Codes and Conventions of a Documentary

Codes and Conventions of a Documentary

During the opening of most documentaries there is typically some kind of “hook” that is used to grab the audience’s attention and maintain it throughout the course of the documentary in order to make sure they keep watching. A hook can be anything as long it initially catches people’s interest and convinces people to continue watching.

In the documentary “Louis Theroux behind bars” the initial hook happens during a conversation between Louis Theroux and an inmate behind bars, and Theroux implies that the inmate is serving over 500 years in prison. This implication grabs the audience’s attention and ensures that they shall continue watching through the documentary in order to find out why this inmate was sentenced such a ridiculous amount of time in prison; which is usually revealed towards the end of the documentary so people have to watch most if not all of the documentary to get what they want to know.

Some documentaries have a kind of question that is always posed at the start of the documentary to grab a person’s attention and inform them about the purpose of the documentary.  Additionally, titles are also presented in this way, very early on in the documentary in order to inform the viewer about the general purpose of the documentary and what it covers. These titles and questions are usually presented as an onscreen graphic that is done through editing, and may be done in certain fonts in order to reflect the theme of the documentary; for example a documentary focused around obesity may comically use large bulky text as the font for it’s documentary title, as that would connote obesity.

Documentaries commonly include montages at the start of them, sometimes accompanied by a voiceover, which may be relevant to the montages on screen. This is again done in Louis Theroux’s documentary where it displays a short montage of several inmates with a voiceover talking about the prison they are in. These voiceovers are common in documentaries and are there to provide facts and information for the viewer and to further reinforce the purpose of the documentary. Other things that may be in the opening sequence of a documentary is a soundtrack of incidental music which is relevant to the documentary and may accompany a montage instead of or alongside a voiceover, however if music is every paired with a voiceover it is undoubtedly always quieter so not to override the person speaking.

After the opening of the documentary, throughout the course of the entire production there are several codes and conventions that are not limited to any point of the film, and there are also several types of documentaries such as historical documentaries or reality television documentaries that implement different codes and conventions. Some documentaries have a theme of filming live events that are relevant to a topic, such as filming a live hurricane or tsunami if the documentary were about natural disasters, however this could be considered highly dangerous. Other documentaries may opt to use archived footage for these segments, using archived footage of natural disasters instead. There are also times where archived footage is necessary and not optional if the documentary centres on the topic of past events such as historical documentaries, which may use archived footage of historical figures to help display information.

Some more informal documentaries about reality television may incorporate a “fly on the wall” convention, which includes filming real people in real life scenarios in a very realistic and down to earth setting. These types of documentaries include codes and conventions such as including a conversation between family members whom the documentary is about and filming them having a discussion, which is relevant to the topic of the film. There is also simply live event footage which consists of handheld cameras following people around and documenting their everyday lives.