Contextual

Throughout our documentary classes, we've been having screenings of documentary films that fit in each of, what you'd call, the 'Five Modes of Documentary'. Essentially, these are the (sub-)genres of the documentary film so it helps to differentiate them and to put them in more defined groups. Like every genre, however, sometimes they like to overlap, creating hybrids, making for a more interesting watch.

We have:

• Expository;
• Observational;
• Participatory/Interactive;
• Reflexive;
• and Performative

In Expository, we want to be persuaded into believing everything that we are being fed. In order to achieve this, the conventions used is a voice of God-like narrator enforcing a direct mode of address to engage the audience. This method of address helps to really involve the audience, allowing them to really delve into the film and think about it. There are a great deal of different research and evidence sources incorporated in the film, such as images, archival video footage, radio clips, etc.

   Essentially what this type of documentary wants to do, is to expose the subject that they're dealing with. I've been forced to sit and watch so many UFO programmes to know exactly that they're trying to 'expose' the truth of alien life and what have you, attempting to convince everyone watching. Don't get me wrong; they're actually all pretty interesting. The series Ancient Aliens uses many of these conventions for expository, interviewing a number of authors, scientists, ufologists, and historians among many others to really put across their point, providing as much evidence as possible to back up their points that they want their demographic to really believe and consider for themselves.

Observational is something you'd get on reality TV all the time. Maybe even more so on YouTube when its users videotape their friends being stupid. It captures reality in its purest form and, where there are generally no interviews in solid observational films, obtaining what the subjects do, completely naturally, is an excellent way of learning something new. It's fascinating. We are quietly observing the goings on of the subjects at hand.

Participatory, also known as interactive, borrows from the previous forms of documentary. To state the obvious, the crew interacts with the subject but ensures that the audience is completely aware of this fact. They are generally light hearted in their interviews, ensuring that their subjects are as comfortable as can be and are free to be as natural as they possibly can. This lightheartedness helps to let the audience wish to delve in further; we're all in our comfort zones here because everyone's friendly and everyone's involved, including the audience. It's almost as though they, too, are a part of the process of what's going on. Everyone is participating and interacting with each other.

  

Now, Reflexive films borrow an awful lot from your typical fiction film. They create a sense of fantasy to an extent to better evoke an emotional response from their audience. They make you think about reality by momentarily plucking you out of reality. Similarly to fiction, we are escaping reality. We get sucked into this form in that way, but then the emotional response that we hand over to it is amplified because we remember that these are, in fact, interviews being played out in a sort of performance. It reflects reality in a fantastical form. We Are Not Afraid takes strongly from this documentary form, where the interviews are performed in such a way that conveys the idea across that the subjects are sharing secrets with the audience. This is done by the interviewees cupping their mouths and whispering beyond the camera, their eyes cut out of frame so their identities are concealed. We, as the audience, are having secrets shared with us and, as a result, our brains are more inclined to listen; we are being trusted with this and we want to the goings on so listen carefully. It's a nice little trick and most certainly goes hand-in-hand with the style of fiction film.

Last, but by no means least, is the Performative mode. This is essentially the lovechild of Participatory and another where the crew interacts and participates. However, the difference is that it tends to heavily concern the creator of the documentary and normally deals with subjects such as identity, such as gender or who they are as a person, as opposed to factual (or supposedly so) topics that the Observational documentaries deal with.
 A fantastic documentary that was screened in class falls right into this category. Stories We Tell is a series of interviews and archival footage of the writer/director, Sarah Polley's, family, about her mother. Really, the film is about her identity. She was very young when her mother passed, as we learned, and in her film, it shows both cast and crew communicating with each other even before the action, so to speak, showing the interviewees getting comfortable with the idea that they're being filmed and interviewed. In fact, Polley even directs them how to respond, 'as if [Polley doesn't] know the answer'. The style of this film made it feel easy for the audience to connect with the subject matters, dead keen to learn more themselves.