ANALYSIS OF THE MARKETING OF MEATLOAF

Title, Series and type Title: The marketing of meatloaf Series: the series was part of BBC 2’s

music business Doc series. It was roughly made around the early 90s.

Type: The type of documentary genre of this is a mixed documentary because it shares all of the conventions like voice over, interviews, basic editing and graphics as well as a good sense of music and sound.

Themes

Themes: The themes of the documentary explore about the music industry and how Meatloaf comes back to success. The main theme however is more powerful and meaningful than just simply the comeback of the musician. It tells us how we as the public can be easily influenced and manipulate in a sense by the power of the music industry, let alone others through media.

Narrative structure Narrative structure: The structure of the documentary was

as followed: Non linear because it didn’t follow a chronological order due

to it was skipping to parts that were suppose to be based further into the future than the past. For example, the opening had an award ceremony that happened after the marketing and in the making of meatloaf the artist.

Single strand because it was just only following how meat loaf made a come back rather than other artists added into the documentary. Despite there was a brief look on how they were trying to make a comeback for the village people, it all linked back to meat loaf towards the end as he was the one who gained no 1.

Closed ending because there's no loose ending, there's nothing left for an open debate. Its just simply how Meatloaf got back into the charts again.

Archive and graphics Graphics: The graphics included the opening sequence for

the series of documentary's it was based around. For example, the series opening was of various interviews of music producers, artist and record label owners put into a magazine/newspaper frame. Other graphics included the opening title for the documentary which had normal font and white font colour on the base of a magazine heading. Other graphics included banners to introduce various people (this was used in the interviews) there was also tabloids and newspaper articles of meatloaf in the background of the interviews.

Archive material: The archive material included the award ceremony, music videos like the meat loaf one itself and ones like the Mr Blobby and the village people. There was also views on newspaper/magazine pages.

Camera Camera: usually conventional, has

many conventional camera techniques like close ups, medium close ups, big close ups and long medium shots. Conventional use of the rule of third where the interviewee is on the other half of the screen. Some hand held (actuality footage) used in places like the press conference to follow the action.

Sound Voice over of British male, portrayed as calm,

clear and un-emotional. However, unlike most documentaries there are some points where the narrator is using sarcasm to point out on certain points (like in the bit how he lists out all the people who have helped market meatloaf and how the fans have “helped” with his success suggests that the documentary is telling us how easily manipulated people can be).

General soundtrack of meat loafs songs as if to correspond with the mise en scene.

Songs trying to make it to no 1, I.E. Village people, Mr Blobby, ect.

Editing and Mise en scene Editing: Editing is rather basic from time

to time, showing cuts from one shot to the next; this is rather conventional in documentaries. How ever, especially in the interviews there were one or two other edits aside from the usual cut. There was a dissolve to the next person in an interview and there was also a flip of another person in one interview (so they were not in the way of meatloaf's face in the backgrounds).