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

real media products?

BILL NICHOLS THEORY OF DOCUMENTARY MODES

Looking at Bill Nichols different theories on the types of documentary modes and sub genres that there are assisted in enhancing on knowledge on the topic of documentaries and the majority of styles it can consist of. This was very helpful as obviously at the beginning of our coursework our knowledge on documentaries wasn’t as expanded as it would become. Bill Nichols theory tells us the different types of documentaries that exist are: poetic, expository, observational, participatory, reflexive and performative.

Poetic documentaries first appeared in the 1920s, they carry a fragmentary and continuous style. They are often impressionistic and lyrical. The poetic mode is a rather subjective style, an old example of a poetic style documentary from 1928 would be Joris Ivens’ Rain.

The expository mode is one where there may usually be a presenter that speaks directly to the viewer. This can be done through a voiceover too and the style generally proposes a strong argument. This is a style that was

At the beginning of our A2 media course, the task we were given was to create the opening 5 minutes of a documentary of our choice. To support this two ancillary tasks, including a double page spread and a radio trailer were also necessary as part of the coursework element.

largely looked at during research and my group and I discussed what advantage of using this style would have. This is the style we followed in our documentary as we guided viewers through the documentary with a voiceover in the opening 5 minutes. We found the rhetoric style of the mode useful in our documentary as it helps portray things to viewers in a certain way.

The observational mode of documentaries portrays a fly on the wall style. This style tends to observe lived life and uses minimum intervention. It tends not to include music or a voiceover in the background and therefore differs to our documentary as we chose to use both of these things in our documentary

The reflexive mode of documentaries shows the findings of the film makers and their opinions on these findings. There is usually a cynical approach to realism shown in the documentary.

The participatory and performative modes of documentaries are both similar as they both present the film maker or presenter as an actor in the film. A good example of this style is the documentary ‘supersize me’ which practically follows film maker Morgan Spurlocks life around which is relevant to the documentary. Our documentary was based on social networking and therefore it was more important to follow the opinions of a wide society rather than the film makers.

As a starting point for research towards the documentary I was going to create I thought it would be helpful to watch and analyse existing documentaries such as ‘Airline’ and ‘Supersize Me’.

Research I gathered from ‘Supersize Me’ through analysis was that the documentary was delivered in an investigative style with a polemical result meaning it was basically a one sided argument. The overall purpose of the documentary was to basically highlight how bad McDonalds is for you.

The opening of the documentary was interesting as it was instantly capturing of the audience’s attention through the fast pace it had. It was factual and full of research, this was definitely effective and I thought would be very useful to also use in our documentary as social networking has more than just a few facts about it that could be mentioned.

Sound is a vital part of documentaries and this includes all aspects of sound such as background music, voiceover, diagetic and non diagetic sound. The use of sound in Supersize Me consists of almost all of these. The documentary includes backgrounds music which serves a purpose as if it is almost telling a story when there is no speech.

FACTS AND STATISTICS PRESENTED IN A VISUALLY EFFECTIVE WAY IN THE OPENING

OF THE SUPERSIZE ME DOCUMENTARY

I ALSO INCLUDED FACTS IN A FAST PACED STYLE AT THE BEGINNING OF MY

DOCUMENTARY; I THINK IT HELPS KEEP THE VIEWER INTERESTED!

Morgan Spurlock is the presenter as well as the voiceover throughout the documentary; this allows him to create a personal connection with the audience and allows them to relate to him more effectively. My group and I decided not to have a presenter and instead guide the audience through the documentary with a voiceover when necessary.

We felt it was essential to have some light background music to help our documentary flow when there was no speech. The background music could not be too distracting from the real focus of the documentary. We created the music in Garage Band and experimented with different sounds to find a good balance that fitted in with the

style of our documentary well.

The

different camera conventions used are shot types like: close ups, medium close ups, establishing shots, long shots and extreme close

This is some of our recorded voiceover in final cut express. To record our voiceover we used a

microphone, headphones and a camera.

This is our background music being created in Garage Band; we experimented with mixing a few

simple beats together.

Once we had saved the file as an MP3 one we imported it into final cut to edit alongside the rest of

our documentary; we adjusted the sound levels so that they were consistent throughout.

ups. For almost all of our camera use in filming our documentary we used a tripod. This was to ensure all our filming was steady and looked professional. The tripod had many benefits as it allowed us to use effects like zooming, panning and tracking which are all featured in our documentary. The tripod was most beneficial during interviews as the filming was consistently steady and looked professional. Whilst filming the interviews we ensured we followed a rule of thirds as this is one of the most important conventions when interviewing.

There are many special effects used throughout the documentary of Supersize Me. This makes the documentary more visually interesting to watch for the audience. When looking at our documentary we decided to include a number of special effects as we wanted to keep

our audience interested throughout the opening of our documentary.

This is a screenshot from one of our expert interviews following the rule of thirds.

One of many special effects used in Supersize Me

Listening to interviews can get boring for the audience so to ensure the attention of our audience doesn’t fade we decided to show a small part of other clips during the interview and then used a dissolve to bring it back together to the initial interview. I this is really visually effective.

Another special effect we used was speeding up certain clips to make the style of the documentary more fast paced and consistently interesting.

MAGAZINE ARTICLE

Magazines and newspapers always have a masthead. The point of it is to basically highlight the topic of the article and give the reader some information on what they are looking at reading in a very succinct way.

A pull quote shows a part of the writing featured in the article that is interesting to highlight some of the views expressed. We chose to include this

As well as telling the reader what the article is about through the masthead ‘social networking’ the rhetorical question that follows ‘curse or blessing’ gives the reader an insight on to the approach it may have towards the topic.

as it is a very important convention used in every double page spread which we gathered from our research. To make it stand out further we made the writing bold and black.

Articles are always presented in columns, we decided to take this approach too as it followed the traditional codes and conventions and made our article look more professional.

RADIO TRAILER

To get an idea of the way radio trailers are put together and what they consist of we listened to and analysed numerous radio trailers. We listened to ones played by a variety of radio stations such as radio one, radio five and capital. As our radio trailer was aimed at radio one listeners it needed to be interesting and appealing for an educated audience.

These are my analysed radio trailer analysis sheets, they helped give an idea of what I needed to include in a good, professionally presented radio trailer.

When writing the script for the radio trailer it was important to include language that would be capturing of listeners attention. I ensured that I included interesting questions like: ‘will the rise of social networking bring a fee?’ I think using questions like this is effective as it makes listeners think about what the documentary may include and persuade them towards them watching the documentary to find out.

We created a script for the radio trailer and recorded it the same way we did for the documentary. The script consisted of many audio clips from the documentary and this is one of the main conventions we noticed from analysing radio trailers.

Garage band was used to create the radio trailer and we placed the same background music we used in our documentary in our radio as this effectively has an obvious connection to the audience.

Another very important convention of radio trailers is that they all include the date, time and channel the documentary will be showing on. Obviously we made sure to include this in our documentary too. It is usually mentioned in a simple way on radio one trailers.

“Sunday night at 8, BBC1 is bringing to you the world of social networking!”