A2 Practice Documentary

To help me understand the various different codes and conventions of the production of interviews, I composed a list of different features that could be seen in examples of documentaries that I watched as a preparation for the course. I made note of both obvious things that could be seen in all interviews and also different, perhaps less obvious codes and conventions that were suggested to me. The list that I produced can be seen below.

• Interviewees; the person or people being interviewed; are filmed with a medium shot, a medium close up or a close up so that their entire body can not be shown, instead just the upper half. This puts emphasis on the person's face, expressing their emotions and reactions to things more effectively.
• The interviewee is always positioned either on the left or right of the frame and never in the centre, leaving a space on the other side which can be used to help show the surroundings or other important objects. If there is more than one interview being shown at a time, positioning on the left or right alternates to create variety and make the doccumenty seem more interesting and appealling to a viewer.
• The rule of thirds is used in interviews, so that the interviewee's eyeline is approximately a third of the way down the frame. This again puts more emphasis on the person's face and makes sure that enough of the person's body can be seen.
• The interviewee always looks directly at the interviewer, so their eyeline never meets with the camera and is consistantly looking in one direction.
• The interviewer must always sit or stand as close to the camera as possible without ever being in the shot, and must be at the interviewee's eye level so that the interviewee is always facing straight forwards - if the interviewer was stood and the interviewee seated the interviewee would be forced to look upwards to keep eye contact, which would appear unprofessional. If the interviewee is sat on the right side of the frame then the interviewer must be on the left side of the camera, and if the interviewee is positioned on the left side of the frame then the interviewer must be positioned on the right side of the camera to create the impression that the interviewee is facing across the 'empty' side of the shot.
• The mise-en-scéne of the interview involves the 'empty' side of the shot being filled by some sort of object or background of relevance to the interview or interviewee, such as a cutout of a character or a significant object or background which provides more of an insight into the character's occupation or role in the doccumentry, for example.
• Light is always in front of the interviewee and not behind - light sources such as the sun coming through windows in the background are blocked out to allow the viewer to have a good view of the interviewee and less focus on the background.
• The interviewer is very rarely heard and the questions often do not appear on screen as graphics, the interviewee is often requested to repeat the question back in a different tense so that the answer still makes sense even without the voice of the interviewer.
• Cutaways are edited into interviews to avoid jump cuts for when the questions are edited out and to break up interviews, showing multiple interviews discussing the same topic, for example. They are either archive material or suggested by something said during the interview and as a result filmed after the interview

The following documentary clips are sections of documentaries that I watched at the start of my course. They are The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special In 3D On Ice and In The Teeth Of Jaws.