RESEARCH INTO SIMILAR PRODUCTSPanoramaThe Truth about FoodKirtan Bhachu

BBC’s Panorama – The killing Screens opening 5 minutes0-3 minutes• The narrative starts once we hear

about Nathan Martinez’s story• There’s archival footage of the film

‘Natural Born Killers’, the film that inspired Nathan Martinez to go and commit a crime.

• Long shot of Martinez being arrested• There’s a voiceover, which is formal

speech. This takes up the majority of the sound.

• The narration explains what happened

0-3 minutes• We hear some dialogue from an

interview with Nathan Martinez’s friend, Brian which is one of the interviews.

• There is a voiceover telling us about Brian being Nathan’s friend

• Extreme long shot of Brian walking down a railway track

• There are no captions in introducing Brian

• There is a voiceover providing facts about Brian and Martinez

3-5 minutes• On location setting – outside

which includes ambient surroundings and ambient lighting such as mountains and desert climates

• Variety of images used such as a close up of another one of Martinez’s friends and over the shoulder shot of characters watching fireworks within the archival footage

• Extreme long shot of the sun which is tilted up

3-5 minutes• Voiceover of Martinez’s friend,

describing what happened after Martinez committed the murder of his family members when he was in a car driving with him

• There are no voxpops• There is a reconstruction of what

Brian describes after Martinez murdered his family members.

• There’s archival footage of the film, Non-diegetic sound of music and diegetic sounds of Brian talking

What conventions would we understand and take from this?• Voiceover/Narration – this is key within documentaries and guides the spectator through the topic of the documentary, almost like the voice of god

• Variety of images – this documentary uses a variety of images relating to the topic such as pictures of Martinez’s family and cars etc.

• Archival footage – This documentary only highlights key scenes that would’ve inspired Martinez, and there’s a right amount of it, not too much or too little.

BBC’S The Truth about Food opening 5 minutes

0-3 minutes• Images of people exercising, of

people eating. Images of people cooking.

• Narrator: ‘Messages about food’ - Dialogue

• Music – light-hearted• Narrator – gives an overview of

what the documentary is about• Images of celebrities getting

involved• Editing – montage of clips.

Animation of opening credits

0-3 minutes• Footage of a news presenter

getting ready to do a report on the news about the obesity epidemic – ‘new figures show…’

• Music – light hearted again but with a hint of seriousness

• Narrator – explains that the news presenter is used to dishing out bad news, and that the news presenter has decided to do something about it

• Image of the news office, News presenter says statistics about obesity in Britain.

0-3 minutes• Narrator explains about experiment

accompanied along with footage of the people taking part in the experiment

• Footage of truckers, with narrator talking about their diet.

• Which people are eating what is explained by the narrator

• Music – almost militaristic, motivational

• Editing – animation of human body• Humorous – added sound effects of

farting to make their point come across

• We see the presenter explaining about her food habits, in her home

3-5 minutes• She still explains about her food

habits and how hard it is to fit it all in, especially the idea of 5 a day fruit and vegetables - Narrator

• It’s almost self-reflective, that she is reflecting on herself and she’s trying to find out the truth about food

• Editing – a tree with pictures talking about apes and food. This is accompanied by jungle like music.

• Narrator explains about an experiment to do with ape’s diet. Accompanied with editing

3-5 minutes• Editing – photos etc• Jungle themed music continues – non-

diegetic sound• Footage of the nutritionist talking

about the apes diet• Footage of apes themselves in zoo• Music changes to a serious tone.• Narrator explains about volunteers

who are taking part in the experiment could be at risk of high blood pressure etc.

• Footage of volunteers having a check-up just before they take part in the experiment

• Footage of the volunteers on their first day of the experiment

What conventions would we understand and take from this?• Voiceover/Narration – this is key within documentaries and guides the spectator through the topic of the documentary, this narration isn’t too overbearing and its dual. We have a presenter on screen but it doesn’t match the voice of the narrator.

• Variety of images – this documentary uses a variety of images relating to the topic such as pictures of fruit and vegetables, and people eating dishes

Why have we done this?The purpose of this task was to help us understand what

codes and conventions documentaries reinforce. Both these documentaries may not have been within our audience, but it gives us an idea which codes and

conventions should be enforced such as a voiceover and narrative etc.