Growing Up Poor: Girls BBC3

The beginning of this documentary is full of cutaways of their chosen three main
subjects, three teenage girls living on benefits, and graphics of white text against
a black background to show facts and figures about the topic matter of living on
minimal money. These types of graphics are continued throughout the
documentary to introduce each of the girls they informally interview.
Establishing shots help the audience to identify where the stories of each girl
take place, such as Bridie who is first properly shown through a low angle
tracking shot, most likely hand-held, walking along the side of a park and then to
a long shot of a street made up of council houses in Rotherham. Due to the nature
of the programme, there isnt any instrumental or soundtrack other than what is
alongside the initial titles, but the majority of the sound comes from either nondiegetic voiceovers, which are firm and informative, or sound bridges from those
who are being interviewed.
The set ups for the interviews are very informal in the sense that they havent
been set up in a room, but that the
person they want to interview has
been given a tie-clip mic and the
cameraperson would track them
whilst the director or producer asks
the subject questions, almost like a
conversation. It hasnt been edited
together in a way that makes the
subject jump, but cutaways of, for
example, Bridies home and street are shown with ambient sound whilst her
voice is carried over on a sound bridge so that its not obvious what has been
modified to give an overall narrative.
With the mise-en-scene, although
it has clearly not been set up, as
the director has very little control
over what each and every person
is wearing whist filming those who
go about their everyday lives, you
can clearly see that Bridie, and
those around her, are not well off
due to their clothing, which is
usually dull and dark, for example
Bridies dark grey tracksuit, their location of a council estate-type area and their
mannerisms. For example, there is a cutaway where Bridie is annoyed with her
neighbor so pulls down her trousers, which is an almost typical convention of
something you would expect to see from someone on benefits, rather than
someone with enough money to support themselves happily.

From this documentary I can see that I should, when making my own
documentary, have interviews with those that my topic revolves around, and use
graphics to enhance the audiences attention, as sometimes facts like these sink in
better when they can be heard, through a voiceover, and be read through a
graphic.

Colouring Light: Brian Clarke An

Artist Apart BBC FOUR
The establishing shots, alongside the close up cutaways match up to help the
audience slowly piece together that you are watching a man design stained-glass
windows, which his house, from the exterior, seems to be made up of. The gentle
score that plays behind these shots helps to set the tone that this documentary is
a light-hearted one that is artistically based and not on that would require too
much thinking, something that does not need an active audience in order to
understand the overall narrative of the documentary. As more varied cutaways
are shown of who you believe to be Brian, such as long-shots of him working, you
start to hear a voiceover of a man who is explaining how he got in to working
with stained glass and designing it.
The handheld shots help to enhance the idea that this documentary is very laidback, instead of one that uses archive footage, such as historical documentaries
and therefore could potentially require a lot of thinking of the audiences behalf.
It flows nicely with the music, and it doesnt make the audience question what
they are watching.
However, there are also mid-shots of
who we assume to be Brian, who is
talking with the same tone as the
voiceover, in what appears to be more
set-up interview styles. He is,
unusually, center of the frame and this
doesnt follow the rule of thirds, but
he still does not look directly into the
camera lens so we can safely assume that there is a producer, or someone of
similar job-type, asking and responding to questions with Brian. This is different
to the previous documentary analysed as you cannot hear the questions being
asked, and it is obvious that it is much more formal due to the set up.
The mise-en-scene shows how Brian is a creative man due to his location and
surroundings in his own home, which is filled with artwork and utensils for
creative design. For my documentary, I think it would be much nicer to have sitdown interviews as they seem like they are more organised and professional, but
also having the background score music as this livens up the overall
documentary partially and therefore makes it seem more interesting.