Genre
This type of autobiographical writing involves someone reflecting on their personal experience and communicating their perspective on often traumatic events. Mary Karr suggests that writers of this genre make it clear to the reader how much they remember about people, events, and dialogue in order to maintain a truth contract between the reader and the writer.
What is memoir?
This mode of documentary includes so little intervention by the filmmaker that it is popularly known as "fly on the wall" filmmaking. Filmmakers utilizing this mode assume that what they film would have happened whether or not they were filming and don't often utilize voiceover or interviews.
What is the observational mode?
These two authors use their own family photographs in their works.
Who are Judith Kitchen and Alison Bechdel?
The space between panels.
What is the gutter?
In Grizzly Man, while Timothy Treadwell's own videos usually work in those documentary mode, Herzog's interviews and narration heavily utilize this documentary mode.
What is the observational mode [you could argue the interactive as well for Treadwell, if you note how he intervenes in the world he's filming] and the interactive mode [you could argue the expository as well because it is a profile of Treadwell organized around Herzog's narration; however, the fact that Herzog's narration is subjective and he steps on-screen suggest a use of the interactive mode].
This genre organizes sound and images into arguments. You might find a number of modes in this genre that reveal what kind of reality the creator is attempting to show.
What is documentary?
One of the most common modes of documentary, this mode is often used to give information about people and historical events. It usually relies on voiceover narration and presents itself as objective, neutral, and truthful.
What is the expository mode?
This author argues that one's interpretation of a photograph needs well-reasoned evidence to support it. They are firmly against looking for a photographer's intentions within their photographs.
Who is Errol Morris?
This online nonfiction form turns articles into lists. Some think it's great because it makes work easier to read! Others, however, criticize its reliance on click-bait like features to lure in readers.
What is a listicle?
These are topical, digital nonfiction games that communication their argument through forcing the player to work through the steps of a process.
What are newsgames?
Unlike objective truth, this type of truth relies on first person experience and personal perspective. It is a feature of memoir that might make people say, "I remember this event different, but this is your side of the story so I can't challenge you about it."
What is subjective truth?
This author uses intuition (and knowledge of how peoples' lives turned out) to "resurrect" and give voice to the people within photographs.
Who is Judith Kitchen?
In this type of closure between panels, the author chooses to show parts of ONE time/place over different panels.
What is aspect-to-aspect closure?
This is a formal summary of a nonfiction text broken into 4 sentences including the author's argument, how they make their argument, their purpose, and the intended audience.
What is a precis?
This genre is known for an attempt to document with reality while using digital technology. It is a digital form of another genre we studied that also has a series of modes.
What is interactive documentary (or i-docs)?
Unlike oral, written, or visual rhetoric, this type persuades through the actions you undertake as a player or user.
What is procedural rhetoric?
This author's goal is to rethink photographs and photography as a practice. They actively question what kind of reality photographs portray and what taking photographs might say about us.
Who is Susan Sontag?
This type of closure between panels occurs when there is a significant time/place JUMP between panels. It could be hours, days, years even and the location can change entirely.
What is scene-to-scene closure?
Deadliest Catch utilizes this reality TV specific mode of documentary that includes observation of subjects who might be consciously performing for the camera.
What is the observation-entertainment mode?
What separates these two digital genres is that one attempts to think through and argue a central point and the other is personal and often has creators speaking about their own lives to a perceived online audience.
What are the video essay and the video blog?
This is a way to read nonfiction texts for the aims of the author and context in which the work was written.
What is rhetorical reading?
This author works in the classical essay style--having multiple lines of inquiry and coming to no firm conclusion about most of their questions. Their writing might leave you asking more questions than feeling like you received firm answers. They do make various points about the "truth" in photographs and photography as a practice throughout their work, so when re-reading you should be careful to read through a few paragraphs in order to understand what they are saying.
Who is Susan Sontag?
It's this type of closure between panels when the author is still dealing with the same subject or theme, but time has passed and we haven't seen a sequence of actions.
What is subject-to-subject closure?
These digital texts are generally defined as short, silent, looping animations that have anonymous creators.
What are GIFs?