The document summarizes the various cinematic techniques and conventions used in the student's media production that are inspired by or similar to real documentaries. These include conducting interviews and using reenactments, cross-cutting between interviews and footage, employing voiceovers to narrate footage or provide factual context, incorporating appropriate background music to set mood, and utilizing a range of shots like medium close-ups for interviews and point-of-view shots for reenactments. The student explains how their techniques emulate successful approaches used in existing documentaries like Educating Yorkshire.

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

2. My media product uses many conventions that are
already used in documentaries today. For example,
I have interviewed several people for the
documentary and also done re-enactments. They
can also work well together as they have done in
already successful work for example, Educating
Yorkshire often use an interview room where they
talk to students and teachers. They often cross this
over with live action of the situation being spoke
about and cut back to the interview.

3. Here they show the head
teacher talking about a
situation between teachers
and pupils. They then cute to
footage of the teacher at
work and his classroom
followed by another
interview of one of the pupils
and also over lapping these
by using the interviews as
voiceovers for the footage.

4. I have done this in places where a victim is
talking about their experience and I cut to a
re-enactment of that experience or perhaps to
a shot of the criminal they are describing.

5. I also use a voice over for explanations as well as
putting facts into my documentary to make it
informative. This is already a common feature of
the program My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding where the
voice over might explain the city they are in or facts
about travelers.

6. My voice over does a similar job but say facts
about crime and the area this crime is based
in.

7. Most documentaries use background music in
their programs so I have also used some. Because
it is a serious subject, the music must match to
keep the audience in the right frame of mind.
This is used in things like the extraordinary
people documentaries, the music changes to fit
the mood of the scene. I have used music that fits
my genre and theme. I have also made sure that
it does not overshadow more important things in
the documentary such as the script and therefore
have only raised the volume of it in places where
I have no sound or am showing re-enactments.

8. I have used a range of different shots: for
interviews there is mostly a medium close-up
which again is similar to other already existing
documentaries such as 24 hours in A&E where
they have a similar system of interviews and
action shots at medium close-up range.

9. Other shots I have used is zoom and reverse
zoom if the shot is long distance something
that often happens in Catfish when they want
to give the viewer a closer look.

10. I also have included point of view shots for re-enactments so that
the audience get an idea of the victim’s feelings at that time. This is
something that is used, though in a different way, in programs like
MTV Cribs. The camera is the guest of the house and is referred to
as MTV but it moves around as if it were someone looking around
the house and makes the audience feel like they are visiting it.