Codes & Conventions Glossary

Voiceover

A voiceover is the voice of an unseen narrator speaking in a motion picture of television commercial, voice overs are mainly used in documentaries too, a voiceover is a production technique used to inform the viewers of the facts and what is going on. A voiceover is used in the documentary Captive for 18 years: Jaycee Lee Dugard. the voiceover basically narrates what is going on and in some what ways explains what/what is happening.
Another example is  Frozen Planet, they use a voice over to inform and tell the viewer what is happening during the documentary. The only way that frozen planet portrays there information is through the voice over.

'Real' footage of events

Documentaries are effectively seen as 'non-fiction' although there are debates around this. Generally most documentaries use some sort of real life footage. Documentaries often have had a lot of thought put into them in terms of trying to convince the audience that the subject is real and truthful and that the evidence of whatever the viewers are watching has not being altered in any way. The real footage should not be edited in any shape or form, however the only way this can be touched is when editing the footage by syncing the clips together to make it into one long documentary. An example in which I think shows this well is Fahrenheit 911, this documentary uses the news channel footage and filmed footage from the public to show the dramatic chaos which happened during 911. This helps to show how scary and disturbing it actually was.

Technicality of realism
Technicality of realism uses 'naural' sound and lighting. This can be used in many documentaries, the footage they film may not be outstanding however this will be shown that it is real. A good example of this could be an interview used on a new channel, where the majority of the time there is background noise from the public and other reporters near by. This is also used in Nick Bloomfields documentary 'Biggie and Tupac'. This shows some of the real footage used which has not been changed and shows some of the main events which happened in the young Hip-hop stars lives.

Archive Footage/Stills
Archive footage is used to back up the point of what the narrater is stating. They use clips from other sources which film maker would have produced and obtained themselves. A good example of this would be again Michael Moors documentary Fahrenheit 911, he uses news clips from the time of the attack, although everyone knows that 9/11 was a real event the news reports make the event more real to the audience. Archive footage can be over used when there is no narrater or facts to backup the archive footage.

Interviews with experts
Documentaries are informative pieces of footage, the best way to inform the audience is to show them an interview with an expert. Depending on the subject the expert may disagree or agree with the documentaries message, this is an oppotunity for the film maker to show a variety of options on the matter of the documentary. A good example of this being shown within a documentary is within Supersize Me, there are many different scenes whereby the director is interviewing doctors about the Mcdonalds food and whether or not it should be eaten at all, and the damage that it can do to a person.

Interview for dummies

What is an interview?
An interview is a conversation between two people the interviewer and the interviewee where questions are asked by the interviewer to obtain information from the interviewee, some interviews can be a lot more personal in some cases.

Lighting
When lighting a set for and interview you should mainly use three-point lighting, this is mainly used within the media and is a very standard yet effective technique.

 •    The Key Light - The main light used on your subject.

•    The Fill Light- This fills in the shadows made by the key light.

•    The Back light- Used to separate the subject from the background.

You also need to consider when filming and interview that your chosen location, whether that is inside or outside is correctly lit. If you are inside and you want to light someones face up then you need to be sure that there are no shadows and that all the lights are in the correct position to prevent shadows appearing. If you are filming on a set then you need to make sure that all the key lights are set up in the correct postions and are working well, these lights consist of fill lights and back lights.
If you are filming outside then you would mainly use natural light unless it was dark outside, then you would have to light the people who are taking part in the interview as you would not be able to see them without the lights.

To the right is an example of how an inside interview may be lit by using lights.

Mise-en-scene

Mise-en-scene means everything you can see in the scene or shot.

This could be costumes, outfits what the people may be wearing and how they are presented, this also refers to anything that may in the background of the set or the lighting and props used in the interview, however it depends on the person and subject of the interview. You can tell a lot from an interview such as peoples class, ethnicity, age and even emotions to do with the subject.

There are many different types of interviews, however I feel that the two main important ones are the formal and informal interviews. For examples a formal interview would be on a morning breakfast show such as day break, when the presenters may have a celebrity or reporter in and they have a very formal interview by having specific questions already prepared to ask their guests.
An example of an informal interview could possibly be a football interview, this may be when after a match has been played interviewees/paparazzi try and catch the footballer for a short interview, firing in as many questions as they can.

Framing and Composition

When filming an interview, the interview should be positioned facing slightly to the left or right of the camera this will show that they are talking to someone however can be speaking to the audience as well as the interviewer. The filmier would usually use a close up or a mid-shot when filming an interview, as this looks more professional.if the framing and composition isn’t right then the interview would look rubbish and very untidy. It is very hard to get the framing and composition in an interview right as it has to be accurate.

Sound

When filming an interview you need to be careful of sound, not only what sound is going on in the interview but the outside sound as well. In situations where an interview may be filmed outside you need to be careful of the surrounding sounds so that it does not make any distractions to the interview.