IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE

FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

Before planning my documentary, we researched different types of documentary and explored the different modes of

documentaries put forward by Bill Nichols. This was important as it helped us choose and appropriate mode for our own

documentary to create an effective piece.

As my documentary is based on education a participatory documentary would not be appropriate or effective as I would not need to intervene, or be involved in the events as these events are reoccurring and structured. This mode would be more

effective for a big event or story for example Nick Broomfield’s’ “The Life and Death of a Serial Killer” this allowed Nick to be involved and gain emotion filled footage. As part of our brief was to create a Television documentary an expository mode

was the most suitable for my topic and project. This is because it is the most popular type of television documentary as it includes a narrator and interviews

which are present in my documentary, this shows that I used certain conventions of real expository products. However, my documentary challenges several

conventions of this mode as it does not portray the information in the form of a story or in chronological order. Instead of using a chronological order I structured

my documentary in terms of interview questions and the pairs of students involved and although this created an order it restricted some ideas that I had and also

restricted me putting some footage in. This is because I wanted to focus on what the learning support programme provides for those involved rather than the

setting up of the programme or how it works.

In a sense my documentary challenges specific conventions of the observational mode of documentary, this is because observational

documentaries usually have a “fly on the wall” idea, where the camera and documentary filmmaker are hidden to gain natural footage. Due to the fact

that nothing is staged the camera often “follows” the action results in rough/shaky footage. However, I chose to challenge this convention and

structure my documentary observations in a way that I would still gain natural and truthful footage. The reason that I chose to use some observational

footage to engage my audience and make the documentary more interesting, however due to the nature of my documentary and the students included I

had to make sure that they were aware that I was filming therefore, I allowed them to get used to the presence of the camera before recording, this was to

ensure that I was filming real footage rather than set up footage.

Some of the year sevens who took part in my documentary are autistic. Which is a very sensitive topic; this meant I had to

make sure the students were comfortable, aware of the purpose and used to the camera in order to gain trust,

cooperation and understanding from the pupils. This meant that I had to challenge conventions of real media products as I could not film without their knowledge and had to run through interview questions before filming the interviews. This was to

ensure that they were comfortable as I did not want to put them in situations where they didn’t feel relaxed. This meant

they could think about what to say before being recorded. As I did this for the year seven students I also chose to do it for the

sixth form students that I interviewed.