Natasha Brown

An Idiot Abroad Deconstruction

I watched the first episode of An Idiot Abroad, the one in which Karl goes to China, and deconstructed, in detail, the first 5 minutes. Then I went on to watch the rest of the episode in order to gain an understanding of a few conventions used in this style of documentary. Directed by Richard Yee, Krishnendu Majumdar, Jamie Jay Johnson, Benjamin Green and Luke Campbell. To begin with, there were several establishing shots of various significant landmarks around the world, including the Taj Mahal and the Egyptian pyramids, accompanied with a voiceover from a man who seemed rather grand, similar to that of the one who makes voiceovers for cinematic film trailers. The whole atmosphere behind this intro was one of grand wonderment, which then juxtaposed with the content of the show for comedic effect. The nondigetic making music that accompanied this sequence was also one of a grand nature but was stopped and then restarted again around a sequence of three shots back in the England office with Karl giving his opinion on the Great Pyramids, with the effect of this being to highlight his idiocy. Then comes a sequence of the two producers, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, describing Karl and what the main purposes of the television series is; what itll contain, the kinds of things they want to see, basically setting the audience up to expect an entertaining show. This sequence is very fast paced, the editing allowing only a couple of seconds of each clip to be shown, sometimes with audio dialogue being layered over the top of different visuals. This montage of clips include ones of the two producers, mostly seen in close ups, talking and Karl, who can be seen from a mixture of shots including long, mid and close up shots. This is all played through with non digetic audio of a musical piece which is quite intense all leading up to the opening title: An Idiot Abroad, which is show in silence after the music draws to a climactic close. The first part of the show is a kind of brief. The two producers give Karl a location and a picture of one of the landmarks in that location; in this episode, Karl was sent to China. The scene starts with a long shot of the three people in an office-like room. Then several close ups of each person is shown, sometimes to record what they are saying or

Natasha Brown sometimes to get the reaction of one of the listeners, for example, Ricky laughing at something Karl has said. Shot reverse shot is used in this scene with a continual and smooth running audio of speech, leading me to think that they either used several cameras or had some ongoing audio recording equipment. An over the shoulder shot of the photo was also seen in this sequence. Then follows a sequence of Karl packing up and flying out to China which is edited at a fast pace despite the fact that it would have taken a very long time to get there. This in notable for aid in our production as we should avoid spending too much time dwelling on what happens on the public transport when travelling to our locations. One arriving in China, another fast paced sequence is shown by using lots of different clips of Karl trying to get a bicycle taxi and looking for someone who can speak English. This has the effect of showing a little fish in a big pond as it makes Karl seem rather lost in the busy world of Chinese natives. Throughout the rest of the episode, notable conventions include several phone calls made from the producers back in England checking up on Karl or giving him tasks to do. There were also several video blogs made by Karl talking about his day when he was back in the hotel room. These were interwoven with the sequences of the days tasks and allowed several different scenes, each including a different task and sequence of various shots, to be distinguished. There were also lots of establishing shots throughout, some of the street and the people there who had obviously just stopped to film a street or the surroundings at the time. We should take note to do a bit of this as well as opposed to filming shots entirely of our presenter. Most of the shots were freehand although a few static ones, such as the video blogs, were present. There werent any interviews within this documentary, maybe that was because of the language barrier, however there were a few instances of dialogue and conversations but they were few and short. This is something we may do differently when it comes to making our own documentary.