1. Evaluation of Documentary
Matthew Flanagan
Question One: In what ways
does your media product use,
develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media
products?

2. • For our documentary to be at a professional
standard when finished we had to take
examples and ideas from real
documentary’s out in the public today.
Through this we could see the basic
elements that make a documentary and
also the rarer things that give it a polished
look. One example of a common, and
almost vital aspect in the ‘rule of thirds’ shot
in and interview. This involved the
participants being two thirds to the left and
their eyes being close to around two thirds
up, with them looking into space away from
the camera. Here is and example from our
documentary, compared with a professional
interview:
• We can see that they are positioned in an
almost exact style. We also used a clip mic
in interviews to get the best sound quality
possible without background noise, this can
also been seen in the professional interview.

3. • There were many other aspects of a documentary that
we felt we HAD to incorporate into our own, so that it felt
natural and familiar whilst watching it but also informing
the viewer on the topic in hand. One example is the use
of vox pop’s. We used these to get quick and short
answers of what student’s favourite consoles were. In
professional documentary’s these are often shown in-
between clips of interviews or b-roll footage and often
answer a question or are used to lead onto the next
topic. Vox pops are filmed in a style similar to interview
but often the filming is done swiftly and ‘on the go’.

4. •Another technique which was developed from real documentary’s was the
narration, or voiceover. This helped dramatically shape our documentary as
we could use it over the b-roll and archive footage we had achieved. Also
because our documentary involved a lot of online technology without a
voiceover the clips may be hard to interpret and make little sense.
•Finally one last technique which was used was the use of b-roll footage. B-
roll footage in professional documentary’s in used to coincide narration or
music and it is almost always a clip or sequence of what the narrator is
talking about. An example of us using this technique in our documentary
was quite simple as any video game footage relates in some way, however
when the narrator says ‘but what are they playing’ we show an over
shoulder shot of a teen playing on a console.

5. As well as using and developing ideas from real documentary’s we also challenged ideas.
We also understood the importance of individuality and making our work look unique.
Something that was an initial idea in the first stages of our documentary was the idea
of the title ‘game over’, a popular video game saying known worldwide. To introduce
the documentary in a unique style without narration we used a animation from the
game ‘crash bandicoot’ to round off a montage, seen here:
I believe this was very creative of us, and introduced the audience in a clever,
relatable way giving them a clear indication of what the documentary has too offer,
which is, video games.