Modes of Documentaries (Rebecca Ogunmola)

Documentary mode is a scheme developed by documentary theorist Bill Nichols that wanted to distinguish particular traits and conventions of various documentary film styles. Nichols identifies six different documentary 'modes' in his schema: poetic, expository, observational, participatory, reflexive, and performative. While Nichols' discussion of modes does progress chronologically with the order of their appearance in practice, documentary film often returns to themes and devices from previous modes. Therefore, it is inaccurate to think of modes as historical punctuation marks in an evolution towards an ultimate accepted documentary style. Also, modes are not mutually exclusive. There is often significant overlapping between modalities within individual documentary features. As Nichols points out, “the characteristics of a given mode function as a dominant in a given film…but they do not dictate or determine every aspect of its organization.” (Nichols 2001)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_mode

The Poetic Mode
It reassembles fragments of the world, transforming historical material into a more abstract, lyrical form, usually associated with the 1920s and modernist ideas, especially those of Grierson.

The Expository Mode
It directly addresses to the audience, social issues are assembled into an argumentative frame, mediated by a voice-of-God narration, associated with 1920s-1930s, and some of the rhetoric and polemic surrounding WW2.

The Observational Mode

As technology advanced by the 1960s and cameras became smaller and lighter, life could be documented in a less intrusive manner, less control was required over lighting, leaving the social actors free to act and the documentarists free to record without interacting with each other, sometimes this is called 'direct cinema', this mode aspires to invisibility.

The Participatory Mode

In this mode the encounter between film-maker and subject is recorded, as the film-maker actively engages with the situation they are documenting, asking questions of their subjects, sharing experiences with them, in this mode the documentary film maker is clearly visible.

The Reflexive Mode
This mode demonstrates consciousness of the process of reading documentary, and engages actively with the issues of realism and representation, acknowledging the presence of the viewer and the judgements they arrive at, this was popular in the 1980s.

The Performative Mode
Documentaries of this type acknowledge the emotional and subjective aspects of documentary, and presents ideas as part of a context, having different meanings for different people, often autobiographical in nature, a contemporary mode that could be associated with post-modernism. 

http://www.mediaknowall.com/Documentary/definitions.html

Our documentary covers a variety of documentary modes; to start with our documentary has aspects of the performative mode as it acknowledges the emotional and subjective aspect of the subject matter, it presents ideas as part of the context, we have views from different kinds of people, our documentary doesn’t persuade the audience to have a certain opinion, the audience are able to choose themselves what their view may be about the subject matter.

It also has aspects of the expository mode as it addresses the audience directly with social issues which could be argued as either positive or negative.

Aspects of the poetic mode can be seen in our documentary as shows how the number of teenage pregnancy has transformed rapidly over the years.

And also reflexive mode as it engages with realistic issues and acknowledges the presences of the viewer as it allows it targets different people with different opinions and allows them to see different views on the subject matter and may change the way they view the issue.