The purpose of a documentary is to document; Many documentary filmmakers attempt to change or improve society in some way with their documentaries, in order to reach a

specific goal they would like to portray to audiences, For other documentaries, the goal is merely to entertain or amuse the audience in some way. These are called “human interest

stories”. Other documentaries may try to challenge and uncover hidden truths or mysteries. One last aim may be to summarise someone famous’ life such as Kurt Cobain

or Anthony kiedis, therefore the purpose of this would be to educate.

To inform To look at

perspectives To persuade To entertain To educate to critique To observe real life

1926: John Grierson (1898-1972), a young Scottish academic following an Career in mass communications in the US, writes a review of Robert Flaherty’s ethnographic film ‘Moana’ for the New York Sun(February 8, 1926). In the review he coined the term "documentary."

Fly-on-the-wall is a style of documentary, The name came from the idea that events are seen openly, as a fly on a wall might see them. When making a fly on the wall documentary, the camera crew works as discreetly as possible; however, it is also common for participants to be interviewed, this is often by an off-camera voice. And example of this is ‘24 hours in A&E’ or ‘Big Brother’

A fully narrated documentary has a voice over the documentary to help the audience gain a better understanding of what is going on. Fully narrated documentaries often use direct address and the voice over goes along with the actions that the audience is seeing. Fully narrated documentaries use the voice of 'God' technique which subconsciously makes the audience think the voice is truthful and meaningful in their words an example of this could be nature documentaries such as; frozen planet, meerkat manor and march of the penguins

A mixed documentary uses a combination of interviews, observation and narration to help to progress the argument the maker is trying to portray. In a mixed documentary as the correspondent is speaking pictures and clips run throughout. Mixed documentaries represent neutral opinions, it is not just a series of selective constructions. An example of this could be ‘the devil made me do it’

In a self reflexive documentary the documentary maker talks to the camera to try to draw the attention of the audience. Self reflexive documentaries have been criticised as being confusing to an audience as they can be said to be drawing attention to the presenter instead of the underlying issues they should be addressing. And example of this could be ross kemps documentaries on gangs.

Docu-DramaA docu-drama is a re-enactment of real life events as they happened for example the Hillsborough disaster. However although docu-drama's are meant to reveal the truth, really they can only ever deliver fiction because they cant really know what went on or how people acted or felt. Docu-drama's are also thought to be misleading and dangerous as people believe them as they claim to be real.