Looking back, I believe that our media project both conformed and challenged in different areas of conventions normally found within documentaries of its kind. We looked at two distinctive sub-genres throughout the research phase of our project. These were associated with the content of the piece (Teen Pregnancy) and also which channel hosted the documentary (Channel 4) as both of these would affect which audience we were speaking to and make us think of the best possible ways that this audience could be engaged with our five minute documentary.
The technical aspects that we used to create the documentary are very common in the sub genre's that we picked. They are filled with establishing shots of setting and scene, reactionary shots of characters reacting with their environment and sticking to a typical 180 degree line when filming a conversation between an interviewer and interviewee. This keeps the film looking professional and able to be accepted more as a professional piece and less associated with being an amateur production when conforming to these creative staples of the genre.
To give our five minute documentary more credibility, we looked into similar documentaries shown on both Channel 4 and on the BBC site to see the differences between the two. The two examples that I chose was the Channel 4 produced short: 'Christmas with Dad'; a look into the life of a working class man at Christmas time with the entire setting being a gritty depiction of "Broken Britain" and the effects of it on one family.
The second was a longer BBC produced documentary: "My Big Decision"; taking two teenage girls who are separated by culture, lifestyle and location but are brought together by the one thing they have in common: their desire to have a baby. The documentary takes the two girls along with their families through several interviews, meetings and searches into what it would be like to look after a child before the girls reach their final conclusion at the end of the programme; do they continue their urgent desire to a child to call their own, or do they give it up as a childish fantasy?
From 'Christmas', I learned about the crucial nature of establishing a scene with several shots to engage the audience in the world they are about to enter. Though Christmas was definitely a mood piece meant to show a glimpse into a life that would be very different from the one its target audience would be used to, it has no set story and makes no use of staged scenes to heighten drama or recreate a scene that the camera crew were not allowed to show. I also learnt that a very quick introductory caption of a character before they are developed helps the audience determine who they are before being shown a scene. It helps them to gain familiarity with the cast before they are shown. We used this in our own documentary, having a caption appearing next to new characters to show who they are before any dialogue and personality is shown.
From 'Decision', I learned how to introduce characters and their relationships to one another not be stating how they act with a voice-over narration, but by showing the characters react to one another and help that aspect to draw out what kind of people they really are to the audience. It feels more naturalistic and convincing to an audience to see a relationship develop rather than being told about it. Showing, not telling, is the crucial element here.
Our piece challenged the medium first and foremost with the premise. On television and in the media today, it is teenage mothers that are given most of the screen time by documentary crews with the fathers being mentioned in passing or simply have left the picture altogether by the time they arrive. We challenged this notion by making the teen father, not the mother, the protagonist and main focus of the documentary and tried to make him the overall focus of the story that went on through the piece. It tackled the various decisions that teen fathers have to take and, much like in 'Decision' follows the character trying to find the answer to a tough decision: accept his role as a father and stay with the mother to support his child together as a family, or move on and try to develop his own life instead?
No comments:
Post a Comment