Wednesday, 3 October 2012

Analysis of conventions of mockumentaries and documentaries.


Katie King (HAB)

-The device I’m going to discuss is shot types and variety. We see this in the Mockumentary ‘Summer heights high’ when the camera does a long shot, it has been used to show the students and their surround. However later on mid shots are used to focus on particular characters such as the main character ‘Jonah’. This section helps the audience to get to know the key characters. We see their costume and where they like to hang out. In the documentary ‘Tribe’ with Bruce Parry the shot types were mostly close up we got HD views of all the nature, it looks professional and the shots are in a lot of detail later in the documentary the camera does a longer shot showing Bruce Parry and his surrounding, showing him and the nature around him, this also look professional and in HD.

 - The next device I’m going to discuss is Interview and narrator. Regularly the characters like ‘Jonah’ in ‘Summer Heights High’ talks to the camera; this makes us feel like the characters are talking directly to us in the interviews. They speak in slang and talk informally which makes us feel that we are being welcomed to their group. Not watching as an outsider. In ‘Tribe’ Bruce Parry does talk to the camera which makes us feel that we are there with him and all their surroundings. But unlike ‘summer heights high’ Bruce Parry talks in formal language therefore its sounds more professional. In ‘tribe’ Bruce Parry also talks as the narrator which tell us he’s in forming and teaching us the animals and nature.

- The third device I’m going to be analysing is quality of footage. In Bruce Parry’s ‘tribe’ the quality of the footage is in HD all the footage is in detail, and you can see all the nature and animals clearly. This makes the footage look professional and real making us feel that we are there. Whereas in ‘summer heights high’ the quality of footage is poor quality trying to mock documentaries. It looks unprofessional. Documentaries used to be poor quality so this Mockumentary is basically trying to mock the old documentaries, because the footage is not HD and the camera is not still it moves around a lot.

- The fourth device I’m going to look into will be quality of filming. In the documentary the filming is professional and uses several cameras to catch all the action, the camera is steady and not messy. The fact the documentary uses more than one camera means they can catch all the action without moving around with one camera making it look blurry and unprofessional. This makes us feel focused on what we’re watching unlike the Mockumentary because the quality of filming is unprofessional because they use one camera to make the effect of trying to catch the action ‘on the spot’. Where actually they haven’t caught the action on the spot because they have rehearsed it thousands of times before. The fact that the filming is quite messy and blurry gives the impression that the filming is real.

- The next device I’m analysing is observation shot. In ‘summer heights high’ some of the shots look like we’re watching from behind a glass or window. This makes us feel that we are observing and watching, not being part of the action and looking on as more of an outsider not being let in to the action. But in Bruce Parry’s ‘tribe’ the shots we see are shots from over the shoulder where we can see the action going on. Bruce Parry is in front of the action. This makes us feel that he is protecting us from the dangers of the nature and animals.

- The last device I’m going to look in to will be voice overs. In the documentary Bruce parry also does voice overs, teaching us about the action and telling us information, this makes us think that he couldn’t tell us everything when he was there because he was there in the action. In the voice over he sounds professional and sounds formal. The language choices of the narrator reveals that the show is sophisticated. It makes people feel like they’re being brought in to the action with Bruce Parry.  In the Mockumentary they don’t have a voice over, instead they have quiet background music. The music is used because its familiar music that’s used in documentaries. The effect of not having a voice over is that whereas the documentary is trying to teach us the Mockumentary is just trying to let us in to the characters school life.

 

No comments:

Post a Comment