This document summarizes three documentaries that are relevant for research into a documentary about body image and social media:
1. The Human Mannequin follows a 17-year-old girl with a rare disease that locks her muscles who tries to make it in the fashion industry despite her condition. It deals with body image and acceptance.
2. Catfish UK investigates people who use fake photos and profiles to trick others in online relationships. It explores how social media can impact those who post images and those who interact with them.
3. The Secret Life of Students tracks students' online and phone activities to observe their general habits and how social media affects them. It uses establishing shots and cutaways in
2. Documentary 1 – The Human
Mannequin
The Human Mannequin is a
documentary about a 17 year old
girl who has a rare disease that
causes her muscles to lock into
place. Despite this, she is desperate
to make it in the world of fashion.
However, will the extremely body
conscious fashion industry accept
her. This documentary is relevant to
ours as it is dealing with similar
issues like body image and being
judged by others.
This documentary is a mixture of reality TV and Self reflective documentary as it
follows the life of a real 18 year old and she is aware the documentary and she
talks to the camera. It also includes interviews with experts in fashion and medicine
as well as close friends and family. The target audience is teenagers aged 13 – 18
which is similar to our documentary’s target audience. It is also on the same
channel at the same time just the day before. This shows that we are on the right
lines with timing and channel as it shows that this must be a popular time for our
target audience to watch television. It starts with an establishing shot of her face
whilst she’s having her make up done. This is introducing the person and theme in
a subtle way.we would like to adapt this by starting with different ‘selfies’.
3. Documentary 2 – Catfish UK TV
Catfish is a TV show documentary
where experts look on internet,
specifically social media, to find out if
people are who they say they are.
People use fake pictures, profiles and
identities to lure people into serious
relationships. This documentary
explores social media and how it
effects people who post them and
people who get involved. This
documentary is a mixed
documentary including elements of reality TV and Docusoap. The real people are
followed and investigated online. Using social media, they track down people who
have been online messing with people. This does deal with how people use social
media to edit pictures or even change profile altogether and tricking people like that
really impacts on them. This is similar to how our documentary will look at how
people use images on social networking to make themselves feel better.
4. Documentary 3 – The secret life of
students
The secret life of students is a
Channel 4 documentary in which
students are given special IPhones
that track all their texts, calls and
online activities. This is good for pre
filming research as it is the
generalised habits of the age group
that our documentary will revolve
around and be targeted at. This TV
show documentary is a mixture of self
reflective
and reality TV as it follows the lives of real students and how social media effects
them. The clip starts with a very wide shot of the student accommodation. This works
as a type of establishing shot which shows the audience where the footage is taking
place and what the general theme is. This then moves to a wide shot of subject
Helen reading her book for university. This suggests that she really is trying to focus.
There is also a close up of the main distraction, her phone, to show she is texting.
When Helen is doing an interview there are several cut aways. One to a shot of her
using her phone and one to the person she is texting.