Documentary Styles.

Within film making there are 6 different styles of filming: 

A poetic documentary usually has a very personal subject to the people involved in the documentary and focuses on it heavily. This tends to be a more emotional documentary style. The personality of the subject or maker is reflected in the music, shots, camera angles and content. Music being the main and most obvious expression.

An observational documentary focuses on what you see, usually a mash up of pictures, and video clips. This is usually people or animals that are observed but sometimes it's events and landscapes too. This style focuses less on audio and dialogue. For my documentary I will use this style as I feel like if done right it can be quite effective.

A performative documentary is more about the subject point and an emotional aspect of the documentary. They are very personal and unconventional and include reenactments of events. These are oftern very auto-biographical in their nature. A good example is "Tounges United' (1990).

An Expository documentary is where there is a direct adress to the audience. These are oftern social issues expressed in an argumentative fashion and it usually about non-fiction friends. 'An Invonvinent Truth' (2006) is a good example of an expository documentary.

A participatory documentary features the filmmaker in it and usually involves an interview between the filmmaker about the subject of the documentary. An example of this would be 'Supersize Me' (2004).

A reflexive documentary shows the constructive nature of the documentary. Its usually associated with experimental documentaries and usually have an interesting structure to the audience. The audience also engages in the documentary as it happens. They engage on a realism and representation.

Tom and my documentary will be more of an observational style, with some but very little dialogue included in the form of and interview. I think this would work well as a twist on the usual observational documentaries.