The documentary "The Big Body Problem" explores body image and teenage girls, utilizing conventions of the documentary genre. These conventions include conducting vox-pops to interview teenage girls, including information about eating disorders referencing the documentary "Super Size Vs. Super Skinny", and using the song "Body Love" by Mary Lambert which references the film's message. The film challenges stereotypes by having a female voiceover and only representing teenage girls, focusing on an issue most affecting them. The impersonal film poster allows audiences to identify with the featured body.

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Evaluation Question 1
I have created a short film which fits the documentary genre, as it
explores a factual topic by using the established conventions of
documentary. The documentary, ‘The Big Body Problem’, focuses
on body image and teenage girls. I have used some typical
documentary conventions to construct my film

2. In my research, I came across vox-pops, which
are a very common way to get a public opinion,
especially on news programmes like ‘Look
North’ or ‘BBC News’; I chose to utilise this
convention in my documentary to interview my
target audience of teenage girls on their feelings
on the topic.

3. As part of my research, I analysed documentaries about
body image such as ‘Super Size Vs. Super Skinny’ by
Dr Christian Jessen. In this documentary, there is a
section dedicated to the dangers of eating disorders.
Before viewing this, I didn’t consider including
information but after this, I chose to include a similar
section in my own documentary and develop it further
by linking my narrative to it, and displaying the idea
through the use of voiceover, archive footage and
images.

4. In documentaries, music is often chosen for its
relevance to the topic; for example, in my research, I
came across ‘Super Size Me’ which uses ‘The
McDonald’s Song’ to suggest its fast food focus. I then
used this in my documentary by researching music with
a body image theme and found ‘Body Love’ by Mary
Lambert, which has lyrics which reference the message
I am trying to suggest in my documentary.

5. During my research, I analysed several
documentaries; I found that documentaries
stereotypically have a male presenter or voiceover
artist, such as Morgan Spurlock in ‘Super Size Me’ or
David Attenborough in ‘March of the Penguins’. I
chose to challenge this convention by making my film
female-led, with female voiceover and presentation.
This not only removes a stereotype, it fits with the
theme of my documentary as it focuses solely on
women.

6. Representation is very important in media products – I
chose to represent only teenage girls in my documentary
as I felt the issue of body image most closely affected
them. During my research, all the documentaries I
analysed represented both males and females; this
makes my representation of gender non-mainstream and
it challenges the norm.

7. My film poster is impersonal and does not
explicitly depict a certain person which allows
the audience to identify with the featured body.
In my research, I came across two different
posters, for Freakonomics and Amy, one which
is impersonal and one which is personal. I used
these two together in my poster by depicting a
person impersonally.

8. During my research, I analysed other magazine reviews
to understand the conventions of a typical magazine
review. In my review, I used conventional features such
as columns, pull-quotes and a star rating system, all of
which inform the audience that this a magazine review.
Reviews often utilise a large image from the
documentary as a hook to grab a reader’s attention; I
made sure to use this in my review, as it is a useful
feature.