3. The brief we were given at the beginning of our A2 course was to create an
opening 5 minutes for a television documentary. Alongside this, were two
ancillary tasks; a radio trailer and a double page spread for a listings
magazine, to back up our documentary. With an hour’s documentary in mind,
I had to research into and find our more about what would go into the first
five minutes of a documentary. I watched many documentaries and studied
double page spreads as well as radio trailers to learn the codes and
conventions. Here are the initial ideas we had for the documentary:
5. Documentaries tend to fall under certain categories, such as
light-hearted, optimistic, pessimistic, serious, resigned,
uncritical, ironic, condemnatory etc. The documentary that we
created had aspects of light-heartedness, but also seriousness
throughout the opening five minutes. This is important for a
documentary, as it sets the tone for the viewer and the type of
documentary they are about to watch.
Bill Nicholls’ theory of Documentary Modes (2001) is something that we began
by looking into. We studied the different styles of documentaries that there
are; poetic, participatory, reflexive, performative, observational and
expositional. One of these modes is poetic mode, which is a very subjective
style of documentary. The participatory and performative modes are very
similar styles, in which they include the film maker as part of their
documentary. For example, ‘Supersize Me’ is an excellent example of this, as
Morgan Spurlock appears in his documentary, it is very personal and more
about the film maker and their intentions. This is a very effective mode,
however would not be suitable for our chosen topic of binge drinking. The
performative mode is very much autobiographical, and almost follows the film
maker’s life around. The observational mode follows the subject around, and
has a very ‘fly-on-the-wall’ style to it. However ours was very different to this,
as observational documentaries tend to not use any voiceover or music
throughout. The expositional mode was definitely the most similar style to our
documentary in many aspects. This has a narrative and a voiceover
throughout, which is what our opening five minutes had to guide the viewers
through. It is very factual which we certainly followed in ours, due to the
amount of stats we used. This style is also very rhetorical in the way that it
narrates to the viewer, and this we found very effective in our piece.
7. The other type of use of the camera is by
using a tripod. We used this on various
occasions such as establishing shots of the
college, for showing students walking in and
out of college. The tripod meant that we
could have various steady shots, and use
skills that I know such as pan, tracking and
zooming in a professional way. The main use
of the tripod was for expert interviews,
which enabled us to set up the camera in a
professional manner.
Since the beginning of the A2 course I watched many documentaries in preparation for creating our
own. They can all be very different; however will use many of the same conventions of each other. I
spent a lot of time analysing documentaries such as ‘Supersize Me’. Many of the conventions that I
picked up from these were the uses of Camera. This included the shot types such as close ups, medium
close ups, establishing shots/long shots and extreme close ups. We used handheld camera a lot in our
documentary to make the viewer feel as though they are there, and get a feel for what is going on. This
was used a lot in ‘Supersize Me’ and we found that it was very effective for our documentary.
Camera shots
8. Establishing shots
Establishing shots are used in many documentaries to introduce the setting and make the
viewer familiar with the surrounding. When introducing the Sixth Form College, we used a
panning establishing shot to show where we was.
Taken from our documentary Taken from ‘Supersize me’
‘Supersize me’ was a documentary I found very helpful in understanding the different codes
and conventions of a documentary. Whilst studying this, I realised every time the creator of
the documentary went to a place or spoke about a place he proved it by showing the
audience. This is something that I learnt is extremely important in a documentary as it is
visually useful for the audience. Therefore every time we went and filmed somewhere we
showed the viewers exactly what we meant.
Here are more
of the
establishing
shots in my
documentary…
9. Sound
Sound is another important part of television documentaries including background music,
voiceover, presenter, diegetic and non diegetic sound. ‘Super-size me’ used a presenter in their
documentary, as well as a voiceover. This worked very effectively and makes the documentary
feel much more personal with the audience, however we found that for our documentary being
more informative and based at college , we did not need to use a presenter, so had just a
voiceover.
The use of background music in our documentary was non diegetic and added to
the professional look of the documentary. It also added an element of
entertainment as the documentary appeared more up-beat and fast paced. Also,
the use of diegetic sound such as voxpops, interviews and voice overs had very
good sound levels. When filming voxpops, we purposely kept the background noise
in the clip so it looked authentic. This is another thing that ‘Supersize me’ does as
they are filming on busy American streets.
We took inspiration from ‘Gogglebox’ which
uses a voice over instead of an on screen
presenter. Gogglebox is a popular programme
amongst our target audience also, according
to our questionnaires.
10. Our interviews were crucial to conveying the general opinions of the public on alcohol drinking in
young people. Having professional interviews in documentaries, and we followed this in order to
keep our documentary looking very realistic and professional. Throughout the interviews we were
aware of mise en scene and so we paid close attention to the background as we knew this knew this
was a huge factor of the way people are represented. For the interview with student
counsellor Julie Maitland, we put up a
poster in the background about alcohol
and how to get help which links in with
the fact there is help for people and also
links to the subject of the social and
health consequences which we discuss in
the documentary.
For all the bar interviews we made sure
the bartender was placed in front of the
bar so their job was emphasised and the
topic was highlighted.
We ensured that the West Midlands
Police website was up in the
background of this expert interview so
it added credibility to PC Luke Prescott
and showed he knew what he was
talking about, as well as looking
professional.
Mise En Scene
11. Expert interviews
We made sure the questions we asked our experts were appropriate and relevant for each
different interviewee and therefore made alterations between the questions for each interview.
The majority of our interviews were medium shots and not medium close ups as we initially
planned so this could have been improved by shooting in medium close up to emphasise the
interviewees emotions more and therefore get their message across better. The style of our
expert interviews was probably the most serious of that of the whole documentary. In contrast to
the voxpops where we had asked the younger people to share funny experiences of alcohol, we
asked the experts more serious questions about the consequences, fake ID and what problems
they have to deal with. This is similar to ‘Supersize Me’ where the expert interviews are quite
serious in order to get the message across.
I feel like the interviewee could have been positioned a little better in this shot for
example as it doesn’t appear that he is looking at the camera and so the effect isn’t as
serious. For example, when comparing this formal expert interview with a formal
interview from supersize me you can see the expert in the documentary is up much
closer to the camera than ours which allows much more emotion to be shown.
Our documentary Taken from ‘Supersize me’
12. One mistake I have noticed in the process of making
this evaluation is the fact we put the titles on this shot
on the wrong side which in the future, for consistency
reasons I would make sure they are on the same side.
Taken from ‘Supersize me’
Expert interviews continued…
During the editing of the documentary we made sure we kept the titles the same as the titles in
‘Supersize Me’ and in most media expert interviews also. The convention is to keep the titles to the
left hand corner as that is where the human eye is drawn to first. We decided to use this as we felt it
was important. As well as this we noted the font was white and very clear, therefore we decided to use
this to make our documentary as similar as we could as our style models were very successful. We also
wanted to make the final product as professional and authentic as we could.
14. Facts and statistics
Another convention of the expository genre we used in our documentary was the presentation of
facts and figures which is important in documentaries as it supports the piece with educational,
solid information.
Taken from our documentary Taken from ‘Supersize Me’
We took inspiration from ‘Supersize Me’ and developed it. As you can see on the right screenshot,
supersize me showed the viewers what health problems people can develop from binge eating.
The way these statistics are shown on screen shocks the audience as there are a variety of
consequences, and more importantly so many. This was something I wanted to include in my
documentary as one of the main points of ‘Tipsy Teens’ was to highlight the problems caused by
binge drinking and the short/long term problems.
I think this shot in our documentary looks good and works well. We blurred the background and also
sped up the original clip so it appears the students are walking really quickly. I think the stats
themselves are effective as they are shocking which is what we were aiming for.
15. Footage from other existing products
In ‘Supersize Me’ clips from advertisements about fast food and television programmes were
used in the documentary to emphasise the point that it was in the media regularly. We decided
to develop this and use clips from popular programmes that the target audience watch regularly
such as ‘Geordie Shore’. We chose to do this as it worked successfully in our style models and
looked very effective. Geordie Shore was the choice of programme we decided to gather clips
from as it is based around alcohol and we thought our target audience would get very influenced
from the stars of the show.
Taken from ‘Supersize Me’Taken from our documentary
I think it was a good idea to use footage from other programmes, specifically the one we chose
because teenagers will relate to this programme and it also gives the documentary more depth
instead of just being interviews and statistics.
16. Montage
Taken from our documentary Taken from ‘Supersize me’
One idea that we did have was to open the documentary a slightly different way. We decided not to
open the documentary a traditional way of the voiceover coming in straight away introducing the topic
to the audience and going straight into the documentary. Instead we took inspiration from one of our
main style models ‘Supersize me’ and made a montage to open our documentary. Supersize Me opens
with a very strong message about child obesity, represented by children singing famous fast food songs.
We decided to develop this idea as we felt it represented them well without words which was very
powerful. We collected clips from our target audience of holidays in popular teenage drinking
destinations such as Magaluf and also from parties. We were very interested by this and hope for the
same impression on our target audience.
18. Reconstructions
One typical convention of documentaries is reconstructions. We did not use this
convention as we didn’t feel it was necessary for the topic or the target audience of our
documentary. Instead of attempting conventions we felt were not appropriate we
decided to focus on the conventions that fitted our documentary in order to create the
best product we could.
Another convention we did not use in our documentary is having the film maker
present in the documentary. This is a typical feature of the performative mode,
however we chose not to use it as we wanted to present the views and experiences of
the general public, not just one person. An example of this type of participatory mode
can be seen in ‘Supersize Me’ where Morgan Spurlock portrays his personal
experience. This autobiographical style personalises the film and so is less effective
when representing a general audience.
19. In conclusion:
Our documentary can fall into a light-hearted category in some aspects but also a
more serious tone is taken when discussing the consequences. We wanted the
voice-over to come across this way as the opening five minutes in our
documentary is a balance of humorous (due to the comedic voxpops and
anecdotes) however at times very formal (in the expert interviews emphasising
the long and short term effects of drinking in young people).
Overall, I feel our documentary used documentary conventions successfully and
the ones we didn’t use were relevant and did not affect our documentary
significantly. We used a variety of shots and settings to make our documentary
interesting and varied, similarly to the documentaries we had studied.
21. What codes and conventions did we use in
our DPS?
We also produced a double page spread article for Radio Times. We chose
radio times as we felt it covered the same type of topics as our documentary.
When analysing Radio Times articles we noted the key conventions, for
example a main title, page numbers, small and large images, a main
image, dates, columns and quotes which summarised what the text is
talking about.
22.
23. We used the conventions of radio times
articles by using small images, however
we decided to place ours in the middle of
the text. We put the photos next to the
text they were relevant to so readers can
visualise what they’re reading about.
The radio times DPS typically
start their article in the bottom
left hand corner so this is
something we followed as we
thought it looked professional
and authentic.
Similar to radio times we
placed our page numbers
in the corner of both
pages, and made sure that
the number on the left
hand page was even as the
very front cover of a Radio
Times counts as 1, so the
number on the left would
be even.
Our double page spread
A Radio Times spread
We made sure we made
authentic logos on our DPS as in
the corners of radio times
articles they use their own logos.
25. On this radio times article they chose to
challenge conventions by not using a big
eye catching masthead, however we
wanted to make sure it was bold and
people would notice it as people often
quickly glance at an article before reading,
therefore we wanted to make sure people
were intrigued.
We chose to challenge another convention of
typical radio times articles. They tend to
show behind the scenes of the programme
they are advertising, however we decided
we’d rather show actual content the target
audience will see in the documentary.
We decided not to use
the main image taking
up the whole
background like this RT
DPS as we wanted our
main image to stand
out and be clear.
27. We were asked to produce a radio trailer lasting between 30-45 seconds. Prior to
production of our media trailer, we did our research to understand the codes and
conventions of a radio trailer. After listening to radio trailers on stations such as capital
and free radio we decided to broadcast our radio trailer on capital. This is because they
advertise frequently and we felt the target audience of our documentary would listen
to capital. Also, we intended to broadcast the radio trailer on BBC radio 1 originally,
however due to BBC regulations we would not have been able to air our documentary
on channel 4 so we changed to Capital FM.
The typical conventions of a radio trailer include documentary extracts, facts, music,
length, voiceover, time, date and channel and we decided to stick to these conventions
mainly.
28. We followed all of the conventions of a typical radio trailer. Our voice over for the
trailer was the same of the documentary for some consistency. The music we used
was also upbeat similar to the positive music in our documentary. We also used
extracts from our documentary such as voxpops which would intrigue the target
audience as they would have to listen to the rest of the trailer to find out what we
are talking about, and then when and where its broadcasted. This also gives the
audience an insight as to what will be discussed in the documentary and what
other teenagers opinions are in general – if the audience agree with what is being
said in the radio trailer they may be interested in watching the whole thing. The
length of our trailer was around 30 seconds which is typical of radio adverts as they
are meant to be short, sharp and straight to the point. This means the audience will
not get uninterested. We also decided to use a voice over which is what all radio
trailers use.
29. Overall I believe our radio trailer was very successful and
professional which I think is due to the fact that we followed
many of the typical codes and conventions of a radio trailer. I
think the fact the sound levels were very well balanced also
contributes towards the success of this product. We followed
the typical length of a radio trailer which meant it all flowed
together well and enabled us to advertise what we wanted to
and get our point across well without boring the audience.
In conclusion:
Final thoughts:
I feel we used the majority of conventions within the
documentary genre, TV listings magazine and radio trailer
in order to create our products. In this evaluation I have
explained why I conformed to certain conventions or why I
challenged them. I believe our research helped to a great
extent as we used media articles to our advantage to see
how they used and adapted conventions and I think this
helped us to create 3 very successful products.
