Harlan County, USA depicts a new kind of documentary that we have not seen in this class. The narration is dictated through the coal miner's and their families. Barbara Kopple's decision to do this greatly helps the audience understand and sympathize with the miner’s struggle against Duke Power Company.

Kopple captures the lives of the coal miner’s and their families. The scene with a coal miner’s wife bathing her little girl in a tin bucket because they don’t have hot running water gives the audience an understanding of how bad their circumstances were. Much of the footage in the documentary is raw in a way that the audience understood how greatly they wanted to win and get better wages and insurance. Kopple and her crew filmed the miner’s and their wives at the “picket line” protesting to the people in charge. The film crew put themselves in imminent danger while filming at the picket lines because of the "gun thugs" that were constantly brandishing weapons and ready to fight. But the fact that the miner's and their supporters still showed up greatly heightened the realistic drama in the documentary. It also established Kopple's credibility because she decided to use the unedited scenes where the crew were pushed and shoved or talked back to to make the point that they weren't holding back the truth.

Another element that helped progress the documentary's argument was the blue grass/ folksy soundtrack. The hauntingly powerful voices of the singers drove home the point of the miner's suffering and the 13 month battle with the company. Some of the lyrics were directly related to the scenes that they accompanied.