At the beginning of the task, we were briefed about what we were going to be doing throughout the coming months. We were told that the main task would be making the opening 5 minutes of a Documentary, followed up by 2 slighter tasks which were a 30-45 second Radio Trailer and a Double Page Spread for an efficient newspaper or magazine.

It was a very thoughtful process in choosing Bullying as our topic of choice and I will show why we chose this throughout this evaluation. There are many separate genres of documentaries that focus on various subjects which range from The History of Buildings to Modern Day Fast Food Restaurants. In order to make the best Documentary possible we had to

look at many professional TV and Cinema released Documentaries so that we were aware of the Conventions used. These documentaries involved Supersize Me, Various channel 4 documentaries such as Gok Wan’s Teenage Nightmare, and other various successful college bullying documentaries.

Exposition This uses rhetoric information and passes on information in order to persuade the viewer this was mainly the objective in the documentary ‘Supersize Me.’ Morgan

Sperlock was very dominant with the Narration which is used as a way of explaining and debating the point of which the documentary is portraying.

Voice-over Through this the filmmaker can speak directly to the viewer giving them explanations and opinions which can be used as a piece to camera or off camera. This was important in our Bullying documentary in order to let, what seemed to be an oblivious audience, know the harsh reality of the percentages and facts.

Actuality is footage of real life events, places and people. Unlike fictional films which use

actors, scripted stories and artificial sets, actuality is a record of real events as they unfold which is essential in our documentary as we intended to express the reality of

the problem in this case Bullying.

Interviews

include real life people or ‘Vox Pops’ being asked questions based on the topic surrounding the documentary. This was important in our documentary as it allowed

us to see first-hand the ignorance of the students at our college on the topic bullying.

Expert

Interviews is another type of interview which gains actual information rather than opinion on

the topic so that there is lots of Objective and Subjective data.

Reconstructions

These are an artificial scene in the documentary used to show something which had happened in the past or could possibly happen in the future. We used our

reconstruction very effectively to represent the brutality of bullying.

Archival

Footage Unfortunately we did not get the chance to

add any of this specific type of footage of extracts from other references as we were short on time. However if we did we would have shown clips from news which discus

facts about Bullying.

In order for our documentary successful we followed the conventions of similar documentaries. The establishing shot is used in order to set the scene for the rest of the documentary as well as to allow the audience to know that they are in a college environment. This is important as we are discussing bullying throughout colleges and schools in our documentary, so this is to deny any confusion bought about where we are getting our interviewees from.

This shot is effective as the framing is able to fit the interviewee on the screen with the background so it shows a relevant professional image that we are in a school or college similar to the other documentary we followed the conventions of on the right.

This manual-focus shot adds a sense of professionalism to the documentary. We chose to implement these shots as much as we could in order to maintain the professional look.

This was another establishing panning shot used to ensure that the college environment is set firm within the viewer’s consciousness.

The background

music This music is very depressing reflecting the topic of bullying upon. We did not feel an

upbeat rhythm or sound would be relevant to express the message to combat the issue of bullying. The background music also allows the narrator’s voice to be

perceived in a certain manor of which we feel ties in perfectly with the documentary. In order to improve our documentary we would level out the sound of the music and

reduce the volume.

Special Effects –

An example of where we used special effects is in the reconstruction we used Black

and White edit to represent the negativity of the topic. We used a variety of fade-ins and fade-outs of different clips in order to give a level fluency to the documentary, as

well as to add to the overall negative message that we are trying to give across.

Similarities in

our Double Page

Article.

The positioning of the pictures in the layout. This is very effective as it allows the reader to see clear images of what’s going to be in the documentary. The layout of the article is very conventional. This is extremely effective as it is simples so that the audience can read it easily and effectively. The colour schemes in both are very simple and mutual, allowing for all stereo-types to be objected and for the article to be attractive for both males and females. ‘The Times’ newspaper such as the colours, fonts and layouts, types of pictures and title layouts were all the common codes and conventions we decided to follow as we felt this was the most relevant newspaper.

Similarities in

our Radio

Trailer. From analysing different radio stations in particular Radio 1 we felt the way the presenter addressed the audience was very informal but yet proffesional as they portrayed the message across in this way, we felt this would be apporpriate to follow a similar style as this in conjunction with our market research this would attract viewers most.

There are many similarities between our own radio trailer and other professional radio trailers. The background music we used was a very mellow depressing beat similar to ones used on BBC radio when a serious topic is being discussed. Special effects in our radio trailer involved editing the voices so that they overlapped one another gradually getting louder and louder as well as fade-ins and fade-outs of certain commentaries.