This week is all about modality. In particular, this post will discuss how modality is used within documentary and furthermore what my proposed modality for my major project is. Additionally, I will discuss how I plan to achieve this modality.
Generally speaking, modality can be defined as a “particular mode in which something exists or is experienced or expressed.”(Oxford Dictionaries, 2018). However, when we relate this term within the context of documentary it refers to a particular documentary style. Furthermore, Bill Nichols, discusses the six modalities of documentary filmmaking. They include: Expository, Observational, Poetic, Participatory, Reflexive and Performative. These are the descriptions he used to categorise the different modes used to communicate a documentary film subject. (Nichols, 2010, pp, 31,32.). To get a better understanding of what each style incorporates, lets talk about each one individually.
Expository:
“Expository documentaries speak directly to the viewer, often in the form of an authoritative commentary employing voiceover or titles, proposing a strong argument and point of view.”(Collaborative Documentary, 2009). Expository films are rhetorical and have the intention of trying to persuade the viewer. Interestingly, the commentary is often objective and omniscient. Examples of this type of documentary include: The Shock of the New (1980) and Ways Of Seeing (1974).
Observational:
Observational documentaries attempt to simply and spontaneously observe human experiences with minimum intervention of the subject. Furthermore it aims to witness first hand the experiences of the participants and looks to allow viewers to draw on their own conclusions (Collaborative Documentary, 2009). Examples include: Rough Aunties (2008), Children Underground (2001) and Armadillo (2010). This style of documentary is also known as the “Fly on the wall” technique.
Poetic:
“Instead of using traditional linear continuity to create story structure, the poetic documentary filmmaker arrives at its point by arranging footage in an order to evoke an audience association through tone, rhythm, or spatial juxtaposition.”(Collaborative Documentary, 2009). Examples of poetic documentaries include: Koyaanisqatsi – 1982 and Baraka (BaEery Chicken sequence) 1992.
Participatory:
“What these films do is emulate the approach of the anthropologist: participant-observation. Not only is the filmmaker part of the film, we also get a sense of how situations in the film are affected or altered by her presence. Nichols: “The filmmaker steps out from behind the cloak of voice-over commentary, steps away from poetic meditation, steps down from a fly-on-the-wall perch, and becomes a social actor” (reference). Examples include: The Man with a Movie Camera (1929) and Chronicle of a Summer (1960).
Reflexive:
“Reflexive documentaries don’t see themselves as a transparent window on the world; instead they draw attention to their own constructedness, and the fact that they are representations. It is the most self-conscious of all the modes, and is highly skeptical of ‘realism.’ It may use Brechtian alienation strategies to jar us, in order to ‘defamiliarise’ what we are seeing and how we are seeing it.” (Collaborative Documentary, 2009). Examples include: The Man with a Movie Camera (1929) and Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989);
Performative:
“Performative documentaries stress subjective experience and emotional response to the world. They are strongly personal, unconventional, perhaps poetic and/or experimental, and might include hypothetical enactments of events designed to make us experience what it might be like for us to possess a certain specific perspective on the world that is not our own.”(Collaborative Documentary, 2009). Examples include: Alain Resnais’ Night And Fog (1955) and Peter Forgacs’ Free Fall (1988).
Now that a better understanding of the various documentary styles has been established, I can now see what style my proposed major documentary fits into. After evaluating each definition, I have come to the conclusion that my documentary would fit into the observational modality. As spoken about previously, this style aims to observe real life human experiences in a non-invasive way, which is a style a think would be most appropriate for the story I plan to tell. Without going into too much detail, the documentary would involve working with kids with a wide range of disabilities, so observing their stories would be most effective in this instance. My team and I plan to have a good idea of the type of b-roll we want as well as a rough shot list in order to make the filming minimally invasive as possible. The film Children Underground (2001) in particular portrays a type of observational style I will be looking to incorporate into the documentary.
Collaborative Documentary. (2009, June 19). 6 Types of Documentary. Retrieved from https://collaborativedocumentary.wordpress.com/6-types-of-documentary/
Nichols, B. (2010). Engaging cinema: An introduction to film studies. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Oxford Dictionaries. (2018). modality | Definition of modality in English by Oxford Dictionaries. Retrieved from https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/modality
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