Modes of Documentary

To support his theory of all films being documentaries, Bill Nichols divided social representation films into 6 different modes.

1. Expository Documentaries
   The most traditional documentary form that uses an authoritative voiceover or presenter to address viewers directly and argue a case about history, nature or politics, they often aim to persuade the viewer to agree with the point of view they prominent in the documentary.
2. Observational Documentaries
   Aim to show everyday life as it really is, with minimal intrusion by the filmmaker or filmmaking process e.g no use of voiceover or interviews. They’re also known as “fly on the wall” documentaries.
3. Participatory Documentaries
   Feature the filmmaker as an on or off screen presence, who nonetheless retains an objective stance on events. Participants are interviewed as witness for or against a case and are in control of the dissemination of their own story. The film may use archive footage or reconstructions.
4. Performance Documentaries
   Similar to participatory documentaries but the filmmaker appears on screen and intervenes directly in the events. Interviews are staged/ arranged and encounters are often dramatised and surprising. The documentary is as much about the filmmaker as the subject.
5. Poetic Documentaries
   May be based on any of the five modes whilst also including strong aesthetic or sensual forms that bring them closer to the feeling of poetry than prose, they tend to be more subjective and abstract representations of reality. Nichols said that the poetic mode “moves away from the ‘objective’ reality of a given situation or person, to grasp at an ‘inner truth’ that can only be grasped by poetic manipulation”.
6. Reflexive Documentaries
   Explicitly comment on their own status as documentaries through stylistic means(e.g by disrupting conventions such as the voice over) or by featuring conversations about the nature of documentary truth. The viewer is made to be just as interested about how the film is constructed as they are the actual content.