Genre Research.

Throughout this report I'm going to be looking at documentaries to give us inspiration when filming our own documentary, this obviously varies due to the fact that some documentaries have been filmed using multiple documentary formats.
I have chosen to analyse documentaries that are based on bombings/disasters and also focusing on how they have been filmed and edited for ideas of our own, for example, the bombings in Syria (October 28^th 2012), and how much they have been affected compared to London based on their poverty and how they have been filmed, looking at the different camera angles and the traumatic footage that may be used.
I have also chosen to use the very recent bombing documentary that happened in Boston on Marathon Day (April 15^th 2013) and again looking at the impact and also looking at the conventions used throughout the documentary.
I am then going to analyse a completely different documentary to be able to show the differences between how they’re filmed.


The Bombing of al-Bara:

This documentary I have chosen to use is a 36 minute long recording of Syria called ‘The Bombing of al-Bara’. Click here for the documentary.
This is a documentary filmed by Olly Lambert, his motive was to film an interview with Jamal Maarouf, he is the commander of the Martyrs of Syria Brigade which is one of the biggest units of the Free Syrian Army and definitely the most powerful in the region that he's been filming in.
Whilst speaking to Jamal himself, a government jet flew overhead and landed a bomb just 300 metres away from where Olly Lambert was. Olly documented the shocking impact of air strikes on a civilian population. The result is a rate portrait of the reality of civil war. Olly narrates this documentary as well as directing it, if you listen to the first sequence; it is just a mellow toned voice for a basic narration, this is taking place whilst he is filming the Martyrs of Syria. 

From the first 2 minutes you can clearly see that this was based around the lives of the Martyrs and how the lived and acted  as well as the interview with Jamal. The documentary was extremely effective because it shows how everybody reacted to the explosion and what happens afterwards we also experience the narrators opinion, how he felt at the time.

The footage is very shaky as soon as the bomb hits as it is live footage, it is clear that it hasn't been edited, there is no cuts and there isn't any point where the filming stops.
There also wasn't really any specific camera angles, but the distance away shows a medium shot.

This documentary uses the expository format; they expose a specific topic and are quite frequently seen on TV. They often include interviews for the benefit of exploring other people’s opinions, which is what Olly seems to be doing.
Expository documentaries are very likely to have narrators too, and are referred to as ‘Voice of God’. Some other examples of expository documentaries would be those that were narrated by David Attenborough called ‘Planet Earth’.

Our documentary will involve a voice-over from a section of the interview with Mark Maybanks, this is so he is narrating his re-enactment of the morning that he had the bomb on his bus. 

We also included a narration and illustrations of where the bombs where placed on the 21st which is the date we focused on but we also filmed our own footage of the locations that were effected on the day that the bombs went off (7/7).

Marathon Day: Boston.

The second documentary I'm going to be analysing is called ‘Marathon Day: Boston’. It’s a basic documentary summarising what had happened on the 15^th April. This documentary is from the perspective of mainstream media; there is also archive footage from when the bomb went off and when it was announced on news reports.
Click here to watch this documentary.

In the first frame of the documentary they have text saying ‘Dedicated to the victims of terrorism’. This is a powerful start to the documentary as it makes the audience think about all of the people that have died, not only on the 15^th of April, but all terrorist attacks that have happened.

 

-We have used something similar in the documentary we have created because it engages the audience, people are likely to read what’s on the screen as it usually informs the audience on what’s going on and what’s going to be shown.-

It then shows some footage the marathon with a clear enthusiastic voice-over from a man and woman explaining that it is a tradition, that there are multiple different people running all over the world and that there are up to 27,000 people contributing. This documentary has many cuts showing thousands running together and then showing individuals depending on what the voice-over is explaining.
We are then shown the finish line, the female voice-over then says 'The crowd are going crazy as they reach the finish line', this is when the bomb explodes. Music is placed over the top of this to emphasise the mood but not completely muting what is going on at the scene, you are able to hear lots of screaming, smoke and sirens. This was so the producers could present to the audience the atmosphere during and after the explosion.

It’s clear that by looking at different styles of documentaries, we were able to confirm exactly what we wanted, and didn't want to include within ours. We knew that we wanted to conform to the poetic/expository mode of documentary, due to the fact that we were documenting on such an informal, controversial, and sensitive topic. 
now clearly established the type of mode that our documentary will convert too, and will be taking into consideration the different effects and styles that we use, and what they could possible connote or represent to an audience once edited.