Codes and Conventions

Claudia O’Hara

Conventional Expectations of a Documentary Non- fiction About the ‘real’ (historical, political, cultural events etc) Based on observation rather than intervention Informative, educational

Voiceover

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

Film language used to shape realism

Placing the audience in the action location shooting uneven, hand held camera work natural light following the action film makers visible presence interviews and witnesses amateur effect

Techniques that allow the audience to be ‘objective’ Voiceover Archive footage Expert testimonial Material shaped into a narrative material structured into an argument

‘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.

Documentaries often go to great lengths to convince us that the footage is real and unaltered in anyway, although editing and voiceover can affect the reality we, as viewers see.

Technicality of realism

Including ‘natural’ sound and lighting suburbia city sounds, non diegetic sound)

The way the shots are taken to create realism Not everything is filmed so is un real although the it has elements of

real life examples.

Archive footage

To aid authenticity and add further information which the film maker may be unable to obtain themselves.

Documentaries which look at historical events have this in order to support there opinions.

Interviews with ‘experts’

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

Use of text

Labels, dates etc. tend to be believed unquestioningly and are a quick and cheap way of conveying information.

Use of words on screen to anchor images in time and space

Sound

Microphone sound Diegetic sound Non- diegetic sound These sounds are in documentaries for various reasons e.g. to create

realism, emotion, emphasis on topic being discussed.

Set-ups

Not just reconstructions of events that happened in the past but also setting up typical scenes

crews make a habit of using set up they will only be using images of ‘reality’ that audiences already recognise (confirming stereotypes) and producing fresh images/ ideas about reality will be impossible.