Channel 4 focuses on airing documentaries that highlight niche topics, provide international perspectives, and explore British culture in greater detail. They often target opinion leaders to spread the messages of their productions. Channel 4 also demonstrates left-wing ideologies in some series and commonly uses talking head interviews within their documentaries.

1. Conventions of Channel 4
Documentaries

2. Channel 4’s Mission Statement
‘Channel 4 will continue to encourage documentaries
with social purpose, personal authorship and an
international perspective’
This extract from Channel 4’s Statement of Promises
shows that Channel 4 sees the relevance of
highlighting niche topics as they have the power to
give a mass audience an understanding of lesser
known subjects.

3. Niche Subjects
Channel 4 often airs documentaries which
focus on very niche topics. They have a series
known as ‘Three Minute Wonders’ which focus
on very niche subjects.
A shot from a Three Minute
Wonder on street art
A shot from a Three Minute
Wonder on niche music
Three Minute Wonders helps to inform Channel
4’s mass audience of topics they wouldn’t
normally study, possibly broadening their
interests.

4. Internal Perspective
As stated in their Mission Statement, Channel 4
promise to show documentaries with an
international perspective. This gives audiences a
wider knowledge of topics they wouldn’t usually
get to study.
This is an advert for a Channel 4 documentary on the 2011 Japanese Tsunami
and Earthquake. This shows that Channel 4 are producing high quality
documentaries on international affairs.

5. Productions Within Britain
Channel 4 also produces a vast amount of
productions on British culture. As they are a
British company, their audience will already have
an understanding on their topics, meaning they
can explore them in greater detail.
This production focuses on a figure of British history, meaning that non-British audiences may
have initial confusion towards the production, but Channel 4’s British audience would already
have at least a basic understanding of the subject.

6. Targeting Opinion Leaders
Channel 4 often targets opinion leaders with their
productions in order to spread the message of their
production through social interactions.
I have followed this conventions in a sense as my
secondary audience consists of older more educated
people who act as opinion leaders because of this.

7. Left-Wing Ideologies
Channel 4 demonstrate left-wing ideologies in their
productions, an example being the series they produce
called ‘Dispatches’.
I followed this convention as I purposely left my
production so didn’t force the audience to pick either
side. This lets the message of the production open to
discussion and is based on personal interpretation.

8. Talking Heads
A popular method of interview used within Channel 4
documentaries is talking heads. This can be seen in all
their ‘Three Minute Wonders’. This involves
interviewing your subject using a medium close up.
I followed this convention as my interviews with band
members were all shot using a talking heads method in
collaboration with multicam.