By Megan Fellowes

Usually a narrator/presenter- a voiceover in which the voice is standard English and this drives the narrative forward

A song or a sound effect underneath the footage- this provides emotion and the SFX anchors the meaning

The music will always relate to the main plot

Asynchronous sound (dubbing) this is gender specific to the person who is being translated

The mise en scene has to be appropriate to the documentary

This always reflects the theme of the documentary, however there is always more than one theme

Repertoire of shots

Medium close ups and close ups on interviews

Direct address

In the documentaries there are mostly interviews which are static, in these the interviewee will either be positioned to the left or to the right looking to the opposite side of the camera

This is because of the RULE OF THIRDS- you can split any screen into three and the eyes of the interviewee will always be in the top third section

Captions under an interviewee which states

the name and the profession underneath

There is text displayed throughout the

documentary which gives you information

about the unanswered questions that are

brought up in the documentary

There are subtitles to make any speech that

is unclear, understandable to viewers

The captions are plain and usually white

All documentaries of an identified type, these

being;

Fully Narrated

Fly on the wall

Mixed

Self Reflexive

DocuDrama

DocuSoap

Open Narrative

Closed Narrative

Single-Strand

Multi-Strand

Circular

Linear

Non-Linear

Exposition is the argument- it is the direction

the documentary is going

Dramatisation is the reconstruction speculate

as to what has happened, this then creates a

dramatisation