Documentary modes and the rise of dramatised "truths"

Documentaries, like every media format, has evolved constantly throughout its lifetime. Still photography opened the doors of capturing the essence of reality in its actuality and sound recordings later adding the possibilities to capture and recreate the sonic environment around us in real time. The innovation of silent films where moving images could capture a more holistic perception of the world to fill in gaps that would be left by still photographs showcased the potential for documentary filmmaking to document the real world.

Throughout the journey, the evolution of technologies allowed for documentaries to capture and present the world in more ways, the medium has developed a feel and an idea and yet a definition is still hard to conjure.

Defining what is a documentary is contested with many theorists proposing different viewpoints. John Grierson, considered a leader of documentary filmmaking in the United Kingdom, created a definition of documentary that has been the ignition of topic on what a documentary is. Grierson said in a review for Robert Flaherty’s 1926 film “Moana” that a documentary is “a creative treatment of actuality”. This definition became the centre point of theorist to explore what is a documentary or not with people agreeing with Grierson’s definition and others standing on the side of the contrary.

Author Carl Plantinga gives his ‘characterisation’ of a documentary to be “…conceived of as an asserted veridical representation, that is, as an extended treatment of a subject in one of the moving-image media, most often in narrative, rhetorical, categorical, or associative form, in which the film’s makers openly signal their intention…” (Plantinga, 2005). This characterisation looks at how the truth can be distorted by the filmmakers’ intentions how they want to present their version of the truth to the viewer.

Plantinga later discusses the concept of documentaries as assertion (DA) and documentaries as indexical records (DIR). Shortly put, DA looks at how a documentary interacts with audiences and how filmmakers create their own projection of the world. DIR looks at how documentaries comprise of various means of recorded media as records and using these tools (such as photography and audio recordings) to showcase the raw reality to audiences.

Plantinga looks at how DA and DIR compare with each other as well as Nicholls’ six documentary modes (2024) (mentioned shortly). DIR struggles to faithfully recreate historical retellings as a result of the available records whereas DA has issues with bias of filmmakers intentions.

Bill Nichols is a film critic and theorist that has been a prominent contemporary voice discussing documentaries and created a list of six documentary modes that documentaries typically follow. These modes are: Expository, Poetic, Observational, Participatory, Reflexive, and Performative (Nichols and Baron 2024).

 The expository mode is what most people may commonly associate with documentary filmmaking in which there is voiceover narrative that speaks over the film to explain to audiences what they are seeing. Examples of this can be documentaries such as BBC’s Planet Earth in which Sir David Attenborough provides voiceover narration giving insight into what the viewer is watching. There are issues with this mode of documentary, however, such as the lack of room for audiences to interpret the message independently without exposition.

Observational documentaries look at presenting the documentary in a ‘fly on the wall’ style, aiming to be invisible to the participants to not break the immersion. This mode can be more truthful to the actualities of events that unfolded but can lack voices to provide audiences with context by being limited to the voices seen in the footage resulting in a less structured narrative which can be harder to follow or for filmmakers to get the intended reactions from audiences.

Poetic documentaries focus on the imagery and metaphorical devices to stylistically express the emotions and feelings intended for the audiences more implicitly compared to expositional documentaries. This can also make it harder for audiences to access or to follow due to its heavy use on style which can be interpreted subjectively and not explicitly instructing audiences.

The performative mode uses the filmmakers within their films as features to share their experiences and become a central character. This creates a closer symbiosis bond across the film as the filmmaker is put into the centre of the film and not the garden walls in other modes. However, it also becomes an issue with the bias of the filmmaker and the lack of societal agreement of the documentary points as it focuses on the filmmakers’ experiences with their intentions as the focal point.

The final mode is the reflexive mode in which the documentary is more self-aware, and the process of creation is exposed through the fourth wall and can share similarities to the performative mode by utilising the filmmaker as a feature. Unlike the poetic mode or other modes, the focus is to break down the walls of filmmaking and open up the process to allow audiences to follow the filmmaker and see how the documentary process occurred.

Nichols’ modes can help to categorise documentaries with some overlapping the groups by combining elements. However, the modern documentary scene has also changed and started to abandon these modes by changing to more popularised formats such as serialised dramas that are based on real events. This is where the definition of what a documentary is begins to become clouded with Grierson’s “the creative treatment of actuality” becoming more focused on the creative element with actuality as a selling point.

Examples of this include the numerous British dramas commissioned recently such as ITV’s ‘Mr Bates vs The Post Office’ which took the true story of the Post Office scandal where hundreds of sub-postmasters were prosecuted wrongfully and adapted it into a dramatised mini-series for television. This topic could typically be seen as a traditional documentary however was instead chosen to blend into the more popular dramas in todays world for more exposure. Another example is the Netflix drama, ‘Scoop’ looking at the BBC Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew which similarly adapts a true story into a drama.

These dramas blur the line of what is actually real and what is fictionalised to create more powerful and engaging media for audiences. How do audiences know what is real versus what is fake?

Netflix’s Baby Reindeer highlights the importance of this as it was marketed as a true story (not based on) but as reported by The Guardian (2024), a judge in the United States found it was wrongfully billed as a ‘true story’ but included false facts in the show such as Fiona Harvey being sent to prison for stalking Richard Gadd (creator of Baby Reindeer) when she did not. As a result, the judge ruled that Fiona proceed with the defamation case.

Transparency is important and debates over what was missed in documentative narratives, with accusation of bias will be always tested, however, the lack of clarity by creators of dramatised media is scary for the acquisition of mistruths in a world where people can be easily deceived by false narratives spread through social media.

Bibliography

CAIN, S., 2024. Baby Reindeer was wrongly billed by Netflix as a ‘true story’, judge finds. The Guardian (London), Sep 30,

NICHOLS, B. and J. BARON, 2024. Introduction to Documentary, Fourth Edition. 4th ed. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press

PLANTINGA, C., 2005. What a Documentary Is, After All. The Journal of aesthetics and art criticism, 63(2), 105–117

RABIGER, M., 2015. Directing the documentary. 6th ed. New York: Focal Press