Conventions of Channel 4 Documentaries

Channel 4’s Mission Statement

‘Channel 4 will continue to encourage documentaries with social purpose, personal authorship and an international perspective’

This extract from Channel 4’s Statement of Promises shows that Channel 4 sees the relevance of highlighting niche topics as they have the power to give a mass audience an understanding of lesser known subjects.

Niche Subjects Channel 4 often airs documentaries

which focus on very niche topics. They have a series known as ‘Three Minute Wonders’ which focus on very niche subjects.

A shot from a Three Minute Wonder on

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A shot from a Three Minute Wonder on niche

musicThree Minute Wonders helps to inform Channel 4’s mass audience of topics they wouldn’t normally study, possibly broadening their interests.

Internal Perspective

As stated in their Mission Statement, Channel 4 promise to show documentaries with an international perspective. This gives audiences a wider knowledge of topics they wouldn’t usually get to study.

This is an advert for a Channel 4 documentary on the 2011 Japanese Tsunami and Earthquake. This shows that Channel 4 are producing high quality documentaries on international affairs.

Productions Within Britain Channel 4 also produces a vast amount

of productions on British culture. As they are a British company, their audience will already have an understanding on their topics, meaning they can explore them in greater detail.

This production focuses on a figure of British history, meaning that non-British audiences may have initial confusion towards the production, but Channel 4’s British audience would already have at least a basic understanding of the subject.

Targeting Opinion Leaders

Channel 4 often targets opinion leaders with their productions in order to spread the message of their production through social interactions.

I have followed this conventions in a sense as my secondary audience consists of older more educated people who act as opinion leaders because of this.

Left-Wing Ideologies

Channel 4 demonstrate left-wing ideologies in their productions, an example being the series they produce called ‘Dispatches’.

I followed this convention as I purposely left my production so didn’t force the audience to pick either side. This lets the message of the production open to discussion and is based on personal interpretation.

Talking Heads

A popular method of interview used within Channel 4 documentaries is talking heads. This can be seen in all their ‘Three Minute Wonders’. This involves interviewing your subject using a medium close up.

I followed this convention as my interviews with band members were all shot using a talking heads method in collaboration with multicam.