Research into Specific Features:

Narration and How the Story is Told

The Story

• Most documentaries that have separate episodes have a different story or group of stories for each new episode meaning they focus on a different aspect or character.

• For documentaries that don’t do this, it is usually because the whole documentary is based around one subject or person and therefore the same story continues throughout.

• However, there are always similar and common way in which documentaries present these stories.

Educating Yorkshire• For documentaries that have lots of different stories:• This happens a lot in Educating Essex or Yorkshire

because the whole series is based on one school but they have individual stories in each episode.

• Each story has a different theme e.g. bullying, prom, a particular year group, fighting, behavior or success.

• The way they often do it is interlink the stories so that the program isn’t bitty and all over the place and so that the audience can develop a sort of familiarity with each story..

• In this case, the story is usually about a teacher or student or event.

• For example, if it is about a student, they might show that persons class first and show a particular clip that makes that student stand out.

• They then use the convention of voice-overs to explain who that person is and why they are significant in the episode.

• Another convention they use is an interview in which that person might appear in, letting the audience get to know them better.

• The narration that is usually included is background information or history so that they audience is filled in on what the cameras can’t show. In this example, they might talk about the student/teachers home life or about their grades or important experiences.

Clip

Other Examples:• X Factor & BGT: they use especially good acts and do

a background story on them where their home is shown etc. Usually they also include something referred to as a ‘sob story’ to make the viewer feel empathy for a character. This is also voiced over and interviewed for more information.

• Crime Watch: They tell a story through voice-overs and re-enactments because it is about something that can’t often be shown so they do acted version of it. Although they may use archived footage if available such as CCTV this gives the viewer an idea as to how the crime happened.

Other Examples:• 9/11: There are lots of documentaries based on this

event, some cover it as a whole and go over most important details of the story and others look at specific things such as survivors or witnesses or family members. These documentaries have used things like phone calls to tell a story or footage that was filmed at that moment (these are very common in disaster documentaries). This is another program that could use re enactment based on a survivors experience.

• Here is an example of one of the 9/11 documentaries using similar conventions to narrate the story.