Types of Documentaries from Introduction to Documentary by Bill
Nichols (2001):
• The Expository Mode
• The Poetic Mode
• The Observational Mode
• The Participatory Mode
• The Reflexive Mode
• The Performative Mode
These six modes establish a loose framework of affiliation within different filmmakers’ work,
they set up conventions that a film may adopt; and they provide specific expectations in the
viewers on what type of documentary they are going to watch.
The Expository Mode -Voice of God:
Example: The Century of the Self, Directed by Adam Curtis
• Most associated with Television News programming
• This mode is what we identify with documentaries. It emphasizes verbal commentary
– often using a narrator. Addresses the spectator directly, with titles or voices that
propose a perspective, advance an argument, or recount history
• The expository documentary goes back to the 1920s but remains highly influential
today. Most television news and reality TV shows depend heavily on their quite dated
conventions, as do almost all science and nature documentaries, biographies, etc.
• The Century of the Self is a 2002 British television documentary series by filmmaker
Adam Curtis. It focuses on the work of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Anna
Freud, and PR consultant Edward Bernays. In episode one, Curtis says, "This series is
about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous
crowd in an age of mass democracy”
The Observational Mode –Window on the World:
Example: Hoop Dreams (1994), Directed by Steve James, Edited by Steve James, Frederick
Marx, and William Haugse
• Attempt to observe aspects of the historical world as they happen
• Typically have no voice-over commentary, no supplementary music or sound, no
inter-titles, no historical re-constructions, no behavior repeated for the camera, and no
interviews
• Social actors behave as if no filmmakers were there
