This document discusses the documentary production group's use of conventions in their documentary about bowling. Some of the key conventions they followed include labeling interviewees with their name and role on screen, positioning interviewees on the left or right third of the screen so they are not looking directly into the camera, and using cutaways to illustrate points made in interviews or cover cuts in questioning. The group also included a voiceover to explain key points, used a song from their documentary in a radio advertisement to connect the two, and designed their poster with a main image fading to a title and channel logo to promote and identify their documentary.

1. Evaluation- Q1 In what ways does
your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of
real media product’s?
Steven Crane.

2. Documentary influence
When we planned our idea for our documentary we sat in the
group and firstly made a list of as many different ideas as we
could. After we had all made a list we took 1 each that we like
the most and then had a long discussion on which one would be
the most achievable and the end choice was a documentary
about Bowling. The main interest to air this documentary on was
going to be channel 4 and BBC. We than sat down and made a
list of possible interviews, images, videos and cutaways that we
could film and use.

3. Codes and conventions.
One of the main codes and
conventions we used was
putting the interviewees name
and who the person was at the
bottom of the screen so that
the viewer’s knew who the
person was and there
relevance to the documentary.
The name needed to be clear
and bold with whom they are
and there role a little smaller
underneath. This needed to be
placed at the very bottom of
the screen.

4. Another code and convention
we followed was keeping the
interviewee on either the left
or the right hand side of the
screen, we also had to make
sure the interviewee wasn’t
looking straight into the
camera lens and was looking
at what would have been my
group’s interviewee. This is
one of the main codes and
conventions and is preformed
through any professional
documentary. Also the eye
line should be roughly 1/3 of
the way down the frame.

5. We followed another code
and convention for
documentaries by using
cutaways. We have used so
many different cutaways in
our documentary and this is
used to help make
interviews more interesting
and help keep the audience
entertained, they are also
used to cover cuts in the
questions. Cutaways are a
good way of showing exactly
what an interviewee may be
talking about.

6. Voice over.
Our documentary has a voice over which explains the
main points of the story. This is another main code and
convention. For our voice over we used a female’s voice
and made sure she spoke well so that the viewers could
understand her with no problems and not be left
confused. Another reason to have a clear female voice is
that it helps make the documentary flow and help
explain what’s happening in some of the interviewees.

7. Radio advert.
The song in our radio advert was “clocks” by Coldplay, we had
previously used this song in our documentary so this helped it
connect with our documentary and when viewers were to hear
the radio add and then watch the documentary would
immediately feel the connection. This is classed as a code and
convention as it helps link both together. We also used a voice
over in our radio add to tell the audience the channel time and
date that the documentary was to be scheduled. We also in our
radio add used many different clips from the Voxpops and also
a few interviewee question answers.

8. Poster.
In our poster we have a main image which is used to attract and
audience and helps connect to our Bowling documentary, it
does this by having the main image of 4 bowling balls that
slowly fades away and the same effects with a bowling pin. The
effect for this was to make the audience be able to connect with
the pictures and know that our documentary would obviously
be about bowling. We then had the title at the very bottom in
bold so that everyone knew the title for our documentary.
Another code and convention we used while making our poster
was putting the channels logo on the page. This helps people
know what channel our documentary would be on. The last
thing we put on was a catchy slogan to catch the audience and
the date and time of the documentary.