Codes and Conventions of Documentary

 Hand held camera – encoding realism

·       Fly on wall filming – capturing real events as they happen

·       Narrative voice over – leading the audience into preferred reading – gender and accent important

·       Creation of a narrative journey in order to answer a question

·       Vox Pops and interviews with experts

·       Often shorter running time than non-fiction feature films

·       Intercutting/ parallel editing linking key scenes

·       Use of archive footage

·       Mediated culture – selecting and constructing thus encoding opinion and subjectivity

·       Selective editing crucial to constructing meaning

·       Often point of view with encoded ideology, preferred meaning

·       Use of establishing shots and close ups

·       Observational, interactive, reflexive, expository in formal 3 act structure, closed investigative narrative

·       Often single stranded, linear – one subject is often the topic

·       Exploration of narrative themes, messages and values of the film maker

·       Different purposes – to entertain, inform, educate, satirise, shock, satisfy, provide voyeuristic pleasure and for propaganda purposes

·       Characters are often hyper real, exaggerated stereotypes

·       Use of emotive or other music

·       Use of mise en scene or props to reinforce ideas about characters or theme