This document analyzes the postmodern elements of a student documentary project on obesity. The documentary is a construction rather than an objective reality, as evidenced by edited footage, manipulated lighting and audio, and interviews that push subjects in a certain direction. While this approach confirms a postmodern reading, it also reduces the legitimacy of the information presented. The film poster represents reality through constructed imagery and subverts newspaper conventions. The radio ad further presents a constructed reality through edited clips and accents that detach from the everyday.

1. FAT U A L
POSTMODERNISM

2. OVERVIEW
• Documentaries are a medium in which to record, and
reconstruct ‘reality’.
• However, as Baudrillard suggests, as soon as you ‘try
to capture reality, you destroy it’.
• This suggests that all documentary footage is in fact a
construction, and is subjective, rather than objective
as the audience might think, in accordance with the
directions of the director.

3. CONCEPT
• The idea which we had for our documentary came from a
report issued by the National Obesity Forum which
suggested that previous dietary advice relayed by the
government was not evidenced.
• Following on from this, we thought of the idea of exploring
both sides of the argument.
• This idea of challenging previously accepted advice confirms
a postmodernism reading, as it represents the postmodern
convention of challenging what was thought to be the truth.
• In our view, this worked well, and the controversial topic acts
as a key selling point to our sophisticated, curious audience.

4. INTERVIEWEES
• We didn’t show take a cinema-vérité approach of showing the
interviewer in any of our shots, nor include the questions being asked
on screen, which gave the suggestion that our interviewees were
talking freely.
• This appears to the audience to be real, as they are drawn into an
everyday reality which they don’t feel the need to question.
• However, we have used our documentary as a way to encourage the
two points of view about government health advice, and therefore our
questions pushed our interviewee’s answers in specific directions.
• This injects a sense of inherent subjectivity as a result of our
directions, making it impossible for the documentary to portray and
accurate representation of the everyday.
• While this was important in order to make our documentary cinematic
to suit our institutional conventions, it reduces the legitimacy of our
information being conveyed.

5. INTERVIEWS
• Our interviews were further constructed through our
use of technology.
• We used lapel mics for all of our interviews, and a
shotgun mic with a dead cat on for our Vox Pops. This
heightened the quality of the audio, and cancelled out
background noise, which made the Vox Pops in
particular quite detached from the reality.
• However, this was necessary in order to keep focus on
our topic, rather than having the audience be distracted
by what was going on around the interviewees.

6. INTERVIEWS
• In addition, we used lighting equipment for all of our interviews
except the Vox Pops.
• For our interviews with Renata and Dympna, we used Patterson
lights with a Soft Box. This is quite obvious in our shots, and
perhaps looks a little unnatural.
• For our interview with Aseem, as we had travelled to London by
train we could not take the Patterson lights and only used a
reflector, which merely reflected the natural light.
• As we used the gold side of the reflector, Aseem’s face showed up
with a yellow hue, which in parallel, also looked quite unnatural.
• These all contribute to the lack of realism within our production,
confirming the Postmodern reading that our documentary is a
construction.

7. EDITING
• Everything in our documentary has been edited – we have edited the
clips together, edited the lighting, interviews and the audio. This
would suggest that everything within the documentary is a construct,
confirming a Postmodernism reading.
• In particular, we manipulated the cinematography in our editing by
reversing certain clips, for instance one within Nandos in which a man
can be seen to be walking backwards in the reversed clip. This again
presents an unnatural image, cluing the audience into the idea of the
documentary being a construct, encouraging the audience to realise
that the documentary does not capture reality and is in fact a
construction.
• Although this was effective in making our documentary filmic, it took
away from the continuity of the editing, and the realism, perhaps
distracting the audience from our topic. An active audience might make
presumptions about this kind of editing – that the facts spoken within
the documentary are not real either like the clip.

8. POSTER
• The photograph in the film poster is a representational
medium, and we have carefully constructed it to convey
the theme of our documentary.
• The poster is probably the most cinematic/pictorial out
of our three products. We would have liked to make the
radio ad and documentary follow this idea of being
stylish and cinematic, however we feel that we failed to
some extent in this aspect.
• The poster is clearly constructed, and doesn’t represent
reality due to the depth of field and edited colours which
we added saturation to.

9. POSTER
• However, the poster has a very concrete concept, and
postmodernist posters are often much more abstract
and feature interesting typography.
• The use of text on the newspaper is quite creative, and
subverts the convention of newspaper headlines
affirming government points of view, which confirms a
postmodernism reading.
• The fact that we used a man in a suit further suggests a
postmodernism reading, as it suggests a sense of
construction, in having a superior convey a message to
those lower down in the hegemonic institution.

10. RADIO AD
• Again, in our radio advert, all of the people who we used for
our voiceover have a clear middle-class accent, which
reiterates the idea of a construct in order to have those higher
up injecting ideas to those lower down (which also confirms a
Marxist reading).
• The fact that we have edited all of the clips together, and
removed the background hum on the interview clips further
presents the fact that the radio ad has been constructed in
order to persuade our audience to watch it.
• We also recorded the main female voiceover for our radio
advert on top quality microphones within a sound-proof
recording booth, which presents something far detached from
reality, as in reality there would have been background
noise.

11. RADIO AD
• However, to more closely adhere to a postmodernism reading,
postmodernism advertising demands that the ‘signifying no longer
corresponds to the signified’, i.e. the radio ad should have been
more abstract, which would have been more entertaining for our
active audience.
• Our radio advert was too simplistic and to the point – to have a greater
effect and to create a more interesting advert we should used more
creativity and perhaps included the sound of a beating heart to reflect
the effects of obesity, which would have had to be clearly constructed.
• The opening of our radio advert confirms a postmodernism reading, as
the newspaper headlines being read over the top of each other created
a confusing opening and immediately clue the audience in to the fact
that we were questioning circulating ideologies which they have been
exposed to through the Culmination theory.