2. In this presentation I will state and describe the main features of documentaries. To find out this
information I watched 3 different documentaries from 3 different channels, this allowed me to get a
broad spectrum of information about documentaries and how they differ, and analyse the
information to present the main codes and conventions. The 3 documentaries I watched were:
Trevor McDonald:
The Mafia
Anorexia: A boy
in a girl's world
Royal Marines
Commando School
3. Voiceovers are where a person speaks over the top of filmed footage to
describe what is happening to the audience or to expand the audiences
knowledge based on the footage.
Voiceovers are usually authoritative, encouraging the audience to think
that they have either some specialist knowledge or, in the case of well
known people we hear in voiceovers like Sir David Attenborough, the
‘right’ opinions that people should pay attention to.
4. This is recorded footage of an event that is real. No actors are used,
they are all real life events.
Documentary is generally seen as non-fiction. A convention of a
documentary is that all events presented to us are real and actually
happened. Documentaries often go to great lengths to convince us
that footage is real and unaltered in any way, although editing and
voiceovers that are used can often affect the reality the audience see.
5. Non digetic music is edited over the top of footage.
Music is used to affect the way the audience sees certain events. This
depends on the type of music used to determine how the audience
views this. For example, tense music was used when a mob member
encountered two ex acquaintances on the street in Trevor McDonald:
The Mafia to display the danger that they are in. Each type of music
makes the audience view the clip in a different manner.
6. Interviews are where the presenter of the documentary asks a person
questions about certain events.
This person could have been part of the event or involved in some way.
This allows the audience to gain more knowledge about the event and
see it from several different perspectives. The interviewer can also
construct the questions they ask in order to gain information that they
did not know before, in order to expand their knowledge on the event.
7. Subtitles are captions displayed at the bottom of the documentary.
These are edited on after the documentary has been filmed.
These are used in documentaries if footage is recorded and some of
it is hard for the audience to understand so captions are used. They
also may be used when interviewing someone who does not speak
English, as there may not have been any witnesses of the event that
speak fluent English. This allows the audience to expand their
knowledge as without the foreigners viewpoint they may miss key
points.
8. Reconstructions are a real event recreated by actors and filmed in a
studio.
These are used in documentaries because not everything is caught on
camera, a reconstruction can be used for events that were not caught
on camera to display the audience what happened and to broaden
their knowledge on what happened. These reconstructions are usually
created based on the story of a witness or witnesses of the event in
order to make the reconstruction as close as possible to the real thing.
