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

By Emily Maunder

During my research I looked and studied about the different types of documentaries for example, “Aileen Wournos, the selling of a serial killer” as well as “Capturing the Friedmans” and “Crazy about One Direction”. I therefore discovered a various amount of different approaches that directors take when producing and also planning documentaries.

When producing my documentary I decided I wanted to take a participatory/expository due to me taking part in the documentary as well as structuring the questions that I asked. I made this decision after researching about Bill Nichols and his theory on documentaries. A participatory approach allows the director to be involved within the filming as said above, therefore allowing them to influence the people who were involved within the documentary in order to make it more interesting and entertaining for the audience.

I believed that this approach would be most suitable for my documentary, as I wanted to discover people craziest stories and opinions about their idol whilst influencing their answer given. For example asking why they had previously said certain things, or do they agree with a statement that I had given them. It was all about building and creating reactions to entertain the audience.

Crazy about One Direction was particularly important for me to watch as it followed a similar meaning of wanting to discover how crazy people actually are about the boy band. I researched into what techniques where used during the filming of the documentary for example types of camera shots, such as close up and also wide shots which where often used to capture expressions, emotions as well as the mise en scene which showed how people felt.

When producing my ancillary my main focus was to ensure that it would target a broad audience. During my documentary I did not target a specific age or gender however females where shown more throughout the filming and therefore would have been something that I would have considered changing to include more males. Although this allows me to discuss the stereotypes and how women live up to their emotional and attached feelings where as the male figure is shown to not be effected as much and therefore was something that was interesting to study.