DOCUMENTARY

A documentary is a non-fictional movie intended to document reality, for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record. And documentaries are a great way to help tell stories, discuss social issues and to educate. They often tell a lot of in-depth information and there’s a lot of different forms.

Portrait documentaries, tell a story about a person. They describe someone in-depth through audio and visuals. They often use interviews from the person(s) the portrait is about or people close of them. But also showcase their ways of thinking, their beliefs, thoughts, emotions, historical background. Basically they’re a motion-picture biography.

Nature documentaries, capture animals, plants and other organisms. They show us how they behave, what instincts they have, how they interact with each other and how they evolve or become endangered.

Crime documentaries showcase a criminal case that either has or hasn’t been solved. They’re often used to form a slight understanding of why a person was able to commit a crime. A look into a criminal’s mind. But they can also become part of solving a case by creating awareness, spreading information and keeping a case relevant. 

A Mockumentary is a type of movie depicting rather fictional events but are still presented as a documentary. They are used to analyze or comment on events and issues. Often comedy is used to parody these events and issues or the form of documentary itself. 

Beside these forms, there’s also lots of methods to make a documentary. For example ‘the fly on the wall’ method is used to create a documentary that’s purely observational. The director attempts to not interact with their subject, in order to create a motion-picture that stays true to reality. Interviews are another method, to capture people’s perspectives on a subject. They’re quite contrary to the fly on the wall method as they show reality can be quite subjective. Another method is for the director to fully submit themselves to the subject by either be-friending it or becoming part of it in another way.