Documentary Evaluation

This documentary was in the style of a interactive documentary. I have chosen to do it in this style because it is the best was to find out in detail, facts about a certain person or story. This is good for my documentary because it is about my family life over 6 months, and the challenges they faced with depression, anxiety and being jobless. This style of documentary help the audience to find out lots of information about those subjects.

 I chose to do this as a documentary because it shows that you may know the person well. and every time you are with the people, they show you a different side to them to what might be going on at home. this is why I chose the title" behind the smiles and laughter" this is because there are things you don't know about the people you know. I also wanted to do this as a documentary because I wanted people to be aware of anxiety, depression and anxiety, and how many people suffer with these conditions and how it has changed there life because of it.

All of the camera shots are stills with most of the shots being close up, straight shots for the interviews so we can see the emotion and face expression of the people being interviewed. I used high medium and long shots for the clips over the top of the audio, for example Amy Murray on her IPAD and Jamie Murray playing the ps3. This is the give the image of the audience looking down on them as we are talking about a sad and emotional story so it looks like they have less power.

I had a calm, soothing music to go over the track. I had the volume increase when the interviews where not taking place. and quitter when the people are speaking so you can hear them clearly. I had the audio on with the shots of us doing usual stuff around the house, to make it look real and that we are with the people whilst they are doing what they are doing.

With the editing I used cuts to add in the shots over the top so it fits in with what they are talking about. The editing also enabled me to cut the videos down to the right length and sequence order and get rid of the parts of the clip that wasn't needed. Finally the editing allowed me to add the title and credits to the 3 minute wonder, so you know who had what role in the documentary.

I started off with the interview of my farther who is the main sufferer in the documentary, with him being out of work for 7 months and having type 2 diabetes to get people interested right from the start. Then you get the interview of me talking about the situation, with clips of me playing rugby and sat in my bedroom on the ps3. After that you get the interview of my sister where she talks about being diagnosed with depression and how she has been effected being jobless, This also had shots of her on her IPAD to show that she feel lonely. And finally you get one last shot of my farther talking about living conditions are now and how we are all doing.

Finally I am happy with my final product, I got the information out that I wanted people to know, and I believe that this would spread the message that I wanted. I am happy with the camera shots and angles in the interviews because you can see the emotion in their faces. If I could change something it would be that I would add more clips over the top of the interview audio as I only managed to get a few shots.