1. In what ways does your media
product use, develop or
challenge forms and
conventions of real media
products?
By Sophie Wallace
Question 1

2. B-roll and A-roll footage
When filming our documentary there were 2 main types
of footage we needed to film; they were B-roll and A-roll
footage. The a-roll footage we filmed was used for the
main body of the documentary such as; interviews and
voxpops. The b-roll footage we filmed was used for the
extra parts such as to break the interviews up and create
the new depth/levels to the piece. By having both sets of
footage this meant that we could mix the 2 lots of
footage up so that the audience wasn't getting bored
with a section of the documentary for too long it meant
that while someone during an interview was speaking
there was something else going on that didn't just focus
on the interview. We recorded more b-roll footage than
a-roll footage, as we needed more recordings to choose
from that helped make the documentary flow better.

3. Transitions
When creating the documentary we needed something that would create a smooth transition
from one scene to the next, we did this by choosing effects from the effects bank.
The effects bank has many different transitions that were available for us to use but we needed
to follow the professional conventions by doing this we chose cross dissolve as (seen on the
bottom) that is also seen in real documentaries on the television. This effect is used as it helps
the documentary flow effectively and also ties the scenes together. We only used the transitions
when necessary to prevent our documentary looking unprofessional and not letting the footage
flow smoothly.

4. Rule of Thirds
The rule of thirds is essential when interviewing someone for
a documentary as it creates a good shot for the interview and
follows the professional conventions for documentary
making.
I think this example from our documentary shows an
successful rule of thirds shot, the ‘level match’ eye line is
achieved and the visual structure is important. After looking
at this shot I find that the interviewee is looking slightly too
far out of shot and she needs to be looking at the camera a
bit more as the is looking too much into blank space and not
slightly off the camera. Her eye line is the correct height and
she is sat in the accurate place for interviewing. If the
interviewee was moved to the left a little I think that her
positioning would be a lot better. This shot is known as the
‘talking head shot’. The framing is crucial as it allows the
audience to communicate with the interviewee effectively
through the balance achieved.

5. Mise-en-scene
When it came to filming the 2 main things that need to be
taken into consideration are the mise-en-scene and the
framing in each location. We made sure that our mise-en-
scene was relevant to the subject and theme of our
documentary being about chocolate. For the top screen shot
the mise-en-scene is relevant as the background is of many
shelves full with chocolate products in the shop where we
filmed the interview, this was also relevant to the
interviewee as she is a full time worker at the shop and that
represents her role throughout her day to day life and in the
documentary. For the bottom screen shot the mise-en-scene
isn't as good as it isn't related to chocolate as much however
it is still relevant, we filmed the interviewee in her office as it
is part of her day to day job which is also her part in the
documentary. There is a small link to chocolate in the mise-
en-scene with the cupcake on her left hand side,
nevertheless I still feel we could have made the link to
chocolate more obvious by maybe taking her to the green
room and superimposing an image as the background of
chocolate as this would have made the mise-en-scene
thought through more in depth.

6. Sound Bed
We decided to put a sound bed throughout our documentary so whenever there wasn’t any dialogue
or voiceover the music could be heard. We chose the chocolate song as it was related to our
documentary with the theme linking to the song as well. The sound bed also doubles up as the theme
tune when the opening sequence is played.

7. Stop Motion Animation
For our opening sequence we developed
documentary conventions by adding stop
motion animation, having this at the beginning
of a documentary isn't normally seen but is not
breaking conventions, we used it to introduce
the title of our documentary, we used the
animation as an imaginative function to make
our documentary stand out and look inventive.
The filming was very time consuming as we
decided to spell out the title of our
documentary with individual chocolates. Every
time we added a chocolate we had to record a
bit and then add another chocolate, we did this
until we spelt out the whole of the title.
During the editing we had to cut out a lot of
extra footage and fix all the wanted pieces of
footage together. This process was also very
time consuming, however the end product was
what we expected and a alongside the sound
bed it created the introduction to our
documentary that we desired.

8. Name Graphics
In my opinion our name graphics breaks documentary conventions as documentaries we saw
prior to making our own documentary most name graphics were plain text, very rarely some
would have a small picture to link the text with the theme of the documentary.
We made our name graphics into a chocolate bar wrapper to keep with the theme of our
documentary. Most graphics are plain and simple and don’t distract the viewer, where as ours are
eye catching and a full image which takes up a lot of the shot. Most graphics in documentaries
are small, however due to ours being within an image it meant that our graphics had to be a lot
larger than what they should have been. I feel that this could be distracting to the viewer as they
are too large. A lot of documentaries don't show graphics appearing and disappearing on screen,
unfortunately the transitions we used meant that this could be seen by the viewer, this again
breaks the codes and conventions of a documentary.

9. Archive Footage
Through the first half of my documentary I
decided to create a comparison of 2
different archive footages with one being a
galaxy advert in 1980 and then comparing it
with a galaxy advert from 2012. I think that
this has challenged the codes and
conventions of a documentary as I have not
seen any documentary that has compared
the old from the new to also help show
people how time has changed overtime and
to also show the difference between adverts
then and now. I think that this has worked
well as it has informed the audience of what
adverts were like and the way they have
changed overtime. Showing the 2
comparison adverts at the beginning of the
documentary has helped give the theme of
the documentary shown to help the
audience know what the documentary is
about.

10. Shot Types
The different shot types through the documentary are all different and have their own reasons
for being used. For example the image shown on the bottom, this is a panning shot shown in my
documentary. There is a voiceover created through this section of the documentary also as I
think that showing a shop through the documentary that we based it on I think that this works
well showing the main parts of the overall documentary.