Jack Glennon

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

For my A2 coursework I chose to create a short documentary about martial arts and wanted to investigate why the term ‘self defence’ was misunderstood in society. To make this documentary I felt it was a good idea to look at already released documentaries and study the conventions that they used as it was clear that they had gained success through following these conventions. One documentary I studied was, ‘Secrets of pickpockets’ a Channel 4 show that followed a special task force of the London Metropolitan police force that were fighting against the rising problem of pickpockets in central London. One convention I picked up on was the use of a strong voiceover through the whole of the show and this was something I wanted to focus on when making my own documentary as the topic of the show, martial arts is not something that everyone knows about so it would need a voiceover to set the scene and give an explanation to what they are watching. I also watched documentaries such as, ‘999, what’s your emergency?’ and ’24 hours in A&E’ and they presented with more conventions seen in documentaries today. One major I noticed was the inclusion of interviews with either professionals or members of the public as this presented the element of reality to the show and also shows the opinions of the people who are involved in the topic of the documentary. For example in ’24 hours in A&E’ interviews with either family members of the person who is in hospital or the actual patient when they are better are used, and also in ‘999, what’s your emergency?’ interviews with police officers were used as they present a professional view of the situation. This was something I wanted to use in my documentary, so I included an interview with the founder and instructor at the academy where the documentary is shot, Russell Jarmesty. I chose to do this interview as it allowed me to present the audience with an honest and professional opinion on the sport and also address some of the issues such as self defence. Adding to this, I wanted to make sure that a small film crew was used to follow the action/techniques that were being displayed at the club by the instructor. I had noticed this in all three of the documentaries, a small film crew was always there to follow either the police or the ambulance service as it allowed the audience to also keep up with the action. I also looked at audience theories and the possibility of encoding messages into the documentary, this theory came from Stuart Hall. He believed that a message can be encoded into a piece of work by the producer and then the audience decodes it, there are then three types of audience that understand it in different, negotiated, oppositional and preferred. These are the understandings that the audience take from the piece. With my documentary, I wanted to encode the message to a wider, family audience rather than just those that were already involved in martial arts. I wanted to address the major issue about the perception of martial arts as many people just see it as a “thug like” activity. I wanted to change this perception and show that there is more of a family type environment and feel around martial arts and it is incredibly beneficial for anyone of any age rather than just controlled violence. During my time researching conventions of documentaries, I came across the work of John Grierson, a theorist who developed the idea of the ‘Creative treatment of reality’. This means that anyone whom makes a documentary, is filming reality but then places a creative touch upon it. I used this in my documentary as I wanted to follow this convention, this was demonstrated in the transitions, overlays of shots of the class training during the interview and the inclusion of music during parts of the documentary. This produced a more creative version of the reality I wanted to show to the audience. I also looked at the different modes that can be used in a documentary, one mode I found apparent in the documentaries I watched was the expository mode or ’Voice of God’ mode. This meant that the documentary was presented by the use of a voiceover and normally addresses the audience directly.

Jack Glennon

With the ancillaries, I had to produce a double page spread article about the show and also a newspaper advertisement to accompany it. One convention I was keen to focus on was the consistent house style through both the pieces. I had noticed this when researching double page spreads and newspaper advertisements of documentaries. This meant keeping the mastheads for the two pieces a similar design and colour, this creates a synergy between the two pieces and allows the audience to instantly recognize that they are both connected. Another convention I discovered was the use of the main image, in all of the adverts and double page spreads I looked at the main image consisted of one of the main people who featured in the documentary. For example, I looked at a newspaper advert for a show about the railways in England and the main image of the advert was of a man who worked in the maintenance/servicing section and was the main focus of that episode. This led me to produce a main image of the instructor at the club demonstrating a technique, as it made it clear to the audience who the focus was on.

When looking at all three pieces of my A2 coursework, I don’t believe that I’ve challenged any of the generic conventions used in either documentaries or newspaper adverts and articles as I felt it would be better to conform to them as they are a good example that they work and are popular with the audience of today.