Challenges Along the Way

Within the second week of the final project, we were assigned to research the genre that compliments our project. This project will be based on a documentary, so the researches applied to that specific genre. In my researches, I found out there are six (6) different modes of the documentary genre: poetic, expository, observational, participatory, reflexive, and performative. They determine the applied concepts and the themes of the various styles.

1. Poetic mode films emphasized atmosphere, sound, and effects. They compose of temporal patterns and spatial juxtapositions, poetically reassembling the universe. There is usually a lack of continuity editing, opting for evidentiary editing instead, which is less concerned about the relationship between time and space.
2. Expository style is to discuss concerns in the historical world explicitly. The main purposes of these documentaries are to educate or reassure the viewer by making a specific statement. They put a strong priority on rhetoric, taking into account the visuals that are secondary to the words. 
3. Observatory mode allows the viewers to observe things how they occur while making their own conclusions. It usually excludes any music, interviews, scenic arrangements, or narrations. The goal is to represent an unmediated reality. 
4.  In a participatory documentary, just like any other, the filmmaker becomes a social performer. Maybe we'll hear his voice or see him on the television. Context is generated in these films by the relationship between the director and the subjects. Such relationships may come in a number of ways, including tutor, critic, questioner, partner, and provocateur.
5. Reflexive filmmakers are both curious about the environment and about how to depict it. More so than any other documentary type, they are both self-conscious and self-questioning. Reflexive films show a negotiating mechanism between the filmmaker and the spectator. The spectator is not only interested in the quality of the production of a reflexive documentary, but also how the film itself was made.
6. It is possible to consider the performative mode to be the inverse of the observational mode. They approach anyone expressively and verbally, instead of leading the audience to the objective universe. There are richly detailed films. Usually, point of view shots, audio, freeze frames, and flashbacks are used. They are intensely human and stress subjectivity.

DOCUMENTARY MODE EXAMPLES:

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) (PERFORMATIVE)

Daughter Rite (1978)  (REFLEXIVE)

Life of Michael Jackson (2004) (PARTICIPATORY)

Public Housing (1997) (OBSERVATIONAL)

March of the Penguins (2005) (EXPOSITORY)

Koyannisqatsi (1982) (POETIC)