• Hand held Camera -  encoding realism and ‘truth’
• Narrative Voice Over -  leading the audience into a preferred reading
• Vox Pops and Interviews with experts / witnesses / participants
• Often a shorter running time than non-fiction feature films
• Intercutting / Parallel Editing linking key scenes
• Use of Archive footage to support filmed scenes
• Surveillance (information) decoded by audience (e.g. about McDonalds in Supersize Me)
• Mediated culture – documentaries select and construct, thus encoding opinion and subjectivity
• Selective editing crucial to constructing meaning
• Often point of view with encoded ideology, preferred meaning
• Use of Establishing Shot and Close Up
• Observational, Interactive, Reflexive, Expository in format
• 3 act structure, closed investigative narrative
• Often single stranded, linear – one subject is often the topic
• Exploration of narrative themes, messages and values
• Different purposes – to entertain, inform, educate, satirise, shock, satisfy, provide voyeuristic pleasure and for propaganda purposes (see Triumph of the Will andCrown Film Unit documentaries – Fires Were Started, Britain Can Take It)
• Characters are often hyper real, exaggerated stereotypes e.g. Charlton...