Documentary Modes and Realism

Documentary Modes and Realism

1. Reality

   • We tend to think of a documentary as non-fiction and through reality, and we frame what our expectations of documentary are.
   • Documentary is not entirely a reproduction of reality, more of a representation of the world we live in.
   • We judge a representation more by how it gives us pleasure about views of the world we know, and views of the world that are near to us.
   • Individual experience, Everyday Reality, Cultural Construction, Familiarity and Understanding, Experience through Senses

2. Realism

   • Film & TV forms are considered ‘realistic’ mediums because they tend to ‘re-present the audience’ with scenarios that are very similar to their life experiences, or ones they can relate to.
   • Important to distinguish between ‘realism’ and the real world; Process of Mediation
   • The realism we experience through film (and TV) depicts a verisimilitude – it is not ‘reality’.
   • Verisimilitude: “The quality or state of being verisimilar; the appearance of truth; probability; likelihood: as, the verisimilitude of a story.”
   • Realism: "a set of conventions of portrayal that, in a certain time and place, are able to pass themselves off as realistic." - John Ellis

3. Documentary

   • “The creative treatment of actuality” (John Grierson) – a definition which helped to further explain the genre after the earliest examples of film: ‘Actualities’
   • Every documentary has it’s own distinct cinematic ‘voice’ which acts as a style and then a signature.

4. Six Modes Of Representation

   • Bill Nichols (1991) argued that there are certain documentary modes. These often overlap, and many films will use a combination of these modes. They can act as sub-genres, but it is often hard to find ‘pure’ versions of these modes.
   • Observational Mode - Authentic in recording the real, presents itself as simply recording what happens, Long takes infer lack of interference of the ‘real’, Synced sound and lack of non-diegetic sound, (and therefore narration) creates an illusion of reality, Narrative pieced together of ‘overheard’ conversations in small segments of the ‘real’ stitched together to create a coherent argument, What the observer sees, we see; perhaps the filmmaker is interacting (or intruding) in the lives of others, meaning if we perceive them in a negative light, it’s through their own actions, fly-on-the-wall.
   • Participatory Mode -