shawn20009

The narrative conventions of documentary film are ones in which we as culture have placed on how a documentary should be produced, edited and showed. The norms associated with documentary films are that they usually have a voice over, a narrator telling what is going to happen or explaining every step or event that will occur. The people in these documentaries try not to pay much attention to the fact that the cameras are present. By doing so the make the film appear to be more “realistic”, uninterferred by the interviewer and the production crew. However, as we have seen, quite a few of modern day documentaries tend to stray away from the conventions that tend to be attached to documentaries. This new style or form of narrative conventions in documentaries appear to be more realistic because the people aren’t necessarily acting. They are aware of the presence of the cameras and are still able to show their personalities.  The “acting”is not scripted so the characters are truly being themselves. Let’s consider this clip of a documentary about individuals who play Bingo to either pay their bills or just for leisure purposes. This is a more Observational mode in this documentary.

In this clip, the participants are not necessarily “acting” because the cameras are present. They are showing who they truly are. Also alot of the film was edited, could that possible mean that the film is not following the conventional constructs of a narrative in documentary? No, more so the idea that the film makers hadn’t taken multiple shots to cause the film to be scripted. Narrative in documentary follows a more compelling baseline that is a framework for complex and factual material. It tells a story of series of events. This conventional approach effectively construct a convincing narrative because of how the facts are produced, the audience that it attracts, how it engages that audience and what we perceive to be as the “reality”.

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