The document analyzes the filmmakers' documentary about phobias and how they applied professional documentary conventions. They watched several professional documentaries to inform their techniques. Their documentary is a mixed-style that uses interviews, observations, and narration, similar to one of the reference films. They paid close attention to graphics, mise-en-scene during interviews, and cutaways to relate to the voiceover or interviewee. The editing separates interviews and voiceover, and a female voiceover with a sinister soundbed were unconventional choices that still anchored the audience effectively.

1. Evaluation Question 1

2. • For our documentary, we intended to follow the codes and
conventions of real professional documentaries. As a class we
watched three professional documentaries: ‘The Music Biz’, ‘The Devil
Made Me Do It’, and ‘That Thing Lara Croft’. All three of these
documentaries are single stranded. Alongside this we each chose to
analyse a further two of our own professional documentaries to
study. I chose ‘The Human Mannequin’ and ‘The Model Agency’.

3. Genre
• The type of documentary we have produced is a mixed documentary,
as we have used a combination of interview, observation and
narration. Likewise to professional documentary ‘The Devil Made Me
Do It’ which also is a mixed documentary. The major theme within
our documentary is phobias, although it has, like many other
documentaries been influenced by the power of the media. Likewise
to ‘That Thing… Lara Croft’, the media is influenced in it being a
feminine look on a masculine idea.

4. Interviews/Graphics
• The interviews we took for our documentary each had relevance to our topic of phobias.
We made sure each person was in the rule of 3rds and after watching professional
documentaries, we wanted to make sure we got this exactly right for our documentary, to
enhance its professionalism. The graphics used in our documentary were Sans Serif and
had a bold white box around its text to make sure it stood out and was clear to viewers
who the interviewee was, and what they do that is relevant to the documentary. Also the
font we chose for the title in our title sequence was the sae, but with an extra glow
around the lettering. This created an almost horror film font that would present a sinister
look to our documentary.
Graphics
show
audiences
the
interview
ee’s name
and his
professio
n that
relates to
the topic.

5. Mise-en-scene/Cutaways
• The mise-en=scene for our interviews was extremely important, as it is a convention of
professional documentaries, we wanted to make sure we could achieve this to the best
of our ability. This is significant as it links to what the topic is about, and is more relevant
than a random background. Additionally, the cutaways were an extremely important
factor in our documentary, and likewise to professional documentaries they stop jump
cuts and they relate to what the voiceover/interviewee is saying. Like ‘That Thing…Lara
Croft’ they have cutaways of the game footage and the game being played, which is also
what we intended to do to make sure we got the right codes and conventions involved.
Both mise-en-scenes relate
to the profession of the
interviewee. Neil Foster has
a relaxed and calming
background, representing
his job as a hypnotist.

6. Editing
• In terms of editing, we did follow the codes and conventions especially
when using cuts. In regard to our own documentary, there are cuts
throughout to separate the interviews from the voiceover, this is purposely
done so that the documentary is broken down for the audience. The sound
in our documentary is female, with a posh, clear voice. We thought that a
male voiceover would be more fitting for the topic of phobias, but we
decided to challenge this idea and use a female voiceover, that anchors the
audience just as much as a male voiceover would. To add to this, we added
a soundbed of Intro – The XX, which is quite sinister that fits the
demographic of phobias. Likewise, to professional documentary sound
beds, in ‘The Devil Made Me Do It’ the sound bed is a Marilyn Manson
song, again fitting with what the documentary is about.