1. In what ways does your media product
use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
Question 1

2. Rule Of Thirds
I think this example from our documentary shows an
effective rule of thirds shot, the eyeline ‘level match’ is
achieved and the visual structure is relevant. I feel the
interviewee is looking slightly too far out of shot and
needs to be looking to camera a little bit more. Her eye
line is as the right height and she is sat in the right
place. If we had move the camera around to the left
just a little bit then this rule of thirds shot would be
better.
The rule of thirds shot is a standard for documentary
film makers. It is also known as the ‘talking head shot’.
The framing is essential as it allows the audience to
communicate with the interview subject effectively
through the balance achieved.

3. B-roll & A-roll
As well as recording A-roll footage such as interviews and voxpops we also recorded B-roll footage. By having
both sets of footage we could mix them so that the viewer isn’t looking at the same piece of footage for too
long. We recorded more B-roll footage than A-roll, because we needed more footage to choose from. B-roll is
used to break the interviews up and create new depth/levels to the piece.

4. Sound Bed
We put a sound bed throughout our documentary so that whenever there was no dialogue or the voiceover wasn’t relevant the music could
be heard. We chose the chocolate song as it is relevant to our documentary. The sound bed also doubles up as the theme tune when the
opening sequence is played.

5. Transitions
We used the effects bank for transitions
between footage to keep our documentary
continuous. The main transition we used was
cross dissolve as seen in the screen shot on
the right. We only used the transitions when
necessary to prevent them being over used
and ruining the footage.
The effect creates an effective flow and ties
scenes together.

6. Mise En Scene
When framing for interviews we had to consider the mise en scene in each location. We made sure our mise en scene was relevant to
the subject of our documentary. For the left screen shot the mise en scene is relevant as the background is shelves of chocolate
products within the shop where we filmed the interview . This was also relevant to the interviewee as she is the owner of the shop and
that is her role throughout the documentary. For the right screen shot the mise en scene isn’t as good however still relevant, we filmed
the interviewee in her office as it is part of her job which is also her part in the documentary. There is a small link to chocolate in the
mise en scene however I feel we could have made the link to chocolate more obvious.

7. Stop Motion Animation
We developed documentary conventions by adding stop
motion animation. Having animation in a documentary
isn’t normally seen but is not breaking convention. We
used stop motion animation for our opening sequence to
introduce the title of our documentary. We used the
animation as an artistic application to make our
documentary stand out and look innovative.
The filming was very time consuming as we decided to
spell out the title of our documentary with individual
chocolates. Every time we added a chocolate we had to
record a bit and then add another chocolate, we did this
until we spelt out the whole of the title.
During the editing we had to cut a lot of extra footage
and fix all of the small pieces of footage we need
together. All together there were around 47 clips of
individual footage which had to be cut and added
together. This process was also very time consuming
, however the end product was what we expected and
alongside the sound bed it created the intro to our
documentary.

8. Name Graphics
I feel our name graphics break documentary
conventions. In the documentaries we saw prior to
devising our own most name graphics were plain text.
Very rarely some would have a small picture or
something to link the text with the theme of the
documentary.
We made our name graphics into a chocolate bar
wrapper to keep in with the theme of our
documentary. I feel that this broke convention as
most graphics are plain and simple and do not
distract the viewer, where as ours are eye catching
and a full image which takes up a lot of the shot.
Most graphics in documentaries are only
small, however due to ours being within the image it
meant our graphics had to be a lot larger than what
they should have been. I feel that this could be
distracting to the viewer as they are so big. A lot of
documentaries also don’t show the graphics
appearing and disappearing on screen. Unfortunately
the transitions we used meant that this could be seen
by the viewer, this again breaks the codes and
conventions of a documentary