Codes and conventions are an essential part of television. It gives the director a sense of being able to enhance the idea he/she wants to project by using elements such as lighting, costumes, hair and make-up and more. A lot of codes and conventions have direct links to the genre. Steve Neale, a British philosopher states “Films to fit to a certain genre should have similar features but also include features that are different in order to keep the audience interested. This is called the “Repetition and Difference Theory””. The way I did research on codes and conventions was that I watched various productions on Netflix and noted what sort of costumes, lighting and make up I saw. After that, I would keep in mind what I had noted previously and then see if there was any links between the code and conventions and the genre. As a matter of fact, there was. I found that the more serious productions had darker lighting and costumes (Fargo), while more up-beat productions had brighter lighting and more vibrant costumes (Trailer Park Boys). I came to the conclusion that the codes and conventions of documentaries were subjective to the topic of the production after seeing that “Murder Mystery” productions were always a lot darker themed while “Legendary Sports Personalities” productions were always brighter and tended to have a happier feel to them in general. I feel a way my production challenged documentary codes and conventions was despite the topic of my production not being very happy, I still used bright lighting, fairly neutral music and I did not use dark costumes.
Representation is something that is crucial to documentaries as they allow the director to use stereotypes to help them show the audience what sort of character they are looking at. These are often constructed by views of society, personal views of the director/producer and even sometimes social issues. There is always an under lying view of the director in documentaries and my production is no exception, as the producer and director I was trying to project the fact that all of us young people are in this strange and confusing situation together. I felt this was extremely important after reading about the increase in suicide rates among teenagers. I constructed my representations by simply allowing the interviewees to say how they really felt and allowed them to feel at ease Infront of the camera as I feel it is an important part of the message. I carried this on by using very stereotypical props such as a can of beer in one interview and a kebab in another adding to the image of the stereotypical teenager which was an aim of mine to convey. Whilst keeping in mind Stuart Halls theory of “Preferred Reading” I decided I was not going to try to appeal to any other age group apart from teenagers as the specific topic I chose to speak about (university) is simply irrelevant to other age groups.
Ideology and themes have a massive impact on lots of factors of documentaries as it is effectively the personal touch of the director. An example of this is Louis Theroux. He uses very simple color choices, fonts and overall styling of his production while also having an Instagram page where he speaks about future productions to come out building anticipation. In many senses, I am very similar to this in the way that I also had an Instagram account where I post teasers about the documentary in an effort to build anticipation for my final product. Due to the fact that I wanted to keep my documentary as authentic as possible, I did not request any specific costumes, instead I just requested that the interviewees wore clothes that they were comftable to wear. This ties in very nicely to the part of the project where I had to have a think about the branding of the documentary.
All the way through the time of film making, stereotypes are something which have had a massive impact on decisions made by directors. This being because it allows the producers to give the audience an image quickly and accurately to describe the character that they want to portrait. This was something a kept in mind while I was branding my documentary because I had to keep in mind that the productions was about teenagers, for teenagers. The topic of my production was a fairly serious topic so I did not have a bright colored theme but instead I used darker colors and less upbeat music than I would have had it been of a lighter nature. I tried my best to emphasise the fact that the production as a whole was very authentic and none of the interviews were staged hence why I did not ask my interviewees to wear anything in particular but to just wear whatever they wanted to. A route which I also decided to take when it came to branding was trying to ensure the audience that the production as a whole was very real and it was really how teenagers were feeling in the current time frame, not only did this add to the more serious side of the production but as previously stated, the authenticity. I also made the production an Instagram page named @UniOfCovid which brought the two main subjects of my production together, university and Covid. On the Instagram page I used images of young adults, hashtags and the thought of the new world ahead of us.
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