Caravans – A Very British Love Affair is a documentary that explores Britain's love affair with caravanning over time. It uses interviews, archive footage, and narration to illustrate themes like family and friends, travel, and the independence caravanning provided for some women. The documentary jumps back and forth in time to tell the story, and features interviews with caravan owners and fans in relevant locations tied to their experiences, like in caravans themselves. Archive footage and images from different eras help show how caravanning and family vacations evolved over the decades.

1. Caravans – A Very British
Love Affair
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=685s0SOef-0

2. Type of documentary?
 Caravans – A Very British love Affair is a Mixed documentary and features
interviews, narration (voice of God), archive footage and observation.

3. Themes
The themes illustrated in Caravans – A Very British love Affair are:
 Family & Friends
 Travel & holidays
 Female independence
 Lifestyle and Leisure
 The Countryside

4. Narrative Structure
 Caravans – A Very British love Affair has an open circular structure as it starts and
ends in the present but the documentary regularly jumps back and forward in time
which makes it non-linear. In comparison, most documentaries are linear and begin
in the past and work their way to the present.
 It is a single structure as it’s main subject is caravans.

5. Camerawork
 Rule Of Thirds – interviewee is always positioned off set from the centre. The
interviewee is looking into the looking space, the centre 3rd, bodies are tilted
slightly to one side. This occurred where people were interviewed such as in
caravans, the other 2 3rds being used to illustrate their location to keep it relevant.
 Shots taken at eye line level to show the face.
 Different shots for interest such as an establishing shot and a panning shot of
caravans.

6. Mise-En-Scene
 Interviewees were interviewed in a relevant location. For example, caravan owners
and fans were interviewed in caravans whilst the designer was interviewed in a
garage with an E-type Jaguar behind him. Furthermore, the wife of Sam Alper was
interviewed in her home rather than a caravan, because it was more relevant
because the home was where he spent most of his time after Caravan International
failed. Rawlinson was a caravan fan, but was filmed in his home instead, in order to
keep relevance of the interview, model caravans were placed in the foreground of
the interview to keep relevance. This helps to anchor the documentary and the
relevance of each interview.

7. Sound
 Diegetic Sound – Interviews with ambient sound to add context and understanding
for the viewer and observational footage. Sound Bridges are also featured, this
being the fading of sound between clips which helps keep the pace of the
documentary.
 Non Diegetic Sound – Vintage music of the period featured over the archive
footage to add context of the period. Narration is used in standard, formal English
which makes it easy to understand and appealing to a wide audience.

8. Editing
 Sound bridges are used to keep the pace of the documentary, sometimes by
fading dialogue into music once the interview had finished.
 Montages were used to show the caravans high point and to show a passage of
time to vintage music, this meant less time had to be spent including it all in
separate segments of the documentary.
 The interviewers questions were edited out with jump cuts and cut always used to
keep pace and maintain a high quality finish. This allows the camera to change
framing during the interview such as from a mid shot to a mid close shot whilst the
sound continues over the top un-interrupted. Observations are used for cut-aways,
such as shots of caravans.

9. Archive Material
 Archive footage and images of caravans and caravan marketing from the past was
used to add relevance and to show the progression and evolution of the caravan
and also the narratives of the program, such as family and nature. An example of
how archive footage was used to anchor the documentary to the narrative of
nature is a pan shot is also featured showing nature with a caravan in the bottom
3rd of the shot.
 This footage helps to show the difference in time periods and can also highlight
female independence as it shows women on their own on caravan holidays, in one
example with children also. In addition, it shows the narratives of friends and family
during the program which is also highlighted using archive footage.

10. Graphics
 Graphics stating interviewees name and position
 Start titles and end credits