Technical Analysis of a Documentry 3

This documentary starts with lots of short, fast-paced panning shots that grab the attention of the viewer straight away because they are accompanied by a non-diagetic voiceover starting to inform the viewer on what they are watching. Many luxurious places are shown in fast paced, panning long shots and these are short and informative. This is then followed by a longer shot that tracks upwards, following a arge hotel. There is fast paced music on in the background which suits the fast pace of the shots being shown. The structural conventions of a documentary is that they let you know a lot of information in a short amount of time, and this video fits this because all the information is being told quickly and the whole video is highly informative and very fast paced. Many high-angled shots of buildings are included in this video, which make the buildings seem larger than they actually are and therefore intimidating and suggests power, which is what they are trying to make Dubai seem like in the video.

Around a minute into this three-minute documentary, the voiceover starts to inform the viewers about a paticular building in the city they are showing. Many shots, which continue with the fast pace, are showing peope seemingly very interested in the building in a long shot, which connotates that the building is very interesting and therefore the viewers should be intreuged by what they are watching. The music in the background is uplifting, and inspirational. The conventions that this documentary doesn't include are the conventions of interviews, because barely anything is asked through the video and the only voice that can be heard is a non-diagetic voiceover giving many facts and statistics of the city the video is based around.

Chosen Target Audience

For my A2 media documentary, I would like to aim my video at people around my sort of age- 16 to early twenties. This is because people my age tend to look for inspiration in a lot of places, and i think providing some sort of an inspirational, insightful and informative documentary I would have my audience interested and they would want to keep watching. I have carried out some research and asked people around my sort of age what kind of short docucmentary they would be interested in watching, and I got a range of responses.
Audiences are paticularly important to documentary construction because they help the makers focus on what they are trying to capture, and the audience is very useful for feedback on what was good about the documentary and what could be improved upon. Also, having a specific target audience in mind when filming your piece can help with whether you need to censor certain thngs for a slightly younger audiece, or whether you should have a slightly more in depth and intelectual side because there are mainly adult target audiences.
In order to fit the audience I am looking to target, I will do more research into what kind of thing people my kind of age like to watch in a documentary, and what they wouldn't find interesting. I can also show them the short documentary I have already made and gather advice on what they found good and what they thought could be improved. Below is a brainstorm of the kind of audience I would be looking to target, and what kind of documentaries that have already been made in order to fit this.

Technical Analysis of a Documentary 2

This short documentary 'What do I desire?' features many conventions of a typial documentary. The establishing shot features white typing on a black background, which is a fairly plain font, and the simplistic nature of it makes it seem more effective to be attention seeking. This is then followed by some close-up shots and a non-diagetic voiceover, which is conventional for this type of a film, because it gives information and that is what documentaries do. Through the film, there is a voiceover through the whole thing and lots of close-up and tracking shots, not showing anything paticularly substantial to the narrative but still keeping the viewers attention. It also features quite a lot of acting being captured in reflective shots. Instead of a normal documentry which would involve asking people and seeking information, this documentary tends to inform its viewers by information that is already known by the filmmaker. The target audience for this film would be people of an older age, because it is quite a high intellect level and would be for the more mature audience. You can tell this by the typ of terminology used within the whole film, and the reflective types of shots and angles that have been captured with the camera. This is similar to the kind of thing i would like to make- it is different to normal documentrys in that it doesn't have a lot of typing on the screen and it doesn't involve interviews. However, it is still just as captivating and the way it has been edited (very smoothly put together) keeps the audience interested.

Experimental Documentary

In order to get our heads round how the way documentaries are made and the different processes to go through to make a full one, we decided to make a very short, couple of minutes long documentary about shopping. Me and my team mates George, Sophie and Georgia filmed multiple scenes, including of people in the public shopping, and we made up some questions and asked them to people and filmed their responses. We also filmed ourselves asking the questions. We combined these all together in the editing and used a vareity of non diagetic voiceovers and a soundtrack and typing over the scenes to make the final product. This is almost a preliminary film in that we used it to get to grips with how to film a documentary. If we were to do this in future, we would film much longer and ask more questions in order to make it a more insightful and time consuming documentary. Working in a team really worked to our advantage when making this documentary, because people can usually offer you advice that you wouldn't usually think of if you were working on your own.

Technical Analysis of a Documentry 1

This is a short documentry about the psychology behind dreams. It starts with lots of moving shots, which is a good opener because it immeditly draws the viewer in. There are also non-diagetic voiceovers which sound like the answers to an interview, and this is a way of the filmmaker to draw the people in because they are starting to find out information they want to know.
The editing is done as a flow, so everything kind of flows into one from lots of seperate shots. There is a non diagetic voiceover of lots of peope explaining what is going on in their dreams, and then it goes straight to shots of three or four people saying the same thing which has been cut short. This brings tension into the scene because the viewer now knows what kind of thing they are going to be watching over the next five minutes.
There are now the usual conventions of a documentry, which are the facts being shown in typing over some shots, and this usually involves some non-diagetic background music. A voiceover, also non diagetic, then tells us what a dream is, a definition. In the back of this there is shots zooming in of someone sleeping, and close-up shots of someones bed. This is effective in makig the reader focus on the voiceover of what is being said and then they can gather information from that.
The rest of the documentary then consists of people being interviewed, and many different shots wtith a main voiceover filling people in on what dreams are. This fits the conventions of a documentary because it is telling you all about what you want to learn about with using shots ih the background as almost an aid to help you listen to what you are being told.
the inter-titles are the questions that are being asked. These are in quite a plain white font and fit in well with the shots being shown in the background, which are typically long shots. The target audience for this documentary would be adults who want to learn more about the psychology behind dreams. The non-diagetic voiceover tends to foreshadow what is going to be asked next.
There is noone asking questions in this documentary, which is unusual because there would usually be someone asking all the questions and someone else answering them. However, this does meet lots of conventions of the documentary because it features a voiceover and lots of different shots, and interviews which are a main thing in most you will watch when it concerns people.

Definition Of Documentaries

Documentaries usually consist of an hour to an hour and a half of documenting something about a paticular culture or way of life for certain people, and it is usually filled with bits of textual information or interviews or capturing what they are trying to inform you about. The content can consist of whatever the filmmaker believes will be helpful to fill the viewers in with information on what they are attempting to learn about. there is a subgenre called observational documentaries, which involves attempting to simply and spontaneously ovserve lived life with a ninimum of intervention. These are good because they allow them to really capture a certain way of living without the subject changing too much for the camera. there are also other forms, which include participatory, for example Louis Thereaux, where he gets to know all the people he is documenting and most of the filming involves himself talking to whoever they are attempting to document. There are also performative documentaries, which tend to capture emotional respnses to the world. There are many types of these films, but most documentaries tend to involve factual information, interviews and film footage.

The method of Documentary Distribution

The main methods of documentary distribution include online distribution and television. There are many famous documentaries around, the most well known ones in the UK having been narrated by the famous Sir David Attenborough. BBC are very well known for their well known documentaries that have been filmed all around the world. These typically involve documenting animals and their natural environments, and BBC have won awards for factual documentation and much more. Last year they were nominated for 18 awards alone, not even considering how many they won at that event. A documentary is using pictures or interviews with people involved in real events to provide a factual report on a paticular subject. These full length usually last from 60 to 90 minutes. ~However, now with the internet being a big scale use of media many companies such as channel 4 on TV feature short documentries on their website and youtube, usually from five to ten minutes. An example of a documentry used in the BBC is David Attenborough's 'Frozen Planet'. These were a se4ries of hour long films informing the watcher on animals in frozen parts of the world. Award ceremonies for documentaries include the IDA's, which are international documentry awards. These are awarded to those who film their documentaries well and usually feature forthose with hour long or longer documentaries. Many popular video streamers now use these films as well, including amazon prime and netflix.