Codes and Conventions of a Documentary

What makes a documentary a documentary?

Voiceover
The voiceover will usually be authoritative in some way, encouraging the audience to think that they either have some kind of specialist knowledge or, as in the case of people like Michael Moore and Nick Broomfield: ‘the right’ opinions that people should pay attention to.

‘Real’ Footage of events
Documentary is essentially seen as ‘non-fiction’ although there are debates around this.
However, a convention of documentary is that all events presented to us are to be seen as ‘real’ by the audience.
Documentarians often go to great lengths to convince us that the footage is real and unaltered in anyway, although editing and voiceover can affect the ‘realist’ we, as viewers, see.

Technicality of realism
Including ‘natural’ sound and lighting in the documentary to make sure that the audience believe the realism.


Archive footage/stills
To aid authenticity and to add further information which the film maker may be unable to obtain themselves looking through archive footage can bring more realism into the documentary and bring an element of past that can’t be created without the archived footage


Interviews with ‘Experts’
Used to authenticate the views expressed in the documentary. Sometimes, they will disagree with the message of the documentary, although the film maker usually disprove them in some way.


Use of Text/Titles
Watch out for the use of words on screen to anchor images in time and space. Labels, dates etc tend to believed unquestioningly and are a quick and cheap way of conveying information.

Sound
Listen out for the use of non-diegetic sound.
Has music been added?
Why what effects does it have?
Is sound used as a bridge between scenes and if so what meanings are made?
An example is ‘Super size me’ –The use of childish music throughout to undermine McDonalds.


Set-ups
Not just reconstructions of events that happened in the past but also setting up ‘typical’ scenes’. So if you want to quickly convey ‘classroom’ you might ask a class to put their hands up like there’s a lesson going on and the teachers just asked a question. Strictly speaking what you’re showing is not ‘true’ the teacher didn’t ask a question, but it is a way of cheaply getting footage a crew might have had to wait fifteen minutes for if they had just waited for it to happen ‘naturally’.

Visual Coding
Things like mise-en-scene and props. Is that doctor any less a doctor if she’s not in a white coat and wearing a stethoscope?




Target Audience

The target audience that I am going to be aiming my Climbing documentary towards is an audience that is aged between 20-40 but can be enjoyed by a younger audience as well, the reason that I have decided to leave quite an open ended audience is that a documentary about climbing could be enjoyed by many different people of age ranges, that is why I believe it is best to target the age range that has the most viewers.




The documentary that I have chosen to produce:

The 5 minute documentary that I have chosen to create is a documentary on climbing, I believe this is a good choice of documentary as it can be made into an informative documentary that could attract a large audience of people who are wanting to find out more about climbing, I also think it is a good Idea for me to create a climbing documentary due to already climbing and working for a adventure company, this will mean I have good access to those in the know about climbing such as my boss and also to get down to climbing areas around the cliffs.