1. Since the beginning we started the A2 course I made sure to watch lots of different
documentaries in order to prepare for making my own. I was able to note down
general conventions of documentaries which I watched which included ‘My Big Fat
Gypsy Wedding’ and ‘Supersize Me’ after watching these documentaries I can now
reflect and comment on how our Documentary follows the same conventions as
these documentaries.

2. Different camera angles are used within documentaries to display and connote different
things for example in ‘Super Size Me’ during one of the vox pops, Spurlock chooses to
have quite a low angle shot of the male speaking this gives a sense of realism which is
then reinforced through the use of hand held camera. (to view this please copy this URL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-Z74og9HbTM#t=926s)
This gives evidence of Spurlock challenging the traditional codes and conventions of a
documentary as vox pops would usually use a still camera involving a tripod. Which is in
fact what we did for our documentary. As you can see below I have taken a screenshot of
a vox pop from our documentary which takes the traditional style of a vox pop as we
chose to use a tripod and one from ‘Super Size Me’.
Our documentary (use of tripod/steady cam) ‘Supersize Me’ (use of handheld
= traditional way. cam) = challenges typical
convention

3. The tripod allowed for us to steady our shots and use the skills we know
such as pan, tracking and zooming in a professional way as a lot of
camera pans (up,down,across) and zooms (in and out) will be used
during documentaries to add to the realism and engage with the viewer.
For example the camera may zoom in on an important piece of writing
on a piece of paper within the documentary. We did this in our
documentary when we cut a way to an ‘Equality and Diversity’ poster
during Mikes interview, this is to put the message across to the viewer
that everyone is equal and shouldn’t be treated differently due to the
age, class, gender, ethnicity and other factors such as how they dress or
where they live etc.

4. The use of tripod was also useful when it came to filming our formal interviews. We
were able to steady the camera and get good medium close ups as I noticed when
watching several documentaries that medium close ups tended to be what was used
for the most for them. We also tried to interview every one of our experts in a formal
setting (i.e their place of work) as I noticed (and as you can see form the screen grab
below from ‘Super Size Me’)this tended to be the case. It also conveys to the audience
immediately that they’re an expert of some sort. Just like in ‘Supersize Me’ we
followed the rule of thirds when
filming our formal interviews.
The interviewee should be
looking into an empty space and
positioned a third of the way
in, with their eye level at a third
of the way down.
Supersize Me Documentary
Use of
title/captions
Our Documentary

5. Different types of camera shots such as Close ups,Medium Close ups, Establishing
Shots/Long shots, Extreme Close ups and wide shots where present when I
watched the documentaries so in order to conform to the norm of having a
variety of different shot types we tried hard to include different shots within our
documentary. Below are some examples of different shot types, on the left hand
side is our documentary compared to other documentaries on the right hand
side.
WS
‘My Big Fat Gyspy Wedding’ documentary
MCU
‘Super Size Me’ documentary

6. When watching documentaries I noticed that all of them included a title
screen therefore we decided to follow this convention however, before
the title screen actually came on, the documentary would start
beforehand to give the viewers a flavour of what the documentary was
about. We decided to do this too. For example ‘Supersize Me’ doesn’t
begin with the title screen but actually the documentary is introduced
first. This is shown here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-
Z74og9HbTM
Our title screen.

7. Sound is a very important part of documentaries, including background music, sound effects, voice
over, diegetic and non diegetic sound.
A common convention I noticed when watching documentaries is that they usually have a narrator who
appeals to the target audience, and generally within the same age of that target audience. The voice over
to our documentary was a male, aged 17 (we did this so that it appealed to the target audience as it’s the
same age range) and the tone of voice was a casual laid back one to emphasize that although our
documentary was on a partially serious topic it wasn’t too serious and comical elements were able to be
incorporated and enjoyed.
Kyle = Voice over.

8. Documentaries will usually have some sort of sound track to back it. It is always relevant
and well fitting for example in ‘Supersize Me’ a song played in the background was
Queen – ‘fat bottom girls’ which fits well with the topic of ‘Obesity’ (this can be heard
here http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-
Z74og9HbTM#t=337s ) The music was also a good sound level, however at times it did
overpower the documentary which was something we didn’t want to do with ours.
Another problem we had was that we couldn’t use Copyrighted music so we chose to
choose something from the student folder on the college network. As it was already an
MP3 file all we had to do was insert it into Final Cut. We chose the track ‘Drum and
Bass’ as this fitted nicely with our topic, and as ‘Drum and Bass’ is usually music
associated with ‘Chavs’ it seemed like the right choice of music. We tried to keep the
music to a low level so it didn’t interfere with those speaking on the documentary at
the time, however during the titles or when no one was speaking we increased the
sound levels slightly.

9. Most documentaries I watched were a fan of ‘straight cuts’ to follow this
convention we used a lot of them too, It enables for the viewer to be less
distracted but also we chose to use fade in and out for example near the start of
the documentary this can be viewed here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UPGRYs39gOA#
t=22s

10. Documentaries require a lot of research before actually producing, and as a group we
found this slightly hard to do since ‘Stereotypes’ is not exactly a topic in which you can go
and get statistics for. So we decided to look more into definitions. However with our first
episode being about ‘Chavs’ we thought looking at crimes rates would be useful. In most of
the documentaries I watched, statistics would pop up on the screen to do with the
topic, for example in ‘Super Size Me’ as you can see below the images show this being
done. As a group we decided to go against the idea of having the statistic's show up on the
screen like this as we felt the text may look shabby and not very professional so went for
the other common convention which was to just announce the statistic in the voice over.
Which ‘Super Size Me’ also does here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-
Z74og9HbTM&feature=player_detailpage#t=684s and as you can see we did something
similar in our documentary here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UPGRYs39gOA#t=153s
Taken from ‘Super Size Me'

11. When it came to our radio trailer we tried our hardest to match our
theme, of ‘Chavs’ (which was our first episode of a documentary series)
but keep it professional and like other radio trailers too. We decided to
include voice clips from our documentary into our trailer as most radio
trailers do this. Therefore we converted our whole documentary into a
‘wave’ file and put it into GarageBand, and cut up the bits we needed.
Documentary exported to Cutting up the bits
‘Wave’ file in GarageBand we needed. (using
Command T)

12. We wanted the voice over to match our theme so to make it comical we had Kyle put on a
stereotypical ‘Chav’ voice and narrate the whole thing, with myself also being included at
the end giving the details as to when and where to watch it (again to add to the comical
effect, I spoke in a chav voice.) Although Kyle and I sounded like a ‘Chav’ throughout, the
typical conventions of a radio trailer were still present. For example I still gave the details
as to when and where to watch it at the end, which is an essential thing to do, which all
radio trailers do, do and Kyle was also able to describe the episode which would be
showing first and used lots of rhetorical questions such as ‘have you ever thought that
guys looks well dodge?’. The use of rhetorical questions helped the radio trailer remain
professional and following the conventions properly, but to add to the comical effect slang
words such as ‘dodge’ and the tone of voice created comedy which would attract our
target audience being 16-24 year olds. But also ages outside of this range would be
curious as to what on earth was playing on the radio and therefore grab their attention
too. Meaning we had been successful in achieving the sole purpose of what a radio trailer
is meant to do = grab attention and promote the documentary.

13. Most of the radio trailers I looked at were around 30-40 seconds long
so in order to follow the conventions we had ours at 31 seconds long.
Finally to keep with the comical theme we used ‘Jam_1’ as our soundtrack.
We took it from the same folder as the soundtrack for our documentary on
the college video drive, this was because we knew the music wasn’t
copyrighted then. It fitted nicely yet wasn’t too intrusive so that you couldn’t
hear Kyle or myself or became very unprofessional.

14. Overall for all three pieces of work we produced, we managed to follow the main
codes and conventions that of a real documentary, magazine and radio trailer.