Doc Mode Activity 1 - Expository

Through my employment at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at BYU, I had the opportunity to direct a documentary focused on a developing field of legal study: the application of what’s called corpus linguistics, which means using a large body of texts to determine how words were used when documents like the Constitution were written. That way, lawyers and judges can interpret the law more accurately instead of assuming meanings that don’t apply. Initially, I was disappointed because I knew I would have to take an authoritarian stance on the subject—since BYU Law was funding the project and supported corpus linguistics—but through this class I realized it was a great opportunity to say something through documentary rather than treat the project mechanically. The final film combines filmed interviews, archival footage, and animated text overlays typical of contemporary video essays, and is titled Why Interpretation Matters: Law and Corpus Linguistics.

I decided to emulate the type of modern expository documentary often found on YouTube through creators like Johnny Harris and Vox. Their “video essays” use documentary filmmaking much like rhetoric in persuasive essays. As the name expository suggests, a large portion of their videos centers on informing the audience of a subject. Then, given that new information, the creators take a position of authority and tell the audience why they should feel a certain way about that subject. As someone who has watched video essays for many years, I was fascinated to realize that these filmmakers communicate through the conventions of the well-developed expository mode.

Entries in this mode such as Night and Fog and Land Without Bread use a “voice of God” narrator to create credibility before an audience. Channels like Vox mirror that aspect of the expository mode. However, as Nichols notes, sometimes professionals or experts speaking for themselves create an alternative credibility. This is more akin to when Vox or Johnny Harris interviews a given professional, such as an economist in Gold Explained, Finally.

I opted for a combination of these two elements. I selected Tom Lee, a former Utah Supreme Court Justice, to narrate the documentary based on a script we developed and which he read from a teleprompter to give the appearance of an expert interview. While not the “voice of God” because his image was shown, his narration created an expository framework with added credibility due to his background. We also included interviews from various legal experts, aligning with the alternative credibility Nichols describes.

I made creative choices to emphasize exposition over participation or observation. Each subject addressed the A camera directly so the audience would feel the experts were explaining the topic to them. I included counterarguments and rebuttals to give nuance to this new, controversial legal tool. I was surprised by how the expository mode doesn’t have to be didactic. I was able to imply my feelings about corpus linguistics through editing—juxtaposing interviews and B-roll. The result was an informative, balanced documentary that reflected BYU Law’s role in the subject without feeling overly aggressive or promotional. This project allowed me to experiment with the expository mode and explore how rhetoric and the creative treatment of actuality coexist.