Narrative vs. Concept Documentary

structural framework that categorizes documentaries into two primary editorial approaches. Narrative documentaries are edited to emphasize a character's journey, focusing on a protagonist, conflict, and emotional arc. Concept documentaries are edited to explore an idea or advocate for a conclusion, prioritizing argument, evidence, and thematic coherence over a single character's story. Concept-driven documentaries, in particular, benefit from pre-editing workflows like spatial synthesis, which allow for the visual organization of disparate ideas and interview bites into coherent thematic clusters.