CODES AND CONVENTIONS OF DOCUMENTARIES

CODES AND CONVENTIONS OF DOCUMENTARIES

what exactly makes a documentary a documentary?

Voiceover
- Almost all documentaries feature a voiceover (narrator) to guide the veiwers learning experience. This voice is always authoritative in someway, making the veiwer believe that they have superior knowledge and 'correct' opinions that people should pay attention to.

Interveiws
Documentaries always feature interveiws, some of them with 'experts' who share their informations and opinions on the subject matter. These make the programme seem a lot more authentic and generally reinforce the message of the documentary.

Archive (B roll) footage and images
These are included to add further information which the producer may not have been able to capture for themselves. Documentaries on past events are heavier on archive content because the film maker cannot travel back in time.

'Real' footage and images
Documentary footage is generally percieved to be real by its audience, although it can easily not be. However, documentary makers often make an effort to create a strong sense of realism and make people believe that the footage is unaltered in any way.


 Use of text and titles
Text that is featured onscreen is edited in and is used to quickly inform veiwers of dates, times, locations and peoples names and occupations (at the beginning of interveiws). These small details also tend to be believed unquestioningly by the audience.


Visual codes
Documentary makers will use misc-en-scene to their advantage. Interveiwees may have been asked to wear clothing relevant to their role and the interveiw itself will be shot in their place of work, and things will frequently be exaggerated. For example, an interveiw with a doctor would require them to wear a lab coat and be filmed in a doctory looking room surrounded by medical equipment. Documentary makers often go to lengths to make this happen, another example is filming an interveiw with a homeless person in the street, opposed to any other location, and being sure to catch him there.

Sound
Importantly, most documentaries feature a lot of non-digetic music to create atmosphere, bridge between scenes add effect to any situatiom. Example of this is the menacing drone-based music that often plays in Ross Kemp documentaries when he is facing an element of danger.