audience 'what if' and/or 'why' questions. British documentaries such as Panorama are well known for their methods of creativity. However, many can be linked in together by what the filmmaker Diane Tammes once said about documentaries which claim to be 'true'. "Truth is what you actually come away with at the end of the film. I mean it's your truth that you're seeing. Everybody who makes a film puts their own truth onto the screen". This means that all documentaries are faked to a certain extent because of the camera angles and the editing.

Some people argue whether a topical program can still be considered a documentary if it is creative. All documentary makers agree that to support an argument, there should be sound, recorded images and elements of actual reality to support those areas of which could be considered 'false'. Current affairs programs are considered half way between documentaries and the news. If they are any longer than 30 minutes then they must be thought of as a documentary. They are also on a much shorter production deadline in comparison to documentaries.

Of course, TV scheduling is vital. For example, a documentary which largely focuses on Christmas at a department store would gain little attention during the summer. Some documentaries that are aired on TV in the UK are aired after the watershed (9pm) because of the strong language and sometimes nudity. Other documentaries aired for the first time on the BBC or ITV are never shown on a Saturday night because this is when viewers like to watch entertainment programs such as 'Strictly Come Dancing' or 'The X-Factor'. They are often first aired on a Monday or Tuesday and then re-aired the next Thursday or Friday. It should be noted that if a television channel has to re-schedule their programs at short notice, then documentaries are often the first to be cut, particularly if it is a repeated broadcast. This is because compared to other genres, documentaries are much less popular.

John Corner of Liverpool University noted some of the codes and conventions of documentaries:

OBSERVATION: This is when the camera becomes the eyewitness to some of the events taking place. For example, when it is placed in a street, it is set to record many people walking past obliviously. This is much better to help the audience imagine they are in the concerned area of the documentary. Often, narration will be used as a way of linking the observations relevence to the problem.

INTERVIEW: Documentaries on television rely heavily on interviews. Sometimes pictures and archive footage is dubbed over to make sense and anchor what is going on. Some documentaries use an interview technique known as 'Vox Pops'. This comes from the latin phrase vox populi, simply translating to 'voice of the people'. They are used to provide a snapshot of public opinion when they are given a particular topic to answer questions about. Often, there will be little footage taken of the questions being answered because the people asked are new to interviews, so they may be nervous about whether they get to see themselves on televison later on. Interviewers don't ask people many questions in Vox Pops for this reason.

DRAMATISATION: All documentaries use a sense of dramatisation. This is when the audience is an eyewitness to the events unfolding on screen. Sometimes, this is done by reconstruction, perhaps with the narration of industry experts who are related to the problem.

MISE EN SCENE: Mise en Scene is always used to advance the arguement. It always has relevence to the problems covered in the documentay. Camera shots of related locations are a common feature.

EXPOSITION: The exposition is when a documentary features the line of an arguement which has a message made up of description and/or commentary.

Infotainment is a form of documentary, although they are much more closely related to current affairs programs. They are often democratic and try to make things better for everyone concerned. A very well known program which did this was Ken Loach's 1966 film 'Cathy Come Home'. This documentary resulted in improved conditions for the homeless because of the widespread attention and publicity it generated. Therefore, this shows how powerful documentaries can be to an audience and questions whether it is right for them to always be the first genre of programs which are cut when TV scheduling has to change.

However, documentaries rarely question the deeper organisation and the fairness of society. For example, when documentaries about the killings by James Bulger are shown, films and popular culture are blamed for his influences. This is the film's own child's play, chosen over neglect that the child received from their parents.Dennis O'Rourke once spoke saying "It is critical that film makers be rid of the fantasy that the documentary can be unproblematic representations of reality and truth can be conveniently dispensed". Within documentaries, ideas of truth and reality can be conflicting at times. For example, when news broke about the then international monetary fund (IMF) chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn's sexual assault scandal, more women came forward and made claims about him. These were later proven to be false claims and were just made so the women could make money by selling fake stories. John Corner believes that evidence rather than truth would help this issue. He states that recording technologies on record snapshots of the physical world we live in and can be used as evidence of actuality over reality. In support of the exposition, this evidence can then strengthen the whole documentary. Ideas of truth and reality can be conflicting at times. Biased documentaries are often considered bad documentaries by critics because they only focus on one side of the arguement after asking the main question of the documentary. There are, however, documentaries which are considered ratings winners. Documentaries that are like this often focus subjects such as sex, violence as well as law and order.

Many of these topics are thought of as delicate to talk about by viewers and if they are not presented in the correct way by televison networks, they may receive complaints from its relevant audience as a result. The audience's reaction, however, is part of a three way process within in making a documentary. The other two parts include who the documentary is aimed at and what is featured within the documentary.

Some people would consider reality TV programs such as 'Big Brother' a documentary. However, it does not fully fit in with the codes and conventions of documentaries. It is true that there are cameras watching every movement in the house and the program is narrated so that documentations can be made. Also, the program only contains several minor expositions rather than one major exposition. Therefore, we must call this a 'loose' type of documentary.

Types of Documentary

Fully Narrated

There is a direct address from the "voice of God" narrator off screen. Wildlife Documentary narrators such as David Attenbourogh define and justify the actions which appear on screen, as animals are unable to speak the same language as humans.

Fly on the Wall

The name 'Fly on the Wall' makes sense with some imagination. If you have a fly in a room, it watches the events unfold without everyone acknowledging it's presence. In terms of documentaries, the fly is the observational camera, aiming to witness controversy. Editing in a fly on the wall is important as it defines the behavior of subjects to audience.

Mixed Documentary

This type of documentary is referred to as mixed because of its approach to interviews, narrative and observation. The narration is from inside the scene and is spoken in a similar style to that of news reports. It is vital to mention that mixed documentaries represent objective reality and not just selective construction. Sometimes, they are self-reflective, meaning that you will see the filmmaker in it. By an audience drawing attention to a mixed documentary, the subject's loss is realised.

Docudrama

A documentary drama (or docudrama, for short) are reenactments of an event that actually happened. However, they are often misleading to viewers and can only ever hope to deliver fiction.

Docusoaps

Docusoaps do not fully explore a central topic. The small production team follows the daily lives of people of a certain sociological background and the final film is presents to an audience as though they are eve's dropping. They have a UK origin and they were very cheap to make at first but the modern popularity of this genre means that they are a little more expensive. Steven Barnett says that the watering down of documentaries in sub genres such as docusoaps has had an impact on British culture in what is called Disneyfication.

A common narrative

Beginning

This is when the central question of the documentary is posed to the audience. A common feature in the beginning of a documentary is to see cutaways, fast paced action, archive footage, narration and occasionally some Vox Pops.

Middle

The documentary must present the majority of it's knowledge of the subject here after heavy research during the pre-production stage. It is essential for the conflict to take place here. This allows creative documentary techniques which develop a fully apparent exposition. Appropriate music beds and sound effects are important at this stage because in some minor ways they can help influence a relevant argument on an individual viewer's final judgement. When interviews are shown on screen, the documentary is edited so that only the answer to the question is heard rather than question being asked. The person being interviewed does not look at the camera. Instead they ignore the camera and just face the person interviewing them.

End

This is when the documentary will present a conclusion to the events discussed. A final recap and summary is presented to the audience. This is to allow the audience to make their own final judgement.