Direct and Interactive Styles of Documentary Filmmaking

An accomplished filmmaker in Boulder, CO, Scott Klumb attended Colorado Mountain College and Colorado Film School, where he completed general coursework and studied post-production, respectively. Since 2012, he has owned and led SMK Media, a Boulder, Colorado-based company that offers an array of film production, drone, and still photography services. Scott Klumb is also an experienced documentary filmmaker.

Documentary films, which are focused on presenting audiences with educational information, are created using multiple styles. Some documentary films adhere to one style, while others provide rigorous blends of two or more styles. Two popular styles in documentary filmmaking are the direct style and the interactive style.

In direct documentary films, events are displayed to viewers while a narrator explains the displayed scenes. This is a more traditional style of documentary filmmaking. A type of documentary that typically uses the direct style is the wildlife documentary.

Interactive documentary films literally interview the subjects of the films. Rather than using narration, the subjects provide the details by themselves. Most interactive documentary arrangements use interviewers who ask relevant questions while the subjects answer the questions. To streamline the film, the sections where questions are directed at the subject by the interviewer are often not shown. This makes it appear that the subjects are conveying information directly to the audience without having been prompted in any particular direction.