The footage's that are displayed in the documentary allows the audience to identify what its going to be about. The camera shots and framing has an effective hand-held technique that follows Theroux through interviews, tours and even a shot of the psychiatric centre shows that the genre of the documentary is going to be about health, wellness and medication. This shows that the documentary is more likely to be an observational documentary because the camera, microphone and film crew seem not to be disturbing the scene or even to be noticed by the participants.
Throughout the entire documentary, the camera constantly shows an establishing shot and close up shots to show where the interview is going to take place and a close up to show the seriousness of the conversation (e.g when Louis was talking to Hugh's mother). Everyone that was featured in the documentary wore ordinary clothes including Louis, himself to make him seem more approachable and relaxed towards children.
Within the documentary, most of the sound that the audience hears are diegetic sound where everything they hear is coming from the footages they see in the camera frame. Long clips usually show the important part of the documentary with no music in the background making the audience listen to what their saying and what is happening, however, there are some voice overs and background music playing when an interview is not taken place. During interviews, the use of the editing technique are often used to show Louis Theroux reactions to what the interviewee is saying making the audience to form their own opinion of the situation themselves.
To compare Louis Theroux documentary to a scientific documentary, Louis work is more related to society and social groups within a community whereas a scientific documentary has a much broader topic to debate about, for example, human, body and mind, space and the outer world etc. A scientific documentary is more like a correspondence documentary where they would use a lot of CGI graphics to demonstrate a fact, historical events and have a lot of interviews with professors, they use narration and voice overs as well as captions to create a factual documentary.
Louis delivers his work through interviews, hand-held camera techniques and being ''one'' of the group to have an insight of what goes on in a social group, he uses no captions and forces the audience to focus on what is happening in the footage therefore making them feel more involved. It seemed like Louis's intentions was to explore and to show the audience something important or otherwise overlooked; devoted to a cause or to people, trying to make a difference.
Compared to scientific documentaries, directors and producers main intentions to make people believe in something whether it be a person, an event, places of significance or a natural phenomenon, they all want you to believe in the facts and as audiences we are expected to be told the truth, no lies or distortion.
Context of viewing or distribution
Its easier to recognize a documentary's genre though its content of viewing (channels). Louis Theroux's documentaries are usually aired on the BBC TWO where most of the other documentaries like ''The Natural World'' and ''Life on Earth'' are always aired on the same channel.
A scientific/philosophical documentary are more likely to be aired on the discovery channel where they are more serious about events and conspiracies revealing about the complex world that we live in.
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