1. 1. In what ways does your media product use,
develop or challenge forms and conventions of
real media products?
At the beginning of our A2 media course, the task we
were given was to create the opening 5 minutes of a
documentary of our choice. To support this two
ancillary tasks, including a double page spread and a
radio trailer were also necessary as part of the
coursework element.
BILL NICHOLS THEORY OF DOCUMENTARY MODES
Looking at Bill Nichols different theories on the types of documentary
modes and sub genres that there are assisted in enhancing on
knowledge on the topic of documentaries and the majority of styles it
can consist of. This was very helpful as obviously at the beginning of
our coursework our knowledge on documentaries wasn’t as expanded
as it would become. Bill Nichols theory tells us the different types of
documentaries that exist are: poetic, expository, observational,
participatory, reflexive and performative.
Poetic documentaries first appeared in the 1920s, they carry a
fragmentary and continuous style. They are often impressionistic and
lyrical. The poetic mode is a rather
subjective style, an old example of a
poetic style documentary from 1928
would be JorisIvens’ Rain.
The expository mode is one where there
may usually be a presenter that speaks
directly to the viewer. This can be done through a voiceover too and
the style generally proposes a strong argument. This is a style that was

2. largely looked at during research and my group and I discussed what
advantage of using this style would have. This is the style we followed
in our documentary as we guided viewers through the documentary
with a voiceover in the opening 5 minutes. We found the rhetoric style
of the mode useful in our documentary as it helps portray things to
viewers in a certain way.
The observational mode of documentaries portrays a fly on the wall
style. This style tends to observe lived life and uses minimum
intervention. It tends not to include music or a voiceover in the
background and therefore differs to our documentary as we chose to
use both of these things in our documentary
The reflexive mode of documentaries shows the findings of the film
makers and their opinions on these findings. There is usually a cynical
approach to realism shown in the documentary.
The participatory and performative modes of documentaries are both
similar as they both present the film maker or presenter as an actor in
the film. A good example of this style is the documentary ‘supersize
me’ which practically follows film maker Morgan Spurlocks life
around which is relevant to the documentary. Our documentary was
based on social networking and therefore it was more important to
follow the opinions of a wide society rather than the film makers.

3. As a starting point for research towards the documentary I was going
to create I thought it would be helpful to watch and analyse existing
documentaries such as ‘Airline’ and ‘Supersize Me’.
Research I gathered from ‘Supersize Me’ through analysis was that the
documentary was delivered in an investigative style with a polemical
result meaning it was basically a one sided argument. The overall
purpose of the documentary was to basically highlight how bad
McDonalds is for you.
The opening of the documentary was interesting as it was instantly
capturing of the audience’s attention through the fast pace it had. It
was factual and full of research, this was definitely effective and I
thought would be very useful to also use in our documentary as social
networking has more than just a few facts about it that could be
mentioned.
FACTS AND STATISTICS PRESENTED IN A I ALSO INCLUDED FACTS IN A FAST PACED
VISUALLY EFFECTIVE WAY IN THE OPENING STYLE AT THE BEGINNING OF MY
OF THE SUPERSIZE ME DOCUMENTARY DOCUMENTARY; I THINK IT HELPS KEEP
THE VIEWER INTERESTED!
Sound is a vital part of documentaries and this includes all aspects of
sound such as background music, voiceover, diagetic and non diagetic
sound. The use of sound in Supersize Me consists of almost all of these.
The documentary includes backgrounds music which serves a
purpose as if it is almost telling a story when there is no speech.

4. Morgan Spurlock is the presenter as well as the voiceover throughout
the documentary; this allows him to create a personal connection with
the audience and allows them to relate to him more effectively. My
group and I decided not to have a presenter and instead guide the
audience through the documentary with a voiceover when necessary.
This is some of our recorded voiceover in final cut
express. To record our voiceover we used a
microphone, headphones and a camera.
We felt it was essential to have some light background music to help
our documentary flow when there was no speech. The background
music could not be too distracting from the real focus of the
documentary. We created the music in Garage Band and experimented
with different sounds to find a good balance that fitted in with the
style of our
documentary
well.
This is our background music being created in
Garage Band; we experimented with mixing a few
simple beats together.
Once we had saved the file as an MP3 one we
imported it into final cut to edit alongside the rest of
our documentary; we adjusted the sound levels so
that they were consistent throughout.
The
different camera conventions used are shot types like: close ups,
medium close ups, establishing shots, long shots and extreme close
ups. For almost all of our camera use in filming our documentary we

5. used a tripod. This was to ensure all our filming was steady and
looked professional. The tripod had many benefits as it allowed us to
use effects like zooming, panning and tracking which are all featured
in our documentary. The tripod was most beneficial during interviews
as the filming was consistently steady and looked professional. Whilst
filming the interviews we ensured we followed a rule of thirds as this
is one of the most important conventions when interviewing.
This is a screenshot from one of our expert
interviews following the rule of thirds.
There are many special effects used throughout the documentary of
Supersize Me. This makes the documentary more visually interesting
to watch for the audience. When looking at our documentary we
decided to include a number of special effects as we wanted to keep
our audience interested
throughout the opening of
our documentary.
One of many special effects used in Supersize Me

6. Listening to interviews can
get boring for the audience so to
ensure the attention of our audience doesn’t fade we
decided to show a small part of other clips during the interview and
then used a dissolve to bring it back together to the initial interview. I
this is really visually effective.
Another special effect we
used was speeding up certain clips to make the style of the
documentary more fast paced and consistently interesting.

7. MAGAZINE ARTICLE
This is the magazine spread we made to support
our documentary as part of the ancillary task. We
looked at other magazines such as ‘Radio Times’
to see what the codes and conventions for
documentary double page spreads usually are.
Magazines and newspapers always have a masthead. The point of it is
to basically highlight the topic of the article and give the reader some
information on what they are looking at reading in a very succinct
way.
As well as telling the reader what the
article is about through the masthead
‘social networking’ the rhetorical
question that follows ‘curse or blessing’
gives the reader an insight on to the
approach it may have towards the
topic.

8. A pull quote shows a
part of the writing
featured in the article
that is interesting to
highlight some of the
views expressed. We
chose to include this
as it is a very
important convention
used in every double page spread which we gathered from our
research. To make it stand out further we made the writing bold and
black.
Articles are always
presented in columns, we
decided to take this
approach too as it followed
the traditional codes and
conventions and made our
article look more
professional.

9. RADIO TRAILER
To get an idea of the way radio trailers are put together and what they
consist of we listened to and analysed numerous radio trailers. We
listened to ones played by a variety of radio stations such as radio one,
radio five and capital. As our radio trailer was aimed at radio one
listeners it needed to be interesting and appealing for an educated
audience.
These are my analysed radio trailer analysis sheets, they helped give
an idea of what I needed to include in a good, professionally presented
radio trailer.
When writing the script for the radio trailer it was important to
include language that would be capturing of listeners attention. I
ensured that I included interesting questions like: ‘will the rise of
social networking bring a fee?’ I think using questions like this is
effective as it makes listeners think about what the documentary may
include and persuade them towards them watching the documentary
to find out.

10. We created a script for the radio trailer and recorded it the same way
we did for the documentary. The script consisted of many audio clips
from the documentary and this is one of the main conventions we
noticed from analysing radio trailers.
Garage band was used to create the radio trailer and we placed the
same background music we used in our documentary in our radio as
this effectively has an obvious connection to the audience.
Another very important convention of radio trailers is that they all
include the date, time and channel the documentary will be showing
on. Obviously we made sure to include this in our documentary too. It
is usually mentioned in a simple way on radio one trailers.
“Sunday night at 8, BBC1 is bringing to you the world of
social networking!”