Research into similar projects

1. DOCUMENTARY RESEARCH
Research into similar products

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 vox pops talking about things
they don’t like about themselves or they’re image.

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.
Our documentary will have a reality TV element about it as we will be talking to
real people about how social media has effected them.

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 away’s. One to a shot of her using her phone and one to the person she is
texting. The main thing we will take away from this documentary is the shots used.
There are a lot of high angle and over the shoulder shots to show the subject and
the screen of their phone. This would work well for our documentary as we can
show social media and te effect it has in the same shot.