James Taylor

Research Analysis
For my Final Major Project I am creating a documentary, so I have been asked to look at other documentaries, as they are my competitors for the Final Major Project, which is going to be about Gaming Addiction. "Psychiatrists are concerned about the wellbeing of children who spend so much time with video games I will look at three documentaries, which are King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (Seth Gordon - 2007), Super Size Me (Morgan Spurlock 2004) and Race to World First (Zachary Henderson and John Keating 2011).

Genre
The technology advances have changed documentaries greatly; this is mainly because of the price drop in equipment and software. This makes film making a lot more accessible and people started taken part in their own documentaries, a great example of this is Morgan Spurlock in Super Size Me. Reality television has been becoming more and more popular since 2000 when the first Big Brother aired. Since then more and more programmes are reality based, such as The Only Way Is Essex and Im a Celebrity Get Me out of Here! This is the approach Morgan Spurlock has adopted which is known as gonzo journalism, he puts himself in the situation and this is what makes it so interesting, because it becomes a reality show as much as a documentary and reality television is very popular in todays society. Technology has also changed the distribution method of documentaries because now all films, documentaries and TV shows are available online to stream via Netflix and Love Film, meaning the content is more easily available to a wider audience. Documentaries often followed the same codes and conventions, which would mostly consist of cut-away shots being used with voice-overs and interviews being mixed in. This is still common in documentaries; both King of Kong and Race to World First follow this technique along with a lot of other Documentarians, but directors are all starting to add their own little changes, such as Michael Moore using satire in his documentaries, he does this in Bowling for Columbine throughout by breaking up the data and facts with humorous interludes and voice overs.

Narrative
The narrative of documentaries has changed a lot over time, they started off being very single strand like most of David Attenboroughs earlier work, it would consist of him doing voice-overs about singular species for each episode, which is very different to his recent

James Taylor

work, which is more multi-strand and covers a lot more, an example of this is Blue Planet which covers a lot more and goes back and forth between species, keeping it more engaging. And therefore it seems to me safer to show things that I know to be truth, truthful and factual, and allow people to make up their own minds about the moralities of this thing, or indeed the theology of this thing. - From the BBC documentary Life on Air (2002)

Race to World First is multi-strand, it covers a lot of aspects around the main focus of the documentary because the main focus of the documentary is all about the progression of killing things first on the game, but they look into all the surrounding aspects and what is involved in getting the world firsts. King of Kong follows a very different narrative as it uses Todorovs theory of equilibrium. It follows this because Billy Mitchell is the best player in the beginning of the documentary and then Steve Weibe attempts to take the top score for himself throwing off the equilibrium and then the documentary ends with Steve becoming the new champion, creating a new equilibrium. Along with using Todorovs theory of equilibrium, a linear narrative is followed with a distinct beginning, middle and end.

Representation
The way things are represented in documentaries is up to the filmmaker to a certain extent, although there are certain ethnical constraints which hold them back from saying purely their opinion, they choose what to show and what to hide. For example in Race to World First both sides are shown of their lives, yes they are hardcore gamers and that put many more hours into games than the average person, yes some of them are shown to be geeky and social outcasts but that is because they are. The director has shown other people who are just as involved in the games are shown with decent jobs and families they provide for. Which is very similar to a lot of Louis Therouxs documentaries, where he shows both sides of the argument and allows the viewer to make their own decision. This is very different to how gamers are shown in other gaming documentaries such as Second Skin. In Second Skin the gamers are portrayed as very geeky, there is no balance of reality.

Before classes, or late at night while his family slept, he would squeeze in time at the computer. He would often eat meals at the computer microwave burritos, energy drinks. Foods that

James Taylor

required only one hand, leaving the other free to work the keyboard and mouse.

The makers of Second Skin follow Michael Moores documentaries, this is because he is very opinionated and only shows what backs up his opinion.