Question 1

Codes and Conventions of my Media Documentary

After watching a series of professional documentaries and analysing the codes and conventions, we chose to follow them when making our documentary. We watched ‘The Devil Made Me Do It’, ‘ The Music Biz’ and ‘That Thing: Lara Croft’, which are all professional documentaries. These are all single stranded documentaries with one line of exposition which is conventional for the documentary we created.

Type of DocumentaryThe documentary we produced was mixed, this was because it contained observations from the cutaways and narration from the voice over. There is a variety of different elements in the documentary which makes it mixed. Evidence of this is shown through the use of both cutaways and voice over , which are present in most documentaries.

Themes

The main theme of our documentary is shoes. There are also minor themes of the changing fashions and styles of shoes over the years and how shoes can damage or be beneficial to your feet. This is similar to ‘The Devil Made Me Do It’ documentary that we analysed. This had the main theme of the murders in Italy and how Marilyn Manson's music may have caused this but also minor themes of how music in general can influence and affect teenagers.

Interviews

After watching professional documentaries and making a list of the codes and conventions we have tried to follow them closely in our own documentary. We have used the rule of thirds convention, where the person is in the right or left hand part of the screen and their eye line is a third of the way down the screen. We have shot the interviews in a medium close up.

We made sure that the interviewee was not looking directly at the camera which is a convention of documentary interviews. The interviewee is looking diagonally across the screen at the interviewer, who is never in the shot and sits beside the camera.

Graphics

We used graphics to tell the audience who is being interviewed and what their role is. Professional documentaries do his also, here is an interview Marilyn Manson and his name is in the corner of the screen. They are generally white sans serif font., which is shown at the bottom of the screen. If the interviewee is positioned on the left hand of the screen the graphic will be on the right hand side, as demonstrated here.

Mise-en-Scene

The Devil Made Me Do It.

Mise-en-Scene is very important to an interview, it reinforces who the person is being interview and why they are being interviewed. It also helps to anchor the themes and topics of the documentary. This is demonstrated in our documentary in the Dr Martens store, behind Grace are some of the products they sell and she is seated on a couch in the middle of the store.

It is also shown here in The Devil Made Me Do It. The Italian girls parents are seated on their couch at home, to reinforce the idea that they are just normal people.

CutawaysCutaways are another important part of a documentary. Cutaways prevent jump cuts in the filming which can make the documentary look unprofessional. The convention for editing the documentaries is to use straight cuts. Cutaways demonstrate further the theme of the documentary and lead into the next item in the documentary.

The Dr Marten boots are an example of a cutaway we filmed, the other picture is a cutaway from That Thing: Lara Croft.

EditingWe followed the conventions when editing the documentary. We used quick straight cuts, this ensures that the audience does not loose interest in the documentary. Like in professional documentaries the use of camerawork and editing keeps the documentary interesting and draws the audience in.

SoundFor the voiceover we used an adult female, who was well spoken and used

Standard English. This made the documentary seem more professional. The music in out documentary was relevant to the subject, we used the song ‘New Shoes’ by Paolo Nutini for the title sequence and the song ‘Shoes’ by Liam Sullivan (internet sensation) under the voice over ,this helped anchor the theme further. In the professional documentaries we looked at they used relevant and appropriate music for the themes, Marilyn Manson was played in The Devil Made Me Do It and Meatloaf was played in Music Biz:The Marketing of Meatloaf. We made sure that the songs were appropriate and that they did not interfere with the voiceover.