Conventions of documentaries
- 2. What is a documentary? - A Documentary is a film or television or radio program that provides a factual report on a particular subject. - it uses using pictures or interviews with people involved in real events to provide a factual report on a particular subject. - consisting of or based on official documents.
- 3. What are the conventions of a documentary?
- 4. Exposition A documentary film is a film story concerning factual topics (i.e. someone or something). These films have a variety of aims, to record important events and ideas; to inform viewers; to convey opinions and to create public interest
- 5. Voice over A voice over is when the documentary reporter/film maker talks over footage or is added to the soundtrack during the production , this allows the film maker to be able to talk to the viewers.
- 6. Interviews The interview is one of the most common documentary teqnques as it allows the film maker to ask very specific questions about any related subject. Some interviews are held in specific backrounds to add some visual coding
- 7. Archival footage (Real footage) Archival footage is another way of saying real footage this means that it is all genuine footage of what haappened.Many documentaries have archival footage because it brings the film to life. Documentaries are non-fiction. However, a convention of a documentary is that events are to be seen as ‘real’.
- 8. Text/ Titles Watch out for the use of words on screen to anchor images in time and space. Labels, dates etc. tend to be believed un- questioningly and are a quick cheap way of conveying information.
- 9. Reconstructions Reconstructions of events that happened in the past but also typically setting up ‘typical scenes’. So if you want to quickly convey a classroom you might ask a class to put their hands up like there is a lesson going on and the teacher just asked a question.