Documentary essay

Documentary and News essay.

I will be discussing and comparing news and documentaries, the codes and conventions, how the audience sees the news and documentaries, how the show and people in the show are represented and how multi camera is used in a news show and single camera in a documentary. I will be talking about codes and conventions in the documentary 'Bowling for Columbine' first.

The first documentary that I will be talking about is Bowling for Columbine Directed by Michael Moore, the documentary explores what Michael Moore suggests what the causes are for the Columbine high school massacre in 1999, Moore also explores the violence in the united states, he gets opinions from the public and focuses on the background and environment in which the massacre took place. Michael Moore argues his point with every 'gun lovers' opinion and tries to get his point across to these people as America has the highest gun related crimes and deaths. One of Moores questions is 'Why did Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold go bowling before they shot their classmates and students' and 'Why wasn't anyone blaming bowling for the cause of the massacre'

One of the codes and conventions that are used in documentaries is voice over, an example of this is at the start of Bowling for Columbine there is a montage of pictures of what's happening on the morning of April 20th 1999, Moore is basically explaining that it was a normal morning for the United States, milk man delivered the milk, the president bombed another country no one could pronounce the name of and two boys went bowling at 6 am before they started the Columbine High School Massacre, if Moore didn't use voice over then the audience wouldn't of understood as much, for example if we only had the pictures we wouldn't have felt as guided to the 'story'  as much as we do, it would've been confusing. Moore uses little shots and symbols that all link together in the documentary, like a sequence, at the very start of the documentary on the menu screen the different selection all have bowling pins on them, the bowling pins represent the title of the documentary and the whole reason this film was made. Another code and convention is when Moore does a montage of pictures of what happened on the morning of the massacre we see the images I have already talked about - of the postman, milkman, the farmer etc - and finally ends on an image of a 'sexy' woman holding a gun in the air and then the picture dissolves into another image of the statue of liberty. This implies to me that although America is the land of opportunity and freedom, including the right to own a gun, that freedom can be taken away by someone with a gun. Therefore, this juxtaposition is ironic because it both suggest freedom but at the same time is about the loss of freedom. The reason Moore does this is to show how America is ignorant and  hypocritical and how this leads to something tragic like Columbine - because the government don't really think things through. The next paragraph links to America not thinking about the kind of consequences guns and other foolish ideas can lead to.

The next part of the documentary is when Moore sees an advert in the newspaper saying that you can get a free gun if you open a bank account with us, Moore then goes to investigate the advert, he walks into the bank and simply says 'I wanna open a bank account, the one where you get a free gun' and ten minutes later he's outside the bank holding a gun! Moore's first question to the bankers that gave him a gun was 'Okay so here's my first question, don't you think its a little dangerous to be handing out guns in a bank?'. This tells us a little more about Michael Moore, it shows us that he believes guns are bad and shouldn't be handed out free in a bank, or anywhere! Another code and convention in a documentary is an interview and Moore has many of them! He is having an interview with the woman that works at the bank ( the one that gives him a gun ) and he is slightly mocking her in a sense that he's making a documentary about guns being bad and she's not getting the hint. I think interviews are good in this documentary because if we only had pictures and montages and a few other shots the audience would not be as attached to the film as they are, that's why I thought it was important to have that interview at the start to drag us straight into the film! Moore also uses voice over in this part to, I think he done this to guide us through the film so it was like we were there, with him.

After this Michael Moore then goes on to VTs of people bowling and a song in the background 'Take the Skinheads Bowling' this VT is essential because the whole film is about why those two boys went bowling before they shot their classmates and teachers at their high school and it also goes with the title. The VT and the music then fades out into another VT of an advert trying to sell toy guns that sound and look like real guns with kids holding them, this is a terrible thing to do as guns are already legal and this is just making kids want guns even more, and this is just another example of how America does not think about their foolish ideas and the consequences that come with it. These VTs are important in this documentary as they are a vital part to the whole point of the documentary. Moore then goes on to explaining Michigan as a 'gun-lovers' paradise and how he won awards when he was younger and how he wanted to 'shoot up the neighbourhood' this connotes that Moore loved guns as a kid but then grew up and knew about the consequences guns have and what effect they have on the countries freedom.

Moore then goes on to another interview with a Michigan Police Officer talking about some police officers dressing a dog up like an officer and then deciding to put a gun on the dog, the gun then fell and shot its owner in the leg, Moore is asking the Police Officer questions like ‘Did the dog get prosecuted’, Moore is taking the ‘Mick’ when talking to him but the Officer is just laughing and saying it was funny.

Moore uses these interviews to show that America doesn't think, not even the police! The codes and conventions used in this documentary are a vital part and I would not have understood the film without them. Interviews, VT's and voice over are all represented in a different way in this documentary, the interviews represent America’s faults and lack of freedom they have there, and the people in the interviews are also represented in a different way, like when Moore interviews James Nicholls, the brother of Terry Nicholls and friend to Timothy McVeigh, the people that blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City killing 168 people.


Introduction;
I will now be discussing different news shows and then comparing the documentary I discussed with the news show I am about to discuss, I will also be explaining different codes and conventions and the purpose of news shows, I will also be talking about the graphics used in news show and how they use voice over, VT's and interviews.

The first news show I am going to talk is FOX NEWS, the show is very biased and they get facts and change them into their own opinions, the way they do this is by interviewing 3 republicans to 1 democrat as they were biased towards the republicans, interviewing is a code and convention in this news show as well as voice over and VT's. In the documentary OUTFOXED it shows FOX news throughout the years become more biased and unfair, when they had invited a democrat on they would argue until Bill O'Reilly told them to 'Shut-up'. 

In the documentary OUTFOXED it focuses on how FOX NEWS increased the fear of crime even when the actual crimes had decreased, OUTFOXED also edited all of the news shows on FOX and added them together when they had mentioned a black man committed a crime, watching fox news at that moment would make you feel scared of 'a black man' but watching OUTFOXED makes you feel for those people being blamed for crimes they have not committed and this is how FOX NEWS manipulates their audience into thinking 'black people' are criminals.

In FOX NEWS they use VT's to carry on manipulating their audience, on FOX NEWS it showed a mother and father crying in front of a camera about their children going missing and they had said a black man had taken them, even people in the street had said they witnessed this happen, people later found out it was the mother who had drowned her children, I feel as though FOX news had a part to play in this with blaming 'a black man', as an audience to FOX news and OUTFOXED I think this was disgusting and very unfair.

In FOX news, just after 9/11 had happened, people were saying the president had a part to play in it and FOX news strongly disagreed with this, O'Reilly was interviewing a victims son when things had got out of hand, the victims son was stating that war is bad and we should make peace but Bill O'Reilly was not having it and actually told him to shut up, he then threatened him and a day later when live on the show O'Reilly stated that he was not rude nor threatened him out off the building, I find this absolutely terrifying as so many people believed the presenter of a loved news show but lied to his audience, if you had watched that interview and then watched the show they day after you would then realise how biased and rude he is.

I feel as though the concept of this news show is to raise fear in their audience so they get more viewers, when the presenters have an opinion they tend to say 'people say' this immediately implies it is their opinion and they just want people to be on their side. They were also very biased towards President Bush when he was about to be 'Re-Elected' the other man in competition with him was horribly abused by the presenters on FOX news; this is another code and convention of FOX news, they manipulate and abuse the other team.

News shows should be honest, fair, unbiased and balanced and I feel FOX news is an example of what NOT to do, they produce opinions not facts, they are unfair and are totally unbalanced.

The concept of other news shows is to inform their audience of what is going on in the world, say for instance someone is killed they inform people about the tragic incident - not raise more fear like FOX news. 

When the awful incident of 9/11 happened FOX news increased the fear of their audience and make them angry at the criminals who had done this terrible attack, other news show informed their audience but did not make them angry, it made them upset and made them think of those poor people who had suffered burning in that building or crushed under piles of rock, as an audience to news I was upset and took a minute silence for those victims and the families, as an audience to FOX news I was angry and annoyed, this is the kind of different impact different news shows have when they have aggressive presenters and when they are biased and unfair.
 




You would not be able to film this single camera as it is live and you would have to edit the show on a vision mixer, the news show camera set up for two presenters is three cameras in the picture above so you can have one focusing on both presenters and the other cameras focusing on the presenters on their own , this is a good way to do it so you can catch both the presenters talking but switch the cameras on the vision mixer when editing.

The reason for using multi camera set up on Live shows is so the camera’s can be set up in place and ready for each shot, if the program was shot single camera, it would make it much more difficult to keep the pace of the show, and the camera would change position each time it was moved. There are many more advantages such as there will be less continuity errors as the actors will not look different and you can catch them from different angles, this would also save time on post-production.