2. Big fat gypsy weddings.
Information:
• Released on: 18 February 2010
• Created by: Jenny Popplewell
• Run time: 49mins
• Channel: 4
• Available to watch: www.channel4.com – 4od
Target audience:
• Age: 15- 30
• Class: middle class
• Gender: female
• Ethnicity: all
3. Conventions of Documentary
• Hand held Camera - encoding realism and ‘truth’
• Narrative Voice Over - leading the audience into a preferred reading
• Vox Pops and Interviews with experts / witnesses / participants
• Often a shorter running time than non-fiction feature films
• Intercutting / Parallel Editing linking key scenes
• Use of Archive footage to support filmed scenes
• Surveillance (information) decoded by audience (e.g. about McDonalds in Supersize Me)
• Mediated culture – documentaries select and construct, thus encoding opinion and
subjectivity
• Selective editing crucial to constructing meaning
• Often point of view with encoded ideology, preferred meaning
• Use of Establishing Shot and Close Up
• Observational, Interactive, Reflexive, Expository in format
• 3 act structure, closed investigative narrative
• Often single stranded, linear – one subject is often the topic
• Exploration of narrative themes, messages and values
• Different purposes – to entertain, inform, educate, satirise, shock, satisfy, provide
voyeuristic pleasure and for propaganda purposes Characters are often hyper real,
exaggerated stereotypes
4. Conventions used:
• Side shot to show
people and include the
place
• Mid angle
• Establishing shot
• High angle
• Showing the place
• Close up angle
5. Conventions used:
• Side shot
• To show bride
• Mid angle
• Interview
• Mid shot
• Rule of third
