1. Documentary analysis
The railway.

2. Type of documentary
• The railway is a mixed to observational
documentary because it uses many
conventions of a documentary. For example it
uses, talking head interviews, vox pop
interviews archive footage, narration, and
most of all observation. all of the above
conventions anchor the meaning of the
documentary and support the expositions.

3. Themes
• The themes the documentary explores the
way the countries railway system works, and
what happens on the railway.

4. Narrative Structure
• The narrative structure of the documentary is split with
parallel narratives:
• Beginning
– Opens at the start of the day with everything running right
and on time
• Middle
– In the middle the program shows the struggle of the
workers to keep the trains on time and how they tackled
the problems facing them.
• End
– At the end the documentary shows the trains running well
and on time again the equilibrium has been restored.

5. Camerawork
• there is a lot of over the shoulder point of
view shots witch give the audience the feeling
as if they were there.
• The program uses wide angled establishing
shots to set the scene and cut away shots of
passing trains.

6. Mise – en – scene
• The Mise – en – scene was considered highly
during this production it can be seen as the
interviews have been filmed in locations
which conform to the genre for example the
train driver is interviewed from his cabin.

7. sound
• There is narration in this documentary which
narrative is anchored with
• There is an intermissant music bed which
changes with the time.

8. Editing
• Editing is simple to give the production a more
sophisticated feel. The editing is in tempo with
the music bed and with the mood of the
narrative.

9. Archive footage
• Archive footage of the news was the only
archive footage used in this documentary.

10. graphics
• The only graphics were for the title card and
names of interviewees.