What is the purpose of the documentary?
I believe that the purpose of this documentary is to show the effects of cyberbullying and to increase awareness of it. It also shows how social media can easily affect and also change people themselves because of the influence that other people have. The help and awareness that this documentary is supposed to raise would really help with all of these issues but its message is ultimately just meant to be received and understood.
What are the typical codes and conventions of a documentary?
Voiceover
The voiceover of a documentary needs to have some form of authority otherwise the audience could lose interest really fast. It needs to ensure that the audience is interested and also has some form of knowledge about the matter at hand as well as the most ethical or simply correct opinions.
Real Footage of Events
A documentary is something which is largely considered to be ‘non-fiction’ although there have been debates about this in the past. A convention of a documentary is that the footage shown to us as an audience needs to be seen as ‘real’, many documentarians apparently go to great lengths to convince audiences that the footage shown is indeed real and unaltered.
Technicality of Realism
This particular code/convention is a minimal one however it does help play a part when it comes to persuading the audience that the shots are real, what this means is that there is a use of natural lighting and sounds which are used to fill in gaps within the editing when they either run out of footage or background noise.
Archive Footage/Stills
To add authenticity to the final edited documentary, what this means is that it allows the audience to see real and unaltered footage which also gives extra information that the filmmaker may not be able to themselves obtain.
Interviews with ‘experts’
This is used in particular to authenticate different views that are shown within a documentary. There have been times when they have been known to disagree with the message of the documentary although filmmakers seem to tend to disprove them in some way or another.
Use of Text/Titles
Text and/or titles are used within a documentary are usually in there to help direct the audience and to explain where in particular the footage is from.
How do the filmmakers connect the audience to the documentary?
The various childhood pictures that are featured within the documentary play quite a large part because they are referenced to be apart of her life when she was ‘happy’ during the X-factor stage of her life. There is music also used which is actually Little Mix’s very own music yet is also a sort of soft flow music that helps to connect the audience with what is being said. The locations also provide a sort of reminiscent kind of things such as when she went to the pier with her boyfriend and how she remembered that she went there as a child.
Describe how the use of different camera angles helps a story
The many different varieties of camera angles that have been used in the documentary help to tell the audience some sort of story and these angles give us a better perspective on what is actually happening.
Make note of the use of archive materials, photographs, and videos. How have they been useful in telling a story?
Progression is shown clearly from when she was a child into what she is now, I believe that this greatly helps the documentary to see because it allows us as the audience to see more of an insight into her life and at which point in her life that all of the troubles began to begin. To most people, she seems nothing more than a standard human being however simply because of her social standing and sudden fame she is treated differently.
Jims Stuff 