1) In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and

conventions of real media products?

Our media product we created is a five minute documentary; the topic we picked for our
documentary was Binge Drinking, we called our documentary Binge Britain. Throughout the
whole of this documentary we have use continuity; we have managed to do this by following
the codes and conventions of real media products. The way we have kept the continuity
running through is by having the correct framing between each of the interviews, the same size
text and font for the interviewees’ names and also the same transitions between cutaways and
interviews. The reason we picked this subject was because of the fact that we knew a lot of
people who have opinions about binge drinking but also there are a lot of statistics about binge
drinking.

To make it a success we had to make sure that our documentary had a well balance argument;
this would keep the audience interested but also so that the audience can create their own
opinion on whether they thought cheap alcohol is promoting binge drinking in Britain. The way
our media product challenges real media products is because we have involved people such as
policeman and counselor who deal with problematic drinking a lot of the time.

The policeman from Essex police gave us some very important answers whilst interviewing,
about the trouble he gets and also the trouble binge drinking brings to society. When
interviewing all of the interviewees I had to make sure that the camera was accurate as possible
and the framing was correct. This is so it made it clear to the audience. The way I managed to
do this was to study the rule of thirds. As what that initially does is make the audience attracted
to the subject who is speaking and not to what is happening the background.

Michael Smith, Brentwood Police Officer (Figure 1) and James Westbrook, Student (Figure 2)
were two very good framing of interviews. As they were well framed it allowed the audience to
connect with the people speaking in the interviews. Also the interview locations were related to
the interviewee. As you can see the Police Officer is being interviewed in an actual police
station interview and James is being interviewed in a pub with bar behind him. We thought by
including a police officer who has a level of power of the public, it challenged real media
products.
This shows a well
(Figure 1)
framed interview of
Michael Smith in the
Interview Room at
Brentwood Police
Station
 (Figure 2)

Mise-en-scene
Again correctly framed
Location – Relates to
interview
James being a binge
drinker, as have all the
optics behind him.

As I was the cameraman, cinematography was of absolute importance. I needed to make sure
that the shots were correct and would be able to flow when they were edited. If the footage
didn’t flow the audience wouldn’t be able to engage with the documentary. By researching in
to Bill Nichol’s theories and looking at his six modes of codes and conventions we managed to
make the documentary show realism.

The police officer and the counsellor went into a lot of detail about the topic asked. This is
important as if our interviews didn’t know about the topic well we wouldn’t have been able to
get it across to the audience. One of our sub questions what do you think binge drinking does
to society. The policeman answered this question really well, which proves that we got the right
person for the interview.

Another code and convention we followed in our documentary was putting the text bar with
the interviewee’s names. We did our research and found out that the best text to use for this is
Helvetica. Also another important thing within the text bar is the colour, it needed to be the
correct colour so the audience could read it. As you can see from figure 3 ours is clear, this
means our audience can easily read the name with out getting distracted from the person
getting interviewed.

(Figure 3)

Text Bar clearly shows

the name of shop
owner
Making sure that the lighting was correct was also important, if it wasn’t the audience would be
trying to concentrate on what is being filmed instead of what is being said. This would mean the
audience would be missing all the vital information that we wanted to get across to them. In
figure 4 shows the correct lighting.

Figure 4

Correct Lighting shows the

interviewee clearly.

When I filmed my cutaways I had to make sure that they would relate to the topic ‘Binge
Drinking’. The policeman talked about the Sugar Hut so we showed a couple of cutaways of the
Sugar Hut and Charlotte the Barmaid talked about people drinking in the pub before they go
out drinking, so we showed people in the pub drinking. Also the voiceover mentions cheap
alcohol so we have got cutaways of promotions. In Figure 5, 6 and 7 shows the pictures of some
of our cutaways.

Figure 5
Cutaway of the Sugar Hut
relates to the Barmaid and the
Policeman said about it.

Figure 6

Cutaway of two people

drinking in the pub which the
Barmaid mentioned.
 Figure 7
Cutaways of promotions

Another thing we put in our documentary was newspaper articles. This again follows the codes
and conventions of documentaries. The newspaper articles were easy to read against the
background. Whilst these newspaper articles are being shown there is voiceover and score
music in the background. This is so it doesn’t cause an awkward silence for the audience and
still keeps them engaged with the documentary. Below shows figure 7 the newspaper articles.

Figure 7

This is the newspaper article,

as you can see the newspaper
article heading clear.

By following all the codes and conventions of documentaries we have managed to challenge
real media products and make a documentary successful and managed to capture our target
audience.