Textual Analysis Of Documentaries

documentary/short film 1
this documentary relates to our documentary/short film because it about the same problem diabetes.


visuals:
The story is not told told through a narrator speaking over everyone it is told through all the people in the interviews, which is different to other documentaries/short films that are mostly told through one narrator, almost like the voice of god.

They use some animations in this film to help the audience to locate where the problem is coming from when it is talking about the pancreas, which is a very good way of showing this because it is comfortable on the eye due to it being clear and simple, helping the audience to understand more.

for all the interviews that take part in this documentary they use mid close ups to only show the persons upper body because that is what part of the person they want the audience to focus on and usually they will do it with a dark background in order for the viewer to only focus on the person being interviewed. For the interviews they range from experts and every day people in order to expand the knowledge of diabetes through two different types of perspective, showing that it is a serious problem through using experts and by using every day people it can help relate to everyone around the world because they could easily go through the same thing, which emphasises the problem even more.

for the location through out the documentary it varies from health centres to public parks to show that this problem is everywhere in the world, hinting that the target audience is everyone not just any specific people and that is what we want our short film to be like.

for camera movement there isn't much movement because they only want you to focus on either what someone is saying or when they are showing something of importance.

Editing:
for the pacing of the documentary they use a fairly normal pace so that it isn't too fast that people won't be able to understand what is going on and they don't make it too slow that people start to get bored.

to switch between different people they use a lot of jump cuts so there isn't really any continuity going on, they do this because they want to speed up the process a little bit so that the audience won't get bored of watching people sit around together and take it in turns to talk. by jump cutting to different interviews it helps reinforce this idea.

the majority of the scenes edited are direct interviews with either every day people with diabetes or doctors/experts. this is done because this is the most effective way of presenting their message people it gives the audiences a kind of 1 to 1 chat with the person in the documentary because the person being interviewed is talking to the audience.

Audio:
for this documentary there isn't really much non-diegetic sound used at all. There isn't any songs or sound effects used in the entire documentary, there is only some sound at the very begging when the guy is talking about his life but throughout the rest of the documentary there isn't any. Most of the sound used is just dialogue of the people being interviewed, which isn't really effective people sometimes people get bored quickly if it is just speaking and no music.

Mode:
This documentary is a Participatory documentary because it employs interviews as testimonies from the documentary subject which is diabetes and it doesn't have any sound as well.


documentary/short film 2
The documentary that i will be analysing is a sports documentary on Arsenal legend Thierry Henry. The point of this documentary is to showcase all the achievements of Henry throughtout his playing time and give an insight on how his career progressed. The intended audience for this documentary is people who are interested in the sport football.

Visuals:
Again there is a lot of mid-close up shots used when different people are doing interviews, not for any particular reason just they only need to show the person speaking, there is no need to show their whole body.

A lot of the camera movement is taken from games that were broadcasted in the past so the camera movement is pretty fast because it needs to be to keep up with player when he is running with the ball.

For the interviews they only use lighting on the person that is speaking and no lighting in the background. they do this so that the viewer only focuses on the person rather than anything behind them.

The location throughout the documentary is mostly on a football pitch because it is showing highlights of his goals, which allows the audience to actually see what the people are talking about rather than them taking time trying to remember that 'certain goal'. making they viewer feel more comfortable.

Editing:

for editing there is a lot of jump cuts between different footage from different times to suggest that he has had a long career and is full of many highlights. it has been edited in a way where the older footage has been shown first and the more recent footage has been displayed after. this is done to make the audience feel as if they are going through his career with him, from the very start till the end, to create a sort of storyline throughout the documentary. there is no real sense of continuity in this documentary because they only want to show the best parts of his career so the use of the jump cuts helps speed up the process of showing the audience his whole career, making the pace of the documentary more fluid and quick. the editor has added in interviews with different people after each clip so that they can explain what is happening in the footage in order for the audience to have a more clear understanding of whats going on.

Structure:
for this documentary it is structured from the start of his career to where it answers the 5 W's who what when where and why, it gives a lot of background information about the player so that people will feel more comfortable throughout the documentary knowing where he came from. it then goes on to inform the audience of his peak in his career. Then finally ends of with how his career ended.