Style and Conventions

Introduction With our documentary, we decided we wanted to break conventions and make something that is stand out, and unique.

Our first step in creating this was looking at documentaries that students in past years had created.

We looked at small, individual parts of each of them, and looked at how they were done.

We then discussed and decided how we would do that part.

We tried to do it as different as possible, not sticking to the conventions, and generally making ours as unique as possible.

Voice Over The first thing we looked at was the voice over.

With every student documentary we looked at, we saw a common pattern.

The voice overs would: Generally be very minimal – they would have parts to introduce

the documentary, state a few facts and then tell us what the next part of the documentary is.

They would all contain common phrases – “we went to the Soilhull Sixth Form College”, “we talked to _________, an expert in ______”, “in this documentary, we are going to look at….”

Voice Over We decided that our voice over wasn’t just going to narrate the documentary and tell the audience a few facts and figures, but to push along the narrative of the documentary, provided back ‘story’ on things we did, as well as being used to light comedic effect. The voice over would tell the story.

A lot of the things we filmed for the documentary were very obscure. They weren’t just filler shots, panning shots etc. They were actually incredible bizarre. For example, we have a shot of someone taking a photograph on their phone of a packet of crisps; a shot of someone looking at their phone, looking at the sky, then shrugging.

Voice Over These shots would only make sense with the voice over providing a narrative to the shots, similar to how a TV programme wouldn’t make sense without the actors voice’s audible.

Furthermore, we decided to stay away from common, cliché phrases that were stated on the previous slide. Instead of finding substitutes for these phrases, we simply didn’t say them at all. Watching many professional documentaries, they rarely state this sort of information, especially documentaries whose style we drew inspiration from.

Structure One thing we noticed with many documentaries is that they have a set structure, made up of set sections. The sections would perhaps be in a slightly different order, but the timeline of the 5 minutes would generally all be very similar.

We decided to not follow these conventions. Yes, our documentary has a structure. A clear structure. A structure which can be easily noticeable and can draw similarities from the structure of these documentaries that we looked at.

Structure The conventions that we are challenging is simply the way these are presented.

One example is the presentation of information. As our documentary is about smartphones, we decided to present figures on the screens of smartphones. Instead of listing things smartphones are used for, we showed them (albeit, mocking them at the same time). Instead of simply showing voxpops, we provided the viewer with a quick glimpse of the voxpops before hand, as well as using a unorthodox voxpop for comedic effect.

Style Style is something which is very important in any form of art. A personal and unique style will make your work standout.

We noticed that the documentaries created by past students were very professional, very formal, very minimalistic (but in a good way!). They get right down into the important stuff.

Style We decided for our documentary to take a different approach. Instead of this very professional, very formal approach, we wanted to create something which is light-hearted, funny, satirical, and just all round friendly. We didn’t negate the important stuff though. That’s still there – it’s just disguised behind the satiricalness and the lightheartedness.