In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop, or Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products

Genre

The documentary genre is fairly broad which give great scope for creativity.

There are two types interactional and observational. Out of these we chose to do a combination of the two so that we can look at the subject from a far and close up and in depth.

To get to this decision we had to look at current examples of documentaries made by the distribution channel we selected ‘Channel 4’.

Channel tend to have unique and original print work which we sort to alienate. Also their documentaries are normally about people themselves

Conventions Used

There were a few media conventions we felt we necessary to maintain the feel of the documentary

We decided to try and keep the stock characters used in many documentaries.

The stock characters in many documentaries are: Expert Presenter

If we had changed or developed these roles I think the format may not have been as clear as we would have liked.

Conventions Used

Another convention we felt should be maintained was the iconography

This meant keeping the main structure of the documentary i.e. using cutaways, interviews and voice over.

This again added to how, generally, the text was received by viewers.

Conventions Developed

The way we developed some conventions were the way we conducted our interviews and the constructed the text around the opinions of the various people.

We decided to base our documentary around the various opinions rather than using theories and looking into a single person or group of peoples opinions

Conventions Development By tweaking the standard convention of

using multiple experts in a field and incorporating more opinions we feel we are being fairer to more groups.

No group can be offended as it is based on just opinions and everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

This also allows the audience to make up their mind on their own and not be as influenced by interlectuals.

Conventions Challenged

To attempt to challenge normal conventions of the documentary genre we have tried to make our target audience as broad as possible and use a topic which hasn’t been done before.

This in itself is not challenging the genre, however, we have tried to include the subject of the documentary in our demographic to try and hold a mirror up to society

Conventions Challenged

We decided to use a younger presenter who is part of the subject.

This gives a new spin on the presentation of a groups as it is normally someone impartial and not an expert on the subject.

We used a young presenter as we felt it would help to challenge the current stereotype