Question 1- In what ways does your media product use, develop or

challenge codes and conventions of real media products?

Documentaries

Hayden Atkins

Documentary

• Before starting the making of the documentary, we decided that we wanted to follow codes and conventions of existing documentaries, whilst also adding in our own features, that we believed we relevant to our genre and audience- Health and fitness and teenagers between the ages of 16-24.

• By using existing codes and conventions, it would allow us to emulate some of the features used on a real life documentary. We decided we would add things like interviews , for example, so that our product looked genuine and professional.

• During our planning and research, we decided that it would be very beneficial to examine existing documentaries, and look at the features they contain, so that we could include these in our work.

• Prominent examples of existing documentaries that featured on our broadcast channel (BBC 3) was “World’s strictest parents”. Whilst we also looked in depth at a documentary that looked at the same genre as us, “Supersize Me”.

• I have looked at various aspects of both of these documentaries, and we have tried to emulate some of the conventions and codes that they have portrayed, to try and make our product seem as realistic as possible.

Use of graphics/images

• It is a key convention of nearly all health and fitness documentaries to use disturbing, graphical images to portray the problem of obesity. One of the ways in which documentary producers do this is to use images of obese people, often combined with facts, showing the risk of obesity. This graphic is used ins supersize me, to demonstrate the size of the problem. For example, in this photograph, we have a long shot of an obese man. The long shot allows productors to include all of the mans body, highlighting the obesity in more detail, providing us with more graphical content.

• However, we also do this. We have used the same effect here in our documentary to obtain the same kind of shocking effect, like supersize me have done.

Supersize me visual Our visual

Use of interview

• It is a key convention of nearly all T.V documentaries to show interviews. Interviews allow the documenter to involve external views in their documentary, normally through field/industry experts.

• Using the documentary Fault Lines, Fast foods, fat profits, we looked at their use of interview, and the conventions that are generally associated with them . We saw that whenever an interview was held, the subject of the interview was looking across the dead space- a key code of all interviews. Because of this, we decided that this would be a good convention to follow. Here are the results.

Fault lines documentary Our documentary

Use of text

• Another key component of many interviews conducted in T.V documentaries is the use of captions, primarily to introduce the interviewee. They give an easy on screen visual to interview the person, and are a very handy tool in the interview. As shown in the example below, the caption introduces the interviewees name, and normally their profession. In our documentary we use captions to introduce our two interviewees, fitness instructor Harriett Fowler, and PE teacher Gavin Sheaperd.

Fault Lines documentary Our documentary

Typical filming components• In hundreds of documentaries, there are examples of different shots used whilst filming. We included

these types of shots in our documentary:

• Establishing shot:

• Mid shot

• Long shot

• Use of pan

• Use of Zoom

Mid Shot

Use of pan