Oh the Modality

Documentaries are broken into different modalities, that identify different traits and attributes that are within the film. These modalities are expository, Observatory, poetic, reflexive, performative and participatory. I am currently working on a short documentary myself, titled ‘God’s in the Making’. The focus of this film is to showcase the conviction of the Aetherius society, a spiritual brotherhood united under the beliefs of an alien master named Aetherius. When I first pitched this documentary I wanted to take the expository modality and film with that style in mind. The traits of the expository documentary suited the style and format extremely suited well with the story I was trying to convey.

Expository documentaries are the most commonly presented with the traits such as narration, and the sequences being presented in a chronological order. This form of documentary is often the most widely viewed, due to its informative nature, it often makes up most documentaries presented on main stream television. This modality is easily identified through nature documentaries such as ‘The Blue Planet” and “Planet Earth’. The ideal goal of this modality is to deliver the information directly to the audience, without them having to search for it. These traits in my eyes best represented the type of documentary I was wanting to make.

When originally pitching this documentary I was looking for previous works that had come before me as a point of reference. ‘The Wizard Oz’ by Animal, was a strong influence for my work. Mainly due to the fact the Wizard of Oz, portrays a strange belief system, in a respectful manner, though its expository qualities were similar to what I was looking to implement. I wanted to take the idea of the leader of the group, acting as a voice of God through one main interview. The idea of narration to explain the beliefs system, history, and their personal view on the world seemed to me to be the best way to demonstrate the society. My goal was to be informative, yet still have a personal touch to the documentary, like the ‘Wizard of Oz’. However, there was another modality that I dabbled with as that suited a different approach to my documentary.

The Observational modality is quite the opposite style of documentary. Often described as a ‘fly on the wall documentary’, this modality strives to capture realism. There is no narration, and no intrusion by the film crew, they are just there to capture reality as it happens. The idea is to portray an invest as it actually happened, and the film makers have to make the decision on the fly to capture what they believe is the most important moments as they happen. The idea is to strive for cinematic realism. I wanted to take elements from this modality and try to implement it into my documentary.

To best showcase the sessions, and the group socializing together, I felt as though this modality was the best approach to filming. I wanted to present the group in the way they act, without interrupting their practices. In terms of filming the sessions, this made the most sense in my head, because it allowed me to showcase the reality of what this group does. However what was more important, was capturing the group socializing. To capture them talking about their beliefs in a casual manner, presented the amount of faith these individuals had in their belief system. This gave the group a much more real sense, to see them just having a cup of tea together, acting just like any other social group, but with the fact that they were discussing aliens, was something I strove to capture. A good example of what I wanted to achieve is the observational documentary, Jesus camp.

So, in the end, the modality for my documentary was expository with observational elements. I was able to showcase to use the main interview for the narration to create an informative structure for my documentary. This way I was able to show the history and their beliefs with ease. However, when showing the group and their practices I wanted to use the observational approach. That way the audience had a sense of what they were seeing was real, and not constructed. It also allowed me to capture amazing parts of discussion among the group, where they discussed what they believed in a much more relaxed setting. I feel that taking the elements of these modalities, was the best way to document the Aetherius Society, in a respectful and informative manner, but still, hold that personal touch.

Yord, D. (2017). The Wizard Oz. Animal.

Ewing, H., & Grady, R. (2006). Jesus Camp.

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