The Music Biz: The Marketing of

Meatloaf

This documentary contains observational, narration and interview features so is a MIXED documentary.

Type of documentary

The Show Biz documentary on Meatloaf forms an closed narrative structure meaning that there was a clear ending point to the programme. This consisted of the release of Meatloaf’s album and the success/failure it brought.

Meatloaf’s record

Themes displayed within the documentary:

Awards

Power of the mediaMusic Business -

success

Advertisement/Marketing

The documentary follows a single stranded and non linear narrative structure meaning these themes are all under the same topic and appear non-chronologically …

Within the documentary there were many conventional interviews that took place:-Medium close ups of interviewee- Talking indirectly, looking away from the camera- Rule of 3rd’s : where interviewee was placed slightly to the right or left of centre.

The handheld camera at the start of the documentary allowed the audience to see the conference, crowds and observational footage of the music video.

CAMERAWORK:

The zoom and pan of the camera combined with extreme long shots of the crowd at the Meatloaf concert allowed the audience to see all his fans.

The documentary contained real people and locations, these were both related and relevant to the music.

Meatloaf wore sunglasses signifing his rock styled character, his interview was low key lighting and so set the rock type mood.

Mise en Scene

During the interviews meatloaf’s image or video was projected in the background, this is conventional of an interview and also links to the themes of the documentary.

The male narration within the documentary provided the audience with context and helped confirm the exposition. The “voice of god” narration was calm so brought an authorative nature to the documentary.

Sound:

Meatloaf’s music was played throughout the programme, his live performances were also shown live (diegetic) along with the rivalry Village People with their song YMCA (non-diegetic).

Montages were used to provide context to the audience.

The most used form of editing to change from shot to shot were ‘cuts’. Along with ‘cut aways’ to different footage , this made the documentary more interesting for the audience.

The use of greenscreens provided background images for the interviews.

And finally on some shots the interviewee faded or dissolved as the shot cut into the next.

Editing:

Archive footage of fans at the concert was used combined with Meatloaf singing. Footage from the making of Meatloaf’s music video was used.

To show Meatloaf’s success archive footage from the brit awards and grammies were previewed.

Archive:

Within the documentary the plain white fonts of text were used to illustrate relevance and show who the people being interviewed were.

Visuals of statistics concerning Meatloaf’s album sale were used.

And finally during interviews ‘The Music Biz’ logo was used at the bottom next to the name of interviewee.

Graphics: