Film Makers Theories: Bill Nichols

Film Makers Theories: Bill Nichols 

An American film academic who wrote a seminal text on documentary form, Introduction To Documentary (Indiana University Press, 2nd edition, 2010)

Six modes of documentary: 

1. Expository:

• Speak directly to the viewer with voice-over. 
• These films use explicitly rhetorical techniques in order to explore points of actuality. 
• They use voice-over and have a straightforward show and tell structure (with graphics/interviews/footage) where the viewer is guided through the material. Often television documentary falls into this category.
• Authoritative (voice over), POV speaking directly to audience

2. Poetic:

• Poetic mode shares a common terrain with the modernist avant-garde. This mode sacrifices the conventions of continuity editing and sense of a specific location in time and place. 
• They use ‘associative’ editing in order to create a mood or tone without making an explicit argument about a subject.
• Subjective, biased emotive tone or mood created e.g. non-linear archive footage, juxtaposition

3. Observational:

• In this mode, the camera looks on as the participants in the film go on with their lives as though the camera wasn’t present. The film-maker steps back from the material he/she is shooting taking a ‘neutral’ stance from the subject matter. Of course, this may well (and should) open up debates about selection of material, lack of voiceover and editing devices.
• Uninterrupted hand held e.g. Direct Cinema/Cinema Verité (“truthful cinema”)

4. Participatory:

• The filmmaker interacts with his or her participants. The relationship between the filmmaker and the person being filmed becomes more direct and complex. 
• He or she directly participates in shaping what happens before the camera, especially in terms of conducting interviews

5. Reflexive:

• This mode calls attention to the conventions of documentary filmmaking in terms of a direct acknowledgment of the filmmaking process.

6. Performative:

• This mode emphasizes the expressive quality of the filmmaker’s engagement with the subject of the film and addresses the audience in a vivid way. 
• This is where the filmmaker is not aloof from the subject matter but who actively engages with the material