Task 1B - Final

Task 1B – Individual report

The 3 different factual programmes I will review and talk about are Catfish, Spies and Special Forces: The Ultimate Hell Week. The news report I will review and talk about is (enter name). There are multiple documentary modes such as expository, observational, interactive, reflexive, performative, realism, narrativisation and dramatization. There are several news modes such as studio news readers, field reporters, links to studio, mode of address to viewer; interviewing; experts, witnesses; report structure and actual footage.

                                               

(News report)

Don't worry about expository or anything for that report, just focus on the use of archive footage/interviews/studio anchors etc... use the assignment brief. 

There are several news modes such as studio news readers, field reporters, links to studio, mode of address to viewer; interviewing; experts, witnesses; report structure and actual footage.

The news report is different to other programmes because it is real recent stories that are going on in the world, therefore it won’t have any documentary modes, it would just mainly have codes and conventions. With documentaries, the viewers do not get live information and data, whilst news does. 

For example, while the news presenter is talking, at the bottom of the screen in the small bar, other main news would be flowing along the screen with main headlines.

The mode of address to the viewer includes style and format of the news programme. BBC is very formal with its reports and straight forward to the point, this way you get all the relevant news and information that you want in a short time. Appearance is a big factor because you wouldn’t trust news from a punk star with lots of piercings/ear rings, tattoo’s all over their face and a Mohawk. This is the reason why all reporters look clean, have clean shaven cuts and are dressed appropriate, this makes the news reliable as it is coming from an appropriate reporter.

News report often call eye witnesses to give statements. For example in this report, they got 2 ladies to talk about their struggle and difficulties of getting their child on a bus with a lack of disabled areas. The eye witnesses cannot be biased or one sided otherwise it wouldn’t be professional. Alongside eye witness’s they also use actual footage from incidents. This makes it very accurate and reliable because it is real actual live footage from the scene.

Catfish

Catfish is a show that is shown on American TV Channel called MTV. On this show, the filmmaker Nev and Max go to different states and help people that have or are being catfished and solves the problem. Whether this is proving if the other person is a catfish or not.

Expository is also known as the Voice of God, a speaker in the programme who isn’t seen. It is basically a narrator.  It is used in each of the programmes by having a narrator in the background. This documentary mode has direct relationship towards the viewers between images and voiceover. The narrator isn’t always unseen in all cases, in some cases the narrator can actually be seen. For example David Attenborough in Wildlife. As well as the narrator being seen in wildlife, in Catfish I would also say the narrator is present and actually in the documentary. The filmmaker called Nev is the main star in catfish, he is every single episode of Catfish. There is never a narrator in catfish and this is because there isn’t a need for one. The viewers can physically see and hear everything, furthermore the Nev does a lot of POV camera shots. Once or twice per episode Nev would talk directly to the camera and explain the person’s catfish story to the viewers watching.

Interactive is pretty self-explanatory again it’s in the name. This mode is when the filmmaker/director gets interactive with people in the programme. A convention you would often see in this mode on a show is the presence of the camera’s and crew. Furthermore the filmmaker would directly speak to their subjects. In some cases there would not be a defensive argument so they would tend to leave the audience to decide at home.  Again with the filmmaker Nev, he is interactive because every episode he goes to meet the person/people that have been catfished and thoroughly talks to them over the couple of days about the situation and how to solve it. In Catfish, many times you would see Max (who is part of the cameraman) in lots of shots alongside the other cameraman and their camera equipment in the shots also.

Reflexive is acknowledging in detail that it is a film or programme. A convention in this mode that you would see would be the director making no attempt to hide constructions such as showing us the camera crew instead of hiding them. They might also include institutional issues in the programme. This element also links with interactive because in Catfish because they make no attempt in hiding the camera crew’s equipment. So at the beginning of catfish you would tend to see many of the camera men, lots of equipment hanging around such as mic holders, lighting holder stands, mics, lights, tripod, cameras etc. etc. The reason they show this in the programme is to let the audience viewers know it’s a very real technical programme.

Performative is when the documentary maker stars in his or hers own film, again for example David Attenborough starring in Wildlife. The conventions you would often see in this mode include the process of the filmmaker making the film, interviews, camera handheld movements a lot of the time as the follow the filmmaker and last but not least, the personality and views of the filmmaker are also shown in the programme.  Nev and Max star in the film which makes Catfish performative. Many times, in episodes you will see Max hold a hand-held camera whilst they are going to meet that person that got catfished or he would hold a hand-held camera whilst him and Nev are with the person. A few other times would be when Nev and Max are just chilling in their hotel room on their laptop And Max would face the camera on themselves and talk directly to the camera.

In catfish, Nev the presenter/film maker and Max you see them edit in numerous episodes. So when watching the programme you could actually see them in episodes editing an actual episode.

Realism is also used in Catfish because it interactive to some sort of extent and is based on reality. Dramatization is used in Catfish, dramatization is the process of presenting a incident or event in a film. For example, there was an episode where this lady caused an dramatic scene for attention, she made a scene in public in a public shopping mall, made it a dramatically episode.

Travel Man: 48 Hours

Travel man: 48 hours is about a man that goes on a 2 day / 48-hour holiday with famous people to nice countries such as Spain, Italy, Iceland etc etc. The people he goes with are mainly comedians, footballers and entertainment.

Expository is also known as the Voice of God, a speaker in the programme who isn’t seen. It is basically a narrator.  It is used in each of the programmes by having a narrator in the background. This documentary mode has direct relationship towards the viewers between images and voiceover. In Travel Man: 48 Hours. Sometimes the narrator would ask questions, sort of like a question cliff hanger before the show goes on break or ends. For example, the narrator asked “What do you think about this country? Would you go with your family or loved ones?”

Travel man: 48 hours is Interactive, this mode is when the filmmaker/director gets interactive with people in the programme. A convention you would often see in this mode on a show is the presence of the camera’s and crew. Furthermore the filmmaker would directly speak to their subjects. In some cases there would not be a defensive argument so they would tend to leave the audience to decide at home.

Performative is when the documentary maker stars in his or hers own film, again for example David Attenborough starring in Wildlife. The conventions you would often see in this mode include the process of the actually filmmaker making the film, interviews, camera handheld movements a lot of the time as the follow the filmmaker and last but not least,  the personality and views of the filmmaker are also shown in the programme. In Travel Man: 48 Hours

Narrativisation is used in Travel Man: 48 Hours because the turned ideas into a narrator’s story. Throughout the whole documentary the presenter Richard Oyoade talks over and has lots of humorous narration. For example, while he was at the restaurant with actor Jessica Hynes in Iceland and they ate a traditional Iceland dish there, he narrated “Well this taste absolutely horrible, me and Jessica certainly will not be coming back here”. 

Unlike The Ultimate Hell Week and Catfish, there isn’t any dramatization or realism in the show. Although it doesn’t include these additional documentary modes, it is still successful and running which makes it a successful entertainment programme.

Forces: The Ultimate Hell Week

Special Forces is a reality based documentary / docusoap/series which is about 20 people that partake a challenge that consists of 2 weeks. Each day is a different training survival day, the aim is to obviously survive and not quit.

Expository is also known as the Voice of God, a speaker in the programme who isn’t seen. It is basically a narrator.  It is used in each of the programmes by having a narrator in the background. This documentary mode has direct relationship towards the viewers between images and voiceover. In Special Forces, the film present Reggie Yates is the narrator/story teller. Each episode you physically see and hear him talk about the contenders in the show.

Interactive is pretty self-explanatory again it’s in the name. This mode is when the filmmaker/director gets interactive with people in the programme. A convention you would often see in this mode on a show is the presence of the camera’s and crew. Furthermore the filmmaker would directly speak to their subjects. In some cases there would not be a defensive argument so they would tend to leave the audience to decide at home. Special Forces is interactive, this is because the presenter Reggie Yates always get interactive with the contenders in the show. This could be by physically talking to them and having a conversation or it could be having a little interview with them. Likewise with the performative mode you see the cameramen/camera equipment in a few shots which make the programme both interactive and performative as they both share the same convention. In this case the film star directly talks to their subjects which in this case are the survival contenders in the programme.

Performative is when the documentary maker stars in his or hers own film, again for example David Attenborough starring in Wildlife. The conventions you would often see in this mode include the process of the actually filmmaker making the film, interviews, camera handheld movements a lot of the time as the follow the filmmaker and last but not least,  the personality and views of the filmmaker are also shown in the programme. In Special Forces, the filmmaker star Reggie Yates stars in the programme as the presenter. There are many conventions in this programme that justify that the programme is performative. On many occasions, Reggie Yates would interview the contenders after each challenge. For example he said “How did you feel about this task? Did you think you were a strong or weak link?” Along with this question he also asked many others to the contenders. Furthermore you would see a few times, the cameramen in the shots. One prime example was in episode 1 when they were doing a 300m run in south Africa during 35 degrees and you could see the camera man in shot running behind the last person who was about to faint. They left this in and didn’t edit it out to show it’s a reality based documentary and gives the viewers at home that real life experience.

Observational is pretty much self-explanatory, this mode observes the people in the programme. You would know it’s an observational mode in a programme because the camera man often uses it hand-held and would have relatively long takes. In other words, the viewers may feel as if nothing was actually even cut out. Another convention of this mode would be the cameraman zooming into someone’s face so that viewers actually can see that person’s expression in real detail.  This gives a vibe which makes the documentary look and feel real life. The Last main convention for this mode is that you would rarely or never hear a narrator, which does tend to make it quieter.  

Narrativisation is when the documentary has a narrator in the background, narrating the whole programme. Narrativisation is used a few times in Special Forces, for example one time the narrator talked other while the people were doing a physical task and said “Each week is getting harder, so far Mok and Samantha have quit. Let’s see who is physically strong and will not give up”

Realism is the quality or fact of representing a person or thing in a way that is accurate and true to life. In special forces realism is used in Special Forces because the topic that the programme portrays the army camp and because this is a real issue it is realism. The ultimate hell week does have realism in it but does not have dramatization in it because it is a real-life programme which makes it reality therefor they wouldn’t need to have a dramatic scene in an episode.