Modes Of Documentary

In recent study, it has been shown that there are 6 different modes of documentary. Bill Nichols; film critic and founder of 'Contemporary Study of Documentary Film' defined these 6 modes and explained how their conventions define them.

• Poetic - It is often abstract, it moves away from the sense of reality. 
• Expository - They speak directly to the audience, they are informative, factual and often use footage and voice overs. 
• Participatory - The film maker becomes a part of the documentary, meaning is created by the relationship between the film maker and audience. 
• Observational - The film maker is simply a witness to the events, it is their attempt to capture reality. 
• Reflexive - It acknowledges the constructed nature of documentary and flaunts it. Using typical conventions. They make it clear that it is a film.
• Performative - Emphasises the subject nature of the film maker and constructs truths that are significant to them. 

Most of these documentary modes will use the generic conventions that audiences connect with documentary. These include things such as; Voice-overs, montages, archive footage, Interviews, editing etc. However, the different modes help categorize the documentaries for how they portray these conventions. It's somewhat like a hybrid genre.

Documentary audiences can easily be manipulated by the film makers, they have the ability to keep certain information from the viewers and potentially spoon feed them their opinion. Everything put into a documentary is there for a reason, because the film maker wanted you to see it. Some could say that documentary is biased, but the film maker always tries to hide that aspect. Audiences have to understand that the information will be truthful to an extent, but the film maker has the ability to manipulate people, whether it be intentional or not.