The Music Biz is a mixed documentary consisting voice of God narration, interviews, archive footage as well

as observational footage. It also has a single-stranded, non-linear, closed narrative structure.

THE MUSIC BIZ:The Marketing of Meatloaf

The use of the bold and vibrant colour red in the opening title grabs the audience’s attention and has connotations of importance, urgency and insistence.

The white text also contrasts with the background and the overall title screen/logo has similarities to “Breaking News” graphics on the news, this signifies the importance of the exposition they are presenting.

The overall mise en scene of this screen links to the some of the main themes of the documentary: the power of the media.

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These magazine covers also signifies some of the other main themes of the documentary: the music industry, marketing music and success.

Newspaper and magazines in the background also highlight and make the audience curious as to what their exposition is about.

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This establishing shot was shown near the beginning as part of a montage introducing the documentary and the main theme of the music industry. The bright lights have connotations of importance, fame, wealth and success. This was also reinforced through the use of the up-beat non-diegetic music in the background.

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This establishing shot is similar to the one above, except for the graphics at the bottom which tell the audience where this place is an its relevance to the topic that the male, Voice of God, narrator was talking about.

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The documentary followed the conventions of interviews as they have used the rule of thirds and had medium close-ups (or close-ups) of their interviewees. Instead of having all the interviewees on sit on one side, they decided to have Meatloaf’s English record label on the right (top) and his American record label on the left (bottom) this contrast makes it more visually interesting as well as portraying the difference of the two people.

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This is an example of a close-up they have used in an interview.

Most of the interviewees were also sat against a green screen which allowed the creators to edit the screen post-production and use different graphic backgrounds. I don’t think this is a traditional convention of interviews, but this technique has been becoming more and more popular as it is effective. Another convention they follow is having the interviewee not make direct address to the camera and the audience, instead they are looking to one side- most likely towards the interviewer off-screen.

All the interviewees were also smartly dressed, showing that they are important professionals. This can also be seen through the graphics added at the bottom where it tells the audience their name, title and relevance to the documentary.

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There were several archive material in this documentary- from Meatloaf’s music videos, concerts, behind the scene footages, archive interviews and photographs. These archive material are used to back up the information the narrator is talking about as it provides a visual evidence for the audience. Some of the old and never-before-seen archive footage also create exclusivity for the documentary for it provides a glimpse of Meatloaf’s everyday-life to the audience.

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As a majority of the interviews were filmed against a green screen, the backgrounds have been edited port-production to include several different footages. There were even times when the documentary shows an archive clip and the interviewee fades in then fades out again.

Like most documentaries, there was also a montage at the beginning to engage the audience and other conventional editing techniques like cuts and cutaways.

A male Voice of God narration was used which is very conventional of documentaries because they don’t provide a regional accent, making their narration come across as being clear, professional, informative and unbiased.

Other sounds included were songs from Meatloaf which suited this documentary as it is about him, his career and the music industry. As well as other non-diegetic sound that suited the clips such as the dark background music playing whilst they were talking about the Bat Out Of Hell album.