Documentary Analysis

Here is my final documentary analysis. This documentary is the kind of thing I aim to make, as it is a social documentary and captures certain aspects of someone's life yet still leaving a certain air of mystery about the people, because I don't want every single aspects of someone's life on display. It is revealing but only to a certain extent in which it is acceptable and not intrusive upon the personal lives of certain individuals.
Mise En Scene
The conventions of an informative documentary is that they don't tend to focus on mise en scene in the ways in which a short film or advertisement would do. The focus is mainly on making the documentary as raw and realistic as possible in order to not make the audience believe that it has been constructed in a false manner. In this documentary, the mise en scene is mainly the background that has seemingly been constructed in order to make it seem as realistic as possible. For example, when the interviewer is talking to people in a prison, the mise en scene is a prison environment. This shows the kind of life that these people are used to, and the audience get their audience pleasures because they are watching what they would expect with a documentary. This also comes into things with meeting standards with the target audience- if someone is watching a documentary such as this one such as a documentary about people in a prison, the target audience would be mature adults rather than children so therefore the documentary is suited to its target audience. In the same way, our target audience is likely to be slightly less mature than the ones of this documentary, so we will probably put slightly more simplistic content into our documentary. This will help to attract the audience of the age which we want our target audience to be, and it will hopefully prevent someone watching the first minute, finding it too complicated for a lighthearted documentary, and clicking off it.

Sound- The sound within this documentary is also not too over the top either. From another form of media such as a short film, a lot of incidental and non-diegetic sound will be packed into it. However, when making a documentary, it is more about the informative content so we are going to focus more into making sure all of the voiceovers are very clear. All of the sound in this documentary is fairly clear, and there has obviously been a lot of effort put into clear voiceovers and making sure there is not too much background noise when filming interviews. This sound is highly effective, because the non-diegetic music is input when there is not too much going on in the background, and it makes a nice balance. We will try and establish one of these balances within our documentary, as we will want to put some music in the background, whether that is from a royalty free website or we make it ourselves using a microphone and a piano as me and my teammate can both play instruments and know people that can play some. We will have some moments in the documentary where there is no background music to accentuate a certain moment, and we will also have some moments where there is background music. The other sounds will also be diegetic music that is filmed in the background of our shots of shopping centres, and the sounds of our voices asking questions during interviews and the responses we get from the interviewees.

Camera- During the interviews during this documentary, there are many different types of shots. Also, within the rest of the documentary, there is an impressive and diverse range of shots when there is a non-diegetic voiceover going on in the background. This works well to keep the audience interested to a high level, because there is a high level of things changing. This high pace of change, accompanied with a high pace of music, will keep the audience interested because they have to stay focused on the documentary in order to keep up with what is happening. The camera man obviously works hard in order to keep an interesting variety of shots, such as long shots, close ups, a few medium shots which consisted mainly of the interviews, and there were also some long shots of the backgrounds, such as the prisons in this documentary. The camera work isn't just the shots- it also consists of making sure that the camera is held steady and nothing is unsteady or inconsistent. If the shots are unsteady or they wobble at all and aren't at good angles, no amount of editing can bring them up to scratch. This is why the editing and camera work together hand in hand to make an effective documentary, and without them working together you can end up having a badly filmed or edited documentary. Although you may see something like this documentary, all of the filming and editing have both been done well. If either of these parts are bad they bring down the whole documentary as a film. An example of a well shot part of this documentary is within the interview shots- the mid shots of the people being interviewed captures the emotion of the interviewee, and doesn't seem overly obscure or trying hard. The main theme with filming documentaries is trying to keep them as natural or raw as possible whilst still keeping the attention of the audience. Also, when panning across to capture what the prison looks like, the long shot is very effective because it shows what it's like inside the prison, and the panning is effective because it means they can capture more than anticipated. Part of being a good filmmaker involves being able to know what shots and when, and what is most effective.

Editing- As for the editing of documentaries, the editing tends to stay fairly raw; however- there is a certain amount of editing that goes into these documentaries in order to make them come across fairly raw and unedited. There seems to be a certain knack for editing these and still making them come across as being as unedited as they seem. This effort comes down to making everything run very smoothly and editing all shots together to make it seem like there is a distinct lack of cuts in between shots. Also, the sound in the background which isn't diegetic is all a part of the editing process, and if this isn't done well it will affect it as a whole. The main thing to take into consideration when watching a documentary like this, you need to take into account that every aspect of the documentary has to be to standard otherwise it affects the film as a whole. This includes the camera angles shot, to the editing and sound. For the editing, it takes into account many different factors, such as putting together all of the different shots and making sure it all flows well.

This documentary is effective as a whole because it captures the perfect amount of the lives of people in the prison- it informs the audience on what they would generally want to find out about someone who lives in a prison, but doesn't tell you too much or disclose copious amounts of private information. The effectiveness of this documentary is down to the fact the presenter (Louis Theroux) and the director (Tom Barrow) have worked well together. This is what me and sophie need to keep in mind for our documentary- without cooperation from both sides of the making of the documentary, it isn't going to turn out the ways in which we plan to make the documentary.