Genre Post

Genre Post

The background history of my documentary which is observational documentary (fly on the wall). This is where the filmmaker wants the audience to be an neutral observer and in some cases like the Channel 4 documentary 'Benefits Street' to make people think in an negative way when they hear or see someone that is living off of benefits and try to influence there decision and Channel 4 have been doing these sorts of documentaries for years and was really the first ones to do it. Other type of documentary uses observational documentaries is normally nature ones which David Attenbrough narrates through such as 'Blue Planet'. The defining features of my text would be that they do want to to get people to make an decision on certain things in an negative or positive way. This can be seen in most Channel 4 documentaries such as 'Benefits Street' as they us and government ideology to try and get people to think an certain way about them.

The first observational documentary was made in 1960 where the technological developments was no where near as good as the technology used today. They had to use mobile lightweight cameras and also had to use portable sound recording equipment. They often had to use voice over commentary like what some documentaries use now. Some examples of the first observational films/documentaries are; High School (1968), Chronicle Of A Summer (1960) and Michel Brault's Les Racquetteurs (1958).

Link to information: https://collaborativedocumentary.wordpress.com/6-types-of-documentary/

Within my documentary style (Observational documentary) there is sometimes in mostly Channel 4 documentaries also Reflexive documentary mixed in with it as well as, in 'Educating Yorkshire' they want to make the audience feel sympathy for the child that said he had an bad past and would make the audience wonder what he went through and feel sorry or him. I may want to use something like this in my documentary that I am doing with Steven about what school is like but we do not want anything or anyone seen in an negative way. Compared to the Observational documentary, the Reflexive documentary has an bit more history behind it as a lot of documentaries like to look back on the past and explore what happened. This is normal when some companies like to do documentaries 'Titanic' and would go in depth research about it and there have been these sort of documentaries for along time. 

When companies like Channel 4 are trying to put cultural expectations into an observational documentaries they are normally criticized a lot for being completely false or just that company being racist. Such as in 'Benefits Street', most people that lived on that road was not English that made the audience get an impression that they are bad and just want to take are money. Most people thought that what Channel 4 was doing was completely wrong and they tried to make us hate them more by getting the newspapers to take pictures of them on an amazing holiday that most people could not afford. The ideologies that are being established within this genre in political. This can be seen in most of the Channel 4 documentaries such as 'Benefits Street', where the government want us to think that people that live off of benefits are bad people and try to make us hate them and want them out the country.  

With the more technology that is coming into the industry, it has progressed very fast with new technology to film different documentaries in many ways. Such as, in the Channel 4 documentary 'Educating Yorkshire' they used an variety of different camera shots and new was so that they could have every angle of the school covered with cameras, so that they can caught everything on film and make their documentary even better. What the audience would expect from an Channel 4 documentary style like 'Educating Yorkshire' is that they would want to see what the school is like and what the staff and student are like. They would also want to see some entertaining footage from within the school or have an narrative that they could follow which could make them have an emotional response. The advantages of having these types of documentary for the institution is that they would allow the public so see what is going on and to make the public think whatever they want the public to think.

From looking into more detail about the genre and documentary style that I will be doing, I can see what I would have to include into my documentary about school to make it an really good documentary that people would want to watch. I would want to try and copy some of the styles that they use of 'Educating Yorkshire' because I believe that it is an really good example of an Channel 4 observational documentary.