The document analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of a student documentary about mobile phones. The strengths include following conventions of television documentaries by framing the interviewee off-center during interviews. It also uses relevant cutaways of mobile phones that relate to the topic. Additionally, the documentary maintains focus and steadiness through the use of a tripod. Weaknesses are that the interviewee does not rephrase questions in answers, lacking a music bed, not having titles, being unfinished and disjointed, and not using superimposition to connect the interviewee to the topic.

1. Mobile phone
documentary evaluation
Shaun Hughes

2. Strengths
• The first strength of my
documentary is that it follows
typical codes and conventions of a
TV documentary interview. For
example; the interviewee is framed
to the off centre when being
interviewed, this is conventional.

3. Strengths
• Another strength of my
documentary is that it uses relevant
cut aways that link to the topic of
the documentary which is mobile
phones. As seen here on the right,
mobile phones are used in my cut
aways.

4. Strengths
• The final strength of this
documentary is that it is in focus all
the way through and the camera is
steady as I used a tripod. The
tripod maintains the steadiness of
the camera and reduces the chances
of blurry shots.

5. Weaknesses
• The first weakness of this
documentary is that the interviewee
doesn’t rephrase the question in
their answer. This means that
sometimes the answers do not
make sense as it is conventional to
cut the questions out of an
interview.

6. Weaknesses
• Another weakness is that the
documentary doesn’t have a
relevant song as a music bed. To be
conventional, my documentary
should have an instrumental from a
pop song as a music bed
throughout.

7. Weaknesses
• Another weakness is that the
documentary is that it doesn’t have
at title, it begins with the
interviewee answering a question.

8. Weaknesses
• Also, we did not finish editing our
documentary and so it is disjointed
and can be quite confusing to
watch, this is a major flaw.

9. Weaknesses
• A final weakness is that we did not
superimpose anything at all, this is
another weakness. Superimposing
should be used to anchor the
interviewee to the topic. The
superimposing should be at the
bottom right of the screen.