Using the categories of documentary developed by Bill Nichols to think about audio documentaries for podcasting

1. Types of Audio Documentaries
For Podcasting

2. Source
Based
on the concepts used for film
documentaries
Bill Nichols books
◦ Introduction to Documentary (2001)
◦ Representing Reality (1991)
http://alexburtonjournal.blogspot.com/20
07/11/documentary-form.html

3. What Documentaries Are
supposedly
revealing reality
impossible to truly re-present reality
construct a narrative - some fictional
elements
choices made in editing

4. When You Listen …
reality
is edited, sometimes re-sequenced
and artificially framed
identify podcaster’s purpose to decode
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6
possibly a moral or political perspective?
maybe just an event recorded?
share information, demonstrate authority?
sales pitch?
types – Bill Nichols

5. Types of Documentaries
Poetic
documentaries
Expository documentaries
Observational documentaries
Participatory documentaries
Reflexive documentaries
Performative documentaries

6. Poetic Documentaries
Organized
by associations and patterns
fragmentary, impressionistic, lyrical
Fragments aesthetically reconstituted

7. Expository Documentaries
speak
directly to the listener
an authoritative commentary
propose a strong argument & point of
view
try to persuade
seek to sound ‘objective’

8. Observational Documentaries
Record
lived life with minimum
intervention
immediacy, intimacy
revelation of individual human character
in ordinary life situations
little or no music, sound effects, or
technical alterations

9. Participatory Documentaries
emulate
approach of anthropologists
participant-observation
recorder part of the recording
get a sense of how situations affected or
altered by recorder’s presence.
“truth of the encounter”

10. Reflexive Documentaries
draw
attention to their own
constructedness
most self-conscious of all the modes
highly skeptical of ‘realism’

11. Performative Documentaries
subjective
experience and emotional
response
strongly personal, unconventional,
perhaps poetic and/or experimental
can have docudrama elements
can reveal marginalized group’s
experience

12. Examples of Types of Documentaries
Poetic
documentaries
◦ http://www.moreabouthenry.com
Expository
documentaries
◦ http://rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/redeye/2013/
12/tips-simplifying-holiday-season
Observational
documentaries
Participatory documentaries
Reflexive documentaries
Performative documentaries