The documentary uses and develops several forms and conventions from real media products such as Americas Most Wanted. These include green screen shots, interviews throughout the documentary to drive the storyline, and flashbacks with captions to reenact events mentioned in interviews. The documentary also includes voiceovers, background music, and transitions. The poster for the documentary takes conventions from the poster for Ross Kemp on Gangs, including a black and white central photo, different colored text, and text stating the channel.

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

2. Documentary

3. Within my documentary we have used and developed a range of forms and
conventions from real media products. These are things such as:
▪ Flashbacks
▪ Interviews
▪ Voiceovers
▪ Background music
▪ The use of a green screen
▪ Micro elements
And throughout this PowerPoint I will show how in our documentary we have done
this.

4. In the first stages of the documentary we added a shot which involved a green
screen. When researching into documentaries I found a scene in Americas most
wanted when the host John Walsh introduces the crime which occurs in that
particular episode. Within our documentary instead of a host we changed this
idea slightly into having a news reporter the person who introduces the crime
which has happened throughout the documentary.
As you can see from the screenshots bellow we have changed the scenes
completely, we have added a different background to the green screen and made
look like a believable news round setting by adding a time and date at the bottom.
My documentaryAmericas most wanted

5. As the documentary progressed we filmed our interviews. We got this idea from
Americas most wanted as it was the best documentary that we found for us to
gather ideas on how to make a successful crime based documentary. Whilst
planning our documentary we agreed that the story line would come across
through these interviews, so we created them first. This was a main convention for
the documentary as interviews are played throughout the whole documentary.
My documentary
Americas most wanted

6. In the documentary we created flashbacks to match the storyline that has been
told within the interviews. This is another idea we created in our documentary
from the documentary Americas most wanted. We have added a caption on each
flashback called re-enactment because in crime documentaries such as Americas
most wanted the flash backs are not actual footage of the crime that has occurred
Within Americas most wanted’s flashbacks
they have their actors speak, in our
documentaries flashbacks are played with
background music and the speech of the
interviews.
My documentaryAmericas most wanted

7. Other conventions we have in our documentary such as micro elements, which we
have added are voiceovers, background music and transitions. Which we added
not because of real media products but because they worked with our
documentary.

8. Poster

9. For my poster I have taken
some conventions from the
poster that was made for ross
kemp on gangs.
I have made my photo
for the poster the
background of my
poster. Also I made the
photo black and white
because crime
documentaries are quite
serious, but I thought it
made ross kemp and
gangs poster quite
interesting to the eye.
I liked how on there
poster they have a range
of simple but different
coloured text, so I have
used the colour scheme
of navy blue, black and
grey, so I can change my
text to colours that fit
into the poster.
Finally I added a line which states
“ONLY ON FOX TV” I got this from
there poster because I thought it
made sense to state the channel its
on

10. Other codes and conventions…
I added a statement
which says “FIVE
STAR” which I think
adds something more
to the poster.
I also added our
documentary
logo, for our
“production”.

11. Newspaper Article