documentary, conventions

Documentary list of conventions

• Witness or victims of the event that has taken place
• Interviews with special topic people
• Clips from things that cover the same subject. For example the Outfoxed used clips of the Fox news stories which were meant to be 'real' news
• Trying to include celebrity's and people in the public eye, in the Blowing for Columbine the reporter when to an old Hollywood star, who also is in a guns club, to talk to him about a six year old boy who went into school with a gun and shot a six year old girl which ending up with her death.
• Voice overs
• VT inserts
• Archive footage
• Use of lots of music
• Use of montage - pace, fast moving, this was used a lot in the Blowing for Columbine when it showed the American history on weapons.
• Hand held footage
• It focuses on one subject but give different solutions to correct it
• Taking law into their own hands
• Tone, sarcastic
• For shadowing
• Irony, sarcasm, black humour 'about death'
• CCTV footage
• Statistics
• Amateur footage
• Use of multi-camera

The good use of Multi-camera is that you can edit by using the different camera shots with the different angles covering the same piece of footage. For example in Louis met the Nazi they used multi-camera edit for the conversation between him and the mother of the two young girls. They edited between three cameras, one focused on him and the other on the mother and one that kept flicking between the two of the girls themselves playing. One of the problems with Multi-camera use is they need an more complex lighting set up to give each angle the same lighting effect and colour balance.

Blowing for Columbine - The step by step set up for the documentary.


1- gun availability + views of gun ownership  
2- fear + safety
3- inequality between rich + poor in USA
4- killing of Columbine students
5- about American society + socialisation
6- importance of the media


Killing of students in school
fact - Students did a shooting at a school
opinion - Local people in the town and gun owners
bias
propaganda