In what ways does your media product

use, develop or challenge forms and

conventions of real media products?
Generic
Did our documentary
Documentary
develop, adhere to, or
Conventions
challenge this
convention?
A voiceover that is
authoritative and informative

Footage of real events

Natural sound and lighting

We adhered to this convention as we

used a voice that had a formal tone, that
was easy to listen to and the script she
read from gave the audience an array of
facts and information about the topic of,
and around, autism. However, we also
developed and challenged this
convention as we used a females voice
for the voiceover, instead of a male,
even though a males voice seems to be
more conventional. This was because we
knew that Holly, the girl who recorded
our voiceover, annunciate her words
clearly and made the information sound
interesting, instead of robotic and
therefore boring.
We both adhered to and challenged this
convention within our documentary. For
example, when we were with our main
subject for the documentary, Aaron, we
filmed him at the War and Peace show
near where he lived, a military vehicle
and live-action re-enactment show,
which was a real representation of how
he acted on a daily basis, and this was
documented naturally; nothing was set
up. However, when it came to some
cutaways within the school
environment, although the behaviour
they were displaying was natural i.e.
revising, writing in books etc., they
were almost all set up by the director
(Minoli) and the subjects were fully
aware that they were being filmed, and
therefore these could be seen as not
being real events. Despite this, all of
the classroom scenes were real and not
forced.
When we filmed, we did not enhance
the lighting in anyway, and nor did we
superimpose any extra sounds, other

In what ways does your media product

use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?

Archive footage/archive stills

that can't be obtained by the
production team themselves

Set-ups (not so much in terms

of reconstructing events, but
in terms of cutaways; set-ups
of classrooms with students
who aren't actually in a
lesson, act as if they are)

than the pre-recorded voiceover in the

editing stages, and therefore we
adhered to this convention. When in
post-production, we noticed that a lot of
the interviews and cutaways varied
immensely in terms of colour and
lighting so we adjusted them using the
software Color, but this was only done
to make the different shots flow
together in a natural way, instead of
having varying shots of opposing light.
The use of the natural sound and
lighting meant it seemed very
professional.
We adhered to this convention on one
occasion. We placed a photo of Aaron
standing next to Amber Rudd in the
documentary, which was accompanied
by the voice of Amber Rudd describing
when she met Aaron and Aarons
mother Maggie. This was classified as
archive stills, as we did not take the
photo in question. It was taken by an
external source and Aaron had
previously used it as part of his own
campaign, so the photo could be found
on websites online, such as online
newspaper articles. We took the photo
from online with Aarons permission and
used it in the documentary as a visual
aid to help the audience recreate the
situation in their mind. We did not use
archive footage.
As previously mentioned, we did set up
some scenes within the school
environment so therefore we adhered
to this convention. We went about this
by taking the camera out during lesson
time and found students who were
working in private study rooms. We
asked their permission to film them and
then we did. However, we also asked
certain students if we could film them
pretending to type on computers
searching facts about autism. There
were many classroom scenes where we
asked the teacher whether we could

In what ways does your media product

use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?

Shaped realism (using media

language to make the events
shown seem as natural as
possible)

film in their lesson, and if they agreed

then we would not disturb their
teaching but film around what the
lesson was like. However, when we
filmed Mary Trapps lesson, she asked
whether we needed any particular
shots so we asked her to sit down with
a group of students on a table and have
a discussion with them. The production
team set this up, but her discussion
with the students was relevant to their
lesson, so it wasnt disturbed too much.
This could be seen as developing the
convention.
As a lot of our footage was of natural
occurrences e.g. The War and Peace
show, students around a school, we did
not need to adjust colour or lighting,
other than to help in blend with other
shots. However, we did use
conventional shot types and camera
angles such as medium close-ups
during interviews and tracking shots
when filming Aaron in his natural
environment. We consciously added in
an unnatural ukulele score track to help
the interviews and voiceovers blend
together throughout the whole
documentary, and this blatantly wasnt
natural, but we felt it made the
audience recognise the tone and genre
of our documentary so therefore they
could relax and enjoy it more, making
them feel indifferent.
We had to edit some of the interviews
in a way that meant we could take out
natural pauses and sounds like um
and err which the interviewees used
as thinking time as it elongated the
message they were putting across and
almost made you lose what they were
saying. We didnt make it sound
unnatural, but more like they were
confident and knowledgeable about
what they were saying.
With interviews, we placed each
interviewee in to a setting that

In what ways does your media product

use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?

Interviews with those

knowledgeable in their fields,
in relation to the documentary

naturally reflected their job or

personality. For example, MP Amber
Rudd was in an interview room with a
world map in the background; Aaron
and Maggie were in their home
environment and teachers Mary Trapp
and Craig Foster were in classrooms
and offices within schools.
All of the things above show how we
adhered to the convention.
The reason we made a documentary
about autism was because of a family
friend called Aaron who has autism and
wanted to make a difference. Due to
this, we wanted to interview him as he
made himself very knowledgeable
about the topic and had relevant
opinions as he has experienced the
disorder first hand. We also interviewed
him mother Maggie who gave a
mothers opinion on the situation. Aaron
made a comment in the interview that
he spoke to his local MP about what
was on offer for him in the area. We
then interviewed her, Amber Rudd, to
get similar answers and a more political
viewpoint. As a lot was said about the
education system within various
interviews, we decided to interview
inclusion officers and teachers within a
secondary school to give us a different
insight. We did not tell our interviewees
the answers we wanted them to say or
mention, therefore everything they said
was on their own account and their own
opinion. We kept their answers within
context in the editing stages so that
what they said was still factual. We
adhered to the convention that says we
had to interview those knowledgeable
in the particular field of autism, but we
also developed the convention by
asking people who werent scientific
experts, but social experts, who had
experienced autism their whole lives
but were not given the sufficient help to
make them fully aware.

In what ways does your media product

use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
Text and titles

We used titles on the lower thirds of the

screen to introduce each of our
interviewees. We also used a lot of
tailor-made graphics, which Minoli
created herself. She used these to
create a visual aid, which fitted with
what the voiceover was saying. This
visual aid is reflective of the topic at
hand. As autism can come with a lot of
learning difficulties, sometimes they
need both the visual and the aural
aspect of the facts in order for them to
understand them. They would include
facts and figures, which you could
easily dismiss if it was only listened to,
and not seen as well. We made sure
that when we used text and titles that
we used the colour blue, as this we
decided would be our theme, especially
as the NAS (National Autistic Society)
do not have one particular colour that
symbolizes their charity.
We adhered to the convention by using
the lower thirds, and developed it by
including graphics.