Tuesday 20 July 2010

Documentary AS Task

Production photos from AS task

These pictures show the way that we filmed our documentary using the blue screen and two lights











Cutaway shots that were used in the documentary AS task

The cutaway shots that we have decided to use in our film were:

A shot of a teenage boy walking along talking on his mobile phone

Shots of different phones piled up against each other

A shot of a phone on its own

A shot of a boy and a girl sat outside together each talking or texting on their mobile phone

A shot of a girl stood in a classroom texting on her mobile phone

These cutaways will show the importance of mobile phones and technology to teenagers and als all of the different functions that a mobile phone can be used for.

Wednesday 7 July 2010

Documentary AS notes

In our media lesson we watched the In The Teeth of Jaws Documentary extract and The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special Documentary to try and find typical codes and conventions of documentary videos



We noticed that in the Jaws interview, the typical conventions were:

- the shark props in the background
- the priducer was interviewed on a beach, a scene relavant to the film
- each characters head and shot is in shot and smart clothes are worn
- Jaws posters can be seen in the background
- the camera keeps cutting to different people talking throughout the documentary, the author, diretcor etc.


The clip below was from another documentary that we watched, The Simpsons 20th Anniversary special



We noticed that in this clip the typical codes and conventions of documentaries that were used were:

- the Simpsons cardboard cut-outs in the background, the cut-outs relating to the character that is speaking
- the name and job at the bottom of the screen when the character spoke
- the camera cuts to the actors recording the episodes in action
- cut-outs also from the film The Incredibles, a film also created by the same company


General Codes and Conventions of Documentaries

- Interviews with different people are edited together to create a coherant narrative
- Interviewees do not look directly at the camera, they look at the interviewer
- The questions are never heard, they are edited out
- Graphics are used (name and job title) at the bottom of the screen to introduce the interviewee
- Cutaways are used between head shots to illustrate what is being said
- Background and mise en scene is chosen to be relevant to the subject
- One person is interviewed at a time
- The interviewees are either positioned in the top left or right corner