III.

Style

Documentary styles vary. In his 1994 study Representing Reality, the documentary historian Bill Nichols mapped out different types of documentary form. These included the observational documentary (in which the film-maker claims to intervene as little as possible—often equated with “fly-on-the-wall”), expository documentary (authoritative interviews, voice-over), reflexive documentary (the film-maker as part of the film itself—often questioning the process of film-making), and the interactive documentary (focusing on the interaction between film-maker and subject, overtly crossing the line of objectivity). However, these different styles are regularly blurred in television documentaries, in no small part in recent years due to the hybridization of the documentary and its mixing with other generic forms (see below).