Documentary mode
Encyclopedia
Documentary mode is a conceptual scheme developed by American documentary
theorist Bill Nichols
that seeks to distinguish particular traits and conventions of various documentary film
styles. Nichols identifies six different documentary 'modes' in his schema: poetic, expository, observational, participatory, reflexive, and performative. While Nichols' discussion of modes does progress chronologically with the order of their appearance in practice, documentary film often returns to themes and devices from previous modes. Therefore, it is inaccurate to think of modes as historical punctuation marks in an evolution towards an ultimate accepted documentary style. Also, modes are not mutually exclusive. There is often significant overlapping between modalities within individual documentary features. As Nichols points out, “the characteristics of a given mode function as a dominant in a given film…but they do not dictate or determine every aspect of its organization.” (Nichols 2001)
and the French Impressionist cinema
principle of photogenie, appropriated these techniques into documentary filmmaking to create what Nichols would later call the poetic mode. Documentary pioneer Dziga Vertov
came remarkably close to describing the mode in his “We: Variant of a Manifesto” when he proclaimed that "kinochestvo" (the quality of being cinematic) is “the art of organizing the necessary movements of objects in space as a rhythmical artistic whole, in harmony with the properties of the material and internal rhythm of each object.” (Michelson, O’Brien, & Vertov 1984)
The poetic mode of documentary film tends toward subjective
interpretations of its subject(s). Light on rhetoric
, documentaries in the poetic mode forsake traditional narrative
content: individual characters and events remain undeveloped, in favor of creating a particular mood or tone. This is particularly noticeable in the editing of poetic documentaries, where continuity is of virtually no consequence at all. Rather, poetic editing explores “associations and patterns that involve temporal rhythms and spatial juxtapositions.” (Nichols 2001) Joris Ivens
’ Regen (1929) is paradigmatic of the poetic mode, consisting of unrelated shots linked together to illustrate a rain shower in Amsterdam. That the poetic mode illustrates such subjective impressions with little or no rhetorical content, it is often perceived as avant-garde
, and subsequent pieces in this mode (Godfrey Reggio
’s Koyannisqatsi (1982) for example,) are likely to be found within that realm.
offers an explanation for the move away from poetic documentary, claiming filmmakers, “got caught up in social propaganda
…We got on to the social problems of the world, and we ourselves deviated from the poetic line.” (Sussex 1972) The expositional mode diverges sharply from the poetic mode in terms of visual practice and story-telling devices, by virtue of its emphasis on rhetorical content, and its goals of information dissemination or persuasion.
Narration is a distinct innovation of the expositional mode of documentary. Initially manifesting as an omnipresent, omniscient, and objective
voice intoned over footage, narration holds the weight of explaining and arguing a film’s rhetorical content. Where documentary in the poetic mode thrived on a filmmaker’s aesthetic and subjective visual interpretation of a subject, expositional mode collects footage that functions to strengthen the spoken narrative. This shift in visual tactics gives rise to what Nichols refers to as “evidentiary editing,” a practice in which expositional images “...illustrate, illuminate, evoke, or act in counterpoint to what is said…[we] take our cue from the commentary and understand the images as evidence or demonstration…” (Nichols 2001) The engagement of rhetoric with supporting visual information founded in the expositional mode continues today and, indeed, makes up the bulk of documentary product. Film features, news stories, and various television programs lean heavily on its utility as a device for transferring information.
's Kino-Eye manifestoes, he declared, “I, a camera, fling myself along…maneuvering in the chaos of movement, recording movement, startling with movements of the most complex combinations.” (Michelson, O’Brien, & Vertov 1984) This emphasis on mobility became practicable in the early 1960s as, “new, light equipment made possible an intimacy of observation new to documentary, and this involved sound as well as image.” (Barnouw 1993) The move to lighter 16mm equipment and shoulder mounted cameras allowed documentarians to leave the anchored point of the tripod. Portable Nagra
sync-sound systems and unidirectional microphone
s, too, freed the documentarian from cumbersome audio equipment. A two-person film crew could now realize Vertov’s vision and sought to bring real truth to the documentary milieu.
Unlike the subjective content of poetic documentary, or the rhetorical insistence of expositional documentary, observational documentaries tend to simply observe, allowing viewers to reach whatever conclusions they may deduce. The camera, while moving with subjects and staying in the action, remains as unobtrusive as possible, mutely recording events as they happen. Pure observational documentarians proceeded under some bylaws: no music, no interviews, no scene arrangement of any kind, and no narration. The fly-on-the-wall perspective is championed, while editing processes utilize long takes and few cuts. Resultant footage appears as though the viewer is witnessing first-hand the experiences of the subject: they travel with Bob Dylan
to England in D.A. Pennebaker's Dont Look Back
[sic] (1967,) suffer the stark treatment of patients at the Bridgewater State Hospital in Frederick Wiseman
's Titicut Follies
(1967,) and hit the campaign trail with John F. Kennedy
and Hubert Humphrey
in Robert Drew
’s Primary (1960.)
’s Man with a Movie Camera
(1929,) for example, he features footage of his brother and wife in the process of shooting footage and editing, respectively. The goal in including these images was, “to aid the audience in their understanding of the process of construction in film so that they could develop a sophisticated and critical attitude.” (Ruby 2005) Mitchell Block’s ...No Lies
(1974,) functioned in a notably different manner, as it reflexively and critically questioned the observational mode, commenting on observational techniques and their capacity for capturing authentic truths. In this way, the reflexive mode of documentary often functions as its own regulatory board, policing ethical and technical boundaries within documentary film
itself.
’ 1990 documentary Tongues Untied
about his experiences as a gay black dancer in New York City
. The departure from a rhetoric of persuasion allows the performative film a great deal more room for creative freedom in terms of visual abstraction, narrative, etc. Stella Bruzzi pits Nichols’ conception of performative documentary at the polar opposite of observational documentary, commenting that performative pieces, “confront the problem of aestheticisation, accepting…authorship as intrinsic to documentary, in direct opposition to the exponents of Direct cinema
who saw themselves as merely the purveyors of the truth they pursued.” (Bruzzi 2000)
With the filmmaker visible to the viewer, and freed to openly discuss his or her perspective in regards to the film being made, rhetoric and argumentation return to the documentary film as the filmmaker clearly asserts a message. Perhaps the most famous filmmaker currently working in this documentary mode is Michael Moore
.
Documentary
A documentary is a creative work of non-fiction, including:* Documentary film, including television* Radio documentary* Documentary photographyRelated terms include:...
theorist Bill Nichols
Bill Nichols
Bill Nichols is an American historian and theoretician of documentary film. His study Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary covers the theory of documentary film, a topic neglected by mainstream film theory...
that seeks to distinguish particular traits and conventions of various documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
styles. Nichols identifies six different documentary 'modes' in his schema: poetic, expository, observational, participatory, reflexive, and performative. While Nichols' discussion of modes does progress chronologically with the order of their appearance in practice, documentary film often returns to themes and devices from previous modes. Therefore, it is inaccurate to think of modes as historical punctuation marks in an evolution towards an ultimate accepted documentary style. Also, modes are not mutually exclusive. There is often significant overlapping between modalities within individual documentary features. As Nichols points out, “the characteristics of a given mode function as a dominant in a given film…but they do not dictate or determine every aspect of its organization.” (Nichols 2001)
Poetic Mode
Early documentary filmmakers, bolstered by Soviet montage theorySoviet montage theory
Soviet montage theory is an approach to understanding and creating cinema that relies heavily upon editing...
and the French Impressionist cinema
French Impressionist Cinema
French Impressionist Cinema, also referred to as the first avant-garde or narrative avant-garde, is a term applied to a group of French films and filmmakers of the 1920s....
principle of photogenie, appropriated these techniques into documentary filmmaking to create what Nichols would later call the poetic mode. Documentary pioneer Dziga Vertov
Dziga Vertov
David Abelevich Kaufman , better known by his pseudonym Dziga Vertov , was a Soviet pioneer documentary film, newsreel director and cinema theorist...
came remarkably close to describing the mode in his “We: Variant of a Manifesto” when he proclaimed that "kinochestvo" (the quality of being cinematic) is “the art of organizing the necessary movements of objects in space as a rhythmical artistic whole, in harmony with the properties of the material and internal rhythm of each object.” (Michelson, O’Brien, & Vertov 1984)
The poetic mode of documentary film tends toward subjective
Subjective
Subjective may refer to:* Subjectivity, a subject's personal perspective, feelings, beliefs, desires or discovery, as opposed to those made from an independent, objective, point of view** Subjective experience, the subjective quality of conscious experience...
interpretations of its subject(s). Light on rhetoric
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...
, documentaries in the poetic mode forsake traditional narrative
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
content: individual characters and events remain undeveloped, in favor of creating a particular mood or tone. This is particularly noticeable in the editing of poetic documentaries, where continuity is of virtually no consequence at all. Rather, poetic editing explores “associations and patterns that involve temporal rhythms and spatial juxtapositions.” (Nichols 2001) Joris Ivens
Joris Ivens
Joris Ivens was a Dutch documentary filmmaker and committed communist.-Early life and career:...
’ Regen (1929) is paradigmatic of the poetic mode, consisting of unrelated shots linked together to illustrate a rain shower in Amsterdam. That the poetic mode illustrates such subjective impressions with little or no rhetorical content, it is often perceived as avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
, and subsequent pieces in this mode (Godfrey Reggio
Godfrey Reggio
Godfrey Reggio is an American director of experimental documentary films.-Life:Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Reggio co-founded La Clinica de la Gente, a facility that provided medical care to 12,000 community members in Santa Fe, and La Gente, a community-organizing project in...
’s Koyannisqatsi (1982) for example,) are likely to be found within that realm.
Expository Mode
Documentary forefather John GriersonJohn Grierson
John Grierson was a pioneering Scottish documentary maker, often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary film. According to popular myth, in 1926, Grierson coined the term "documentary" to describe a non-fiction film.-Early life:Grierson was born in Deanston, near Doune, Scotland...
offers an explanation for the move away from poetic documentary, claiming filmmakers, “got caught up in social propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
…We got on to the social problems of the world, and we ourselves deviated from the poetic line.” (Sussex 1972) The expositional mode diverges sharply from the poetic mode in terms of visual practice and story-telling devices, by virtue of its emphasis on rhetorical content, and its goals of information dissemination or persuasion.
Narration is a distinct innovation of the expositional mode of documentary. Initially manifesting as an omnipresent, omniscient, and objective
Objective
Objective may refer to:* Objective , to achieve a final set of actions within a given military operation* Objective pronoun, a pronoun as the target of a verb* Objective , an element in a camera or microscope...
voice intoned over footage, narration holds the weight of explaining and arguing a film’s rhetorical content. Where documentary in the poetic mode thrived on a filmmaker’s aesthetic and subjective visual interpretation of a subject, expositional mode collects footage that functions to strengthen the spoken narrative. This shift in visual tactics gives rise to what Nichols refers to as “evidentiary editing,” a practice in which expositional images “...illustrate, illuminate, evoke, or act in counterpoint to what is said…[we] take our cue from the commentary and understand the images as evidence or demonstration…” (Nichols 2001) The engagement of rhetoric with supporting visual information founded in the expositional mode continues today and, indeed, makes up the bulk of documentary product. Film features, news stories, and various television programs lean heavily on its utility as a device for transferring information.
Observational Mode
The observational mode of documentary developed in the wake of documentarians returning to Vertovian ideals of truth, along with the innovation and evolution of cinematic hardware in the 1960s. In Dziga VertovDziga Vertov
David Abelevich Kaufman , better known by his pseudonym Dziga Vertov , was a Soviet pioneer documentary film, newsreel director and cinema theorist...
's Kino-Eye manifestoes, he declared, “I, a camera, fling myself along…maneuvering in the chaos of movement, recording movement, startling with movements of the most complex combinations.” (Michelson, O’Brien, & Vertov 1984) This emphasis on mobility became practicable in the early 1960s as, “new, light equipment made possible an intimacy of observation new to documentary, and this involved sound as well as image.” (Barnouw 1993) The move to lighter 16mm equipment and shoulder mounted cameras allowed documentarians to leave the anchored point of the tripod. Portable Nagra
Nagra
Nagra is the trademark referring to any of the series of mostly battery-operated portable professional audio recorders produced by Kudelski SA, based in Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Switzerland....
sync-sound systems and unidirectional microphone
Microphone
A microphone is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. In 1877, Emile Berliner invented the first microphone used as a telephone voice transmitter...
s, too, freed the documentarian from cumbersome audio equipment. A two-person film crew could now realize Vertov’s vision and sought to bring real truth to the documentary milieu.
Unlike the subjective content of poetic documentary, or the rhetorical insistence of expositional documentary, observational documentaries tend to simply observe, allowing viewers to reach whatever conclusions they may deduce. The camera, while moving with subjects and staying in the action, remains as unobtrusive as possible, mutely recording events as they happen. Pure observational documentarians proceeded under some bylaws: no music, no interviews, no scene arrangement of any kind, and no narration. The fly-on-the-wall perspective is championed, while editing processes utilize long takes and few cuts. Resultant footage appears as though the viewer is witnessing first-hand the experiences of the subject: they travel with Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
to England in D.A. Pennebaker's Dont Look Back
Dont Look Back
Dont Look Back is a 1967 documentary film by D.A. Pennebaker that covers Bob Dylan's 1965 concert tour in the United Kingdom.In 1998, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically...
[sic] (1967,) suffer the stark treatment of patients at the Bridgewater State Hospital in Frederick Wiseman
Frederick Wiseman
Frederick Wiseman is an American documentary filmmaker. He came to documentary filmmaking after first being trained as a lawyer...
's Titicut Follies
Titicut Follies
Titicut Follies is a 1967 American documentary film directed by Frederick Wiseman, about the treatment of inmates/patients at Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane, a Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The title is taken from a talent show put on by...
(1967,) and hit the campaign trail with John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
and Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. , served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 38th Vice President of the United States. Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota, and served as Democratic Majority Whip. He was a founder of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and...
in Robert Drew
Robert Drew
Robert Lincoln Drew is an American documentary filmmaker known as a pioneer of cinéma vérité, or direct cinema, in the United States....
’s Primary (1960.)
Reflexive Mode
The reflexive mode considers the quality of documentary itself, de-mystifying its processes and considering its implications. In Dziga VertovDziga Vertov
David Abelevich Kaufman , better known by his pseudonym Dziga Vertov , was a Soviet pioneer documentary film, newsreel director and cinema theorist...
’s Man with a Movie Camera
Man with a Movie Camera
Man with a Movie Camera , sometimes called The Man with the Movie Camera, The Man with a Camera, The Man With the Kinocamera, or Living Russia is an experimental 1929 silent documentary film, with no story and no actors, by Russian director Dziga Vertov, edited by his wife Elizaveta...
(1929,) for example, he features footage of his brother and wife in the process of shooting footage and editing, respectively. The goal in including these images was, “to aid the audience in their understanding of the process of construction in film so that they could develop a sophisticated and critical attitude.” (Ruby 2005) Mitchell Block’s ...No Lies
No Lies
No Lies... is a 1972 short dramatic film made by Mitchell Block while he was a student at New York University. The film, which is in the style of a cinéma vérité interview, deals with a young woman who has been raped and has been widely viewed by nurses, therapists and police officers.In 2008, No...
(1974,) functioned in a notably different manner, as it reflexively and critically questioned the observational mode, commenting on observational techniques and their capacity for capturing authentic truths. In this way, the reflexive mode of documentary often functions as its own regulatory board, policing ethical and technical boundaries within documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
itself.
Performative Mode
The performative mode, the final mode Nichols discusses, is easily confused with the participatory mode, and Nichols remains somewhat nebulous about their distinctions. The crux of the difference seems to lie in the fact that where the participatory mode engages the filmmaker to the story but attempts to constructs truths that should be self-evident to anyone, the performative mode engages the filmmaker to the story but constructs subjective truths that are significant to the filmmaker him or herself. Deeply personal, the performative mode is particularly well-suited to telling the stories of filmmakers from marginalized social groups, offering the chance to air unique perspectives without having to argue the validity of their experiences, as in Marlon RiggsMarlon Riggs
Marlon Troy Riggs was a gay African-American filmmaker, educator, poet, and gay rights activist. He produced, wrote, and directed several television documentaries, including Ethnic Notions, Tongues Untied, Color Adjustment, and Black Is. ....
’ 1990 documentary Tongues Untied
Tongues Untied
Tongues Untied is a 1989 semi-documentary film directed by Marlon Riggs. The film seeks, in its author's words to, "...shatter the nation's brutalising silence on matters of sexual and racial difference."-Content:...
about his experiences as a gay black dancer in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. The departure from a rhetoric of persuasion allows the performative film a great deal more room for creative freedom in terms of visual abstraction, narrative, etc. Stella Bruzzi pits Nichols’ conception of performative documentary at the polar opposite of observational documentary, commenting that performative pieces, “confront the problem of aestheticisation, accepting…authorship as intrinsic to documentary, in direct opposition to the exponents of Direct cinema
Direct Cinema
Direct Cinema is a documentary genre that originated between 1958 and 1962 in North America, principally in the Canadian province of Quebec and the United States...
who saw themselves as merely the purveyors of the truth they pursued.” (Bruzzi 2000)
With the filmmaker visible to the viewer, and freed to openly discuss his or her perspective in regards to the film being made, rhetoric and argumentation return to the documentary film as the filmmaker clearly asserts a message. Perhaps the most famous filmmaker currently working in this documentary mode is Michael Moore
Michael Moore
Michael Francis Moore is an American filmmaker, author, social critic and activist. He is the director and producer of Fahrenheit 9/11, which is the highest-grossing documentary of all time. His films Bowling for Columbine and Sicko also place in the top ten highest-grossing documentaries...
.