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

challenge forms and conventions of real media products?”

Poonam Parmar

Throughout the production of my documentary I have predominantly adhered to the codes and conventions of a the typical documentary stylistic devices as well as key theories to interest and target my audience.

“In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?”

The BriefTo create an opening 5 minute TV documentary. • Two ancillary tasks; a radio trailer and a TV Listings magazine for a listings magazine

to support the main product-the documentary. The Purpose• Both ancillary texts were to encourage and to entertain backed up by factual

information.The Audience• Mid teenagers (16years) to adults (30’s)

Opinionated

Documentary’s have

many categories - here are a

few.

Light-hearted

Debatable

Statistical

Condemnatory

Critical/ Uncritical

Serious

Contradictive

• The documentary that we created had aspects of serious, opinionated, condemnatory & factual

information throughout the opening five minutes. This is important for a documentary, as it sets

the atmosphere for the viewer with what type of documentary they are about to watch.

Research & Planning

• In order for our documentary to be professional we had to make ensure research & planning

was accurate, this meant looking at theorists. Theories-

Bill Nicholls’ theory of Documentary Modes (2001)

We as a group began to study Nicholl’s different types of documentaries and which one

would best be utlised within our very own. Poetic, participatory, performative, reflexive &

observational. After completing our documentary it is evident that these modes apply

throughout, however the expository mode is the most suitable when addressing Social

Networking patterns. The ‘voice of god authoritative voiceover’ attracts the viewers

directly engaging them into the documentary and presents them for a lot of rhetorical

reasons.

“In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?”

Theories

Public affairs, Cinema Verite & Actuality

• Public affairs documentaries such as panorama look into what is happening

between the people, the polemical occurrence that we have tried to draw

attention to - we have applied this theory within our documentary.

• Cinema Verite expresses that the filmmakers opinions should be expressed

so we have looked at our own Social Networking patterns and have applied

this knowledge within our documentary.

• Johnson Grierson’s Theory of actuality is something we tried to replicate;

the places and the people being as realistic as possible to make it look

inartificial and be represented as it is. However, as our documentary is time

bound it will be mediated and re-represented for our target audience.

“In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?”

Poetic Mode- has a subjective style of documentary - in comparison to the expositional mode (which is very objective) with continuity editing; it uses symbols & associations in time. It puts a tone of being leading, which we wanted to avoid, as our topic is very subjective being factual and staying professional. The participatory and performative modes- very similar styles, as they openly discuss personal opinions and a clear message is put across to the audience. The performative is very much autobiographical account, which almost follows the film maker’s life around- this engages the film maker and the audience as it takes them through the experience making it more effective. In our documentary of Social networking this would not be suitable as it’s not relevant to the subject matter.

Alternatively, to gain an insight into documentaries ideas we looked at for example SuperSize Me which is great example of this. Morgan Spurlock appears in his own work shown to the viewers, it is very personal and more about the film maker and their intentions.

Click the hyperlink to take you on to the trailer.

“In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?”

The observational mode follows the subject around, and has a very ‘fly-on-the-wall’ style to it, which simply observes the life, lived with minimum intervention. Our documentary had elements of observing students and the general public- however an observational documentary does not tend to use any voiceover or music throughout their piece which, rejected the convention of this mode.

We looked at many different observational documentaries such as; airline, child genius and teen species which we analysed in our research stages.

The reflexive mode- looks at the constructed nature and sometimes illustrates the filmmakers fighting with the content of their findings; it can also be skeptical of the idea of ‘realism’ captured on film. We didn’t use this within our documentary however in the future this may have been a good theory to follow.

Overall- The differences were emphasised but also certain conventions & techniques were presented which allowed me to incorporate them throughout our documentary which gave it an overall positive outcome to the consistent theme and structure.

“In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?”