CODES AND CONVENTIONS OF A DOCUMENTARY.

VOICEOVER

The voiceover is usually authoritive to encourage the audience to think that they have a specialist knowledge or, like Michael Moore and Nick Broomfield, the ‘right’ opinions that people should pay attention to.

REAL FOOTAGE OF EVENTS

A documentary is seen essentially as ‘non-fiction’, although there are debates around this.

However, a convention of documentary is that all events presented are to be portrayed as ‘real’ to the audience.

Documentaries often go to great lengths to convince the audience the footage is real and unaltered.

TECHNICALITY OF REALISM

Including ‘natural’ sound and lighting, and flow in an interview (no scripts, questions) (Nick Broomfield’s use of this in ‘Biggie and Tupac’ when they run out of sound’.

ARCHIVE FOOTAGE /STILLS

To aid authenticity and add further information which the filmmaker may be unable to obtain themselves.

INTERVIEWS WITH EXPERTS

Used to authenticate the views expressed in the documentary and gain a professionals support for them, encouraging the audience to agree also.

USE OF TEXT/TITLES

Like the voiceover, can be used to anchor the documentary, as well as show facts etc about the topic that tend to be believed unquestionably.

SOUND

Use of non-diegetic sound, has music been added? Why, and what effects would adding music have? Is a sound bridge used in-between scenes which connotes a change of tone/twist within the documentary?

E.g in Supersize Me, does the use of childish music undermine McDonald’s?

VIDUAL CODING

i.e mise en scene and props, putting an individual in a doctor’s coat could help create a medical tone.

SET-UPS

Not only reconstructions of events that happened in the past but also setting up ‘typical’ scenes, i/e if you want to quickly convey a ‘classroom’ you may ask a class to put up their hands, or to convey and doctor’s room have the patience standing on a weighing scale (props also contribute to how well you create a set-up)

CONVENTIONS WE WILL STICK TO (NOT FINALISED YET): •Hopefully when we secure it, an interview with experts (Maddy Conway,

B-eat), Form Research has taught me about organising an interview (Checklists!) which will be tested when we plan this interview.

•Not finalised, but an authoritative voice-over to help anchor the documentary and add more sound appeal to the documentary. From the textual analysis of student work, I felt like their documentary needed a voice over to complete it which is conventional is other police orientated programmes such as theirs.

•Archive footage/stills of new media, possibly images/blogs from Tumblr regarding body image.

•Use of texts and titles to also help anchor the documentary and structure it.

•Sounds, not hugely discussed but music to create a tone suitable to the topic, i.e sad but inspiring and dynamic towards the end.

•Realism, which we'll hope to achieve through editing or on location. •Links between the documentary and print productions (poster and

review) through the models, or text font or ideas (writing on models body).

•Title of the documentary will be introduced in the beginning, with the interview mid-way and proposals (positive bit towards the end to drive audience hopefully into action!) towards the end to act as closure.