Is TV news a window on the world?

Television news certainly would like to be seen as a window on the world, by this I mean that they present them selves as a really important, trust-able  and reliable source of information. They tend to tell us that they are showing the most important news national and international.
They certainly try to represent itself as unbiased, neutral and impartial. The real question is, to what extent does the news remain relevant? We will never have a definite answer, all we know is that media has a great power when it comes to news. What we are presented with in the news television is an interpretation of the medias point of view on what is important and what is not. Everyday there are millions of events and everyday only 6 to 10 of these events are presented as important from only one person in the media point of view.
Online news tend to be more relevant than actual news on TV. The reason for this is simply because there is less control of what gets published on the internet news. Also it is a better way to find out more about what you want as you can just research the event instead of waiting and hopping it comes up on the TV news. The fact of television news being a window on the world is seem to be very unreliable as they do not have a huge range of source portrayed to the audience.

There are simply methods used in the television news to bride the audience to think that the news which will be shown is actually a really important and relevant to everyone.
The first method is the "starting sequence" used. The other method is the news reader and the way they are presented.
Starting sequence- This is the first few seconds of the news. It also is the introduction of what will be told in news.
News reader- This is one or more people who will be introducing and telling us the news.
Here is an example of a starting sequence and news readers:


Starting sequence method used in this news - Loud bell ringing, fast rushing graphics, fast pace music, earth and important cities around the world is shown.
News reader method used in this news -  Behind a desk, well dressed and smart, mid 40s male, mid 20s female, load of paper work in the desk.

As you can see in this sequence before the news actually started we hear a loud bell ringing and then we are already introduced to a story which we will be hearing from later on in the news. The bell ringing connotes the fact that it is bang on 10 o'clock, the exact time the news should start. The short introduction to the story is trying to tell us that that story is the main story of the day.

Following that we are then taken straight into the title sequence which plays a big role in the news industry. The title sequence has to put up a show in order for the news to be seen as interesting and important. The title sequence is consisted of fast rushing graphics and fast pace music to connote emergency/urgency. We start at the top of the earth and are taken through a series of cities and finally we finish at the Big Ben showing a time of 10 o'clock.

Once the news starts we first see two news readers sitting at a desk in a studio. They both are well dressed and presented. Also they have a series of paper work in front of them which to us connotes importance. To start the news we have the man telling the first news and the woman sitting quietly waiting to go second. As we can see the male reporter seems to be more of a middle age and the woman is much younger compared to him. The use of the middle aged men is simply because they tend to connote knowledge. The use of the young good looking female connotes beauty. This kind of stereotype is mostly seen in news.
The reporters when doing their job have a limited face expression. When they telling us the news they cannot show feelings as happy, sad and many mores simply because they are telling us and we have the write to think and feel how we want and not how they want. They have to use formal standard English and serious tone at all the time. This implies that what they are telling the audience/viewers is very important.

Impartiality law
The law states that all news should be impartial. This simply means that all stories told to the audience should not be bias.
In the Ofcom website there is a section which outlines more the importance of impartiality law.

There is more to add to this section, "The exclusion of views or opinions". This is more rules coming from the Ofcom for news presentation on television.

Knowing we have all these rules stated we as an audience would be more secured in believing what is told in the news is the most relevant and important news. We believe that the news is actually delivering what it claims. However is this really the case?


Lets take a look at "The gate keeping process".
The gate keeping process takes us through the steps the events go through in order to make it to the list of being told in the news for the public.
An event occurs -
First step- Must be found by the "News source". If in unpopular area and not found this event will be not told so therefore it will go to the history bin.
Second step- This event must have a "News value" or be really important in the eye on the media. Again if not it will also end up in the history bin. In order for a story to make to the news the people who chooses this must think it is important. Again this controversies the fact of the TV news be a window on the world as it is up to a certain person to decide if a case is important enough to get on the news. According to the media there are 8 factors in which determines if a story has a great news value. For the story to make it to the news it should have "potential, timeliness, prominence, proximity, the bizarre, conflict, currency and human interest". Here is a screenshot of these 8 news value in more detail:

Third step- Does the even have "Legal constraints"? How far can the organisation go in regards to a specific matter.
Fourth step- Does the event fit the "News cost"? Will it be enough funding to research and tell the story.
Fifth step- Will the organisation face "Competition"? If yes this could also affect the fact of the event being shown or not.
Sixth step- "Broadcasting problems". Do all footage and links work fine for broadcasting?

All news events have to pass through those six steps before arriving to the public. This Gating keeping process is a method media created in order to decide what is shown. If an event does not go through one of those step it will simply be thrown into the history bin where the world will not be informed about it. Knowing about the gate keeping process it emphasizes the fact of television news being bias.

Conclusion:
I think the fact that what we are told in the news only depends on the choice of a certain group of people (white, middle class, middle age, southern, university educated, straight males) is not right as we are not hearing what we want to but what they wants us to hear. This makes the point of the news being a window on the world bias. In my opinion this should be changed, we should have more variety of news deciders and news readers. We should also have more varieties of news stories. Maybe the media should make news an hour long instead of just 30 minutes so that way more stories are covered.

The nature and purposes of research in the creative media industries

Research can become very important in media when it comes to documentary types. This could determine the viability of the future production. It is important that you know as much as you can in order to produce a relevant piece of work. By collecting all the relevant information it will help you when it comes to the planning. There are a few types of research which you can do in order to produce your media work to a professional standards.

Primary Research
This type of research is normally done after the secondary research. The main reason for this research is to find out a certain information about the chosen topic. In order to gather these information primary research is normally done by interviews or even simply observations.

To do primary research for my work I first done an only questioner using smart survey. I then went and sent this questionnaire using social media such as Facebook. Then I also went out myself to a local gym and done some face to face interviews and also observed the gym members as they were exercising.

Secondary Research
This research is normally done first. This is the research which the researcher normally does using other peoples research. For example using the most common source which is the internet. Other useful sources which the research can use are news papers, magazines and even books. This research requires the researcher to use his times going through information that are already provided to him.

I myself did some secondary research using mostly the internet. I found some interesting online webpages that was talking about the fitness history and industry. I also backed up all the information I had took from internet by watching a short documentary on fitness on YouTube. This was also embedded to my work. One last thing I done was use some facts and figures which I took from a few trustable websites.

Quantitative research
Quantitative research is when you ask people for their views and opinions in a structured way so that in future you can produce hard facts and statistics to guide you. This means you have to collect a reasonable amount of data to get a reliable and representative statistical results.

In order to ensure I had quantitative research I made a questionnaire on gym and sent it to a few people using social media. By doing this I was ensuring my data was not only quantitative as it was also reliable and representative as a variety of people with different age group were involved. I managed to gather 36 responses from my online survey.

Qualitative research
This is another type of research in which I came across. This type of research involves exploratory research. The reason this research is done is mainly to gain understanding to opinions, reasons and motivations. The most common methods of gathering qualitative data is by doing observations, taking part in group discussions and individual interviews.

One simple method I used to ensure I also had some qualitative data was by placing a reason box to the answers on my survey in order to collect individual feedbacks. I also went out to the closest gym to do some individual and group interviews.

Here are some examples of questions I used:

Looking at the result for this question the appropriated target audience for my documentary should be between ages 15-19 as most of the answers collected (32/36 responses) vary between those ages. The other 4 response were found between the age 20-24.











For question two we asked the questionnaire takers to write down there gender. The reason we did not use a tick box with only two answers (male & female) is because some people may consider them selves as something else. A few people skipped this question so we only gathered  this information for 27 people. Overall we know that at least we had 15 males who took the questionnaire and 12 females, the others remain unknown.

Question 3 was a important question as we have to know if the people we sending our work to actually knows what is a documentary and has watched some different ones in the pass. By asking them if the watched documentaries we have found that 32 out of 36 actually does watch it.

We also wanted to know if not only they have seen a documentary before, they also know what a 3 minute wonder is because that is pretty much what our documentary is as it is a very short one. Not surprisingly hardly no one knew what it is. Only 10 out of 36 people knew about 3 minute wonders.










After all those question it is obvious that i wanted to ensure my audience would be interested in watching the type of documentary i would make. I myself am quite interested in gym and wanted to make a documentary on gym, so i asked people if they would be interested in watching a documentary about gym, and 24 responses out of 30 was a yes.










Before question 11 i asked the questionnaire takers a few more question on gym and if they had already go to the gym, and how often they attend gym if so. Its very unfortunately to know that not many of them attends a gym, however when i asked them if they have considered on going most of the answers were positives and most said yes.











In doubts why so many people do not go to the gym i have asked another question to know the main reason. So the reasons to not attend gym varies from having no motivation, no funds, no time, no need, and no gym nearby.

What is audience research?
Audience research is defined as any communication research that is conducted on specific segments to gather information about their attitudes, knowledge, interests, preferences, or behaviours with respect to prevention issues. (Audience data, audience profiling, demographics, geodemographics, consumer behavior, consumer attitudes, audience awareness).

What is production research?
This is a research which must be done before carrying a media production in order to know if it will be possible to finish the production. This means researching the viability, cost, income, technology resources, personnel and also locations.

What is  market research?
The information gathered from market research helps budding entrepreneurs make wise and profitable business decisions. This research is very helpful as it gathers information about the target markets or customers.


Data Gathering Agencies:

BARB is simply a short word for broadcaster's audience research board. BARB is the official source of television viewing figures in the UK. They continually develop new ways of measuring what people in the UK are watching.

Here is a list of channels that barb are responsible for:

As you can see many of those channels are the main channels people watch on their day to day basis, it is very likely that you are also an audience of BARB.

RAJAR, again another short word with a big meaning and responsibilities. RAJAR stands for Radio Joint Audience Research. This is owned by the BBC and the radio center, and it is the official body in charge of measuring radio audiences in the UK.
"There are currently approximately 310 individual stations on the survey and results are published every quarter."





Here is an example of RAJAR infographics (Taken on the 29/05/2014): 

Assessing data research:
Before the start of any production everyone should ensure they have chosen the apropriated research and distribution method to ensure the data delivered to the audience is validy and reliable.

What I mena by valid- 
Valid refers to the extent to which a measurement does what it supposed to do. Data need not only to be reliable but also true and accurate. If a measurement is valid, it is also reliable. But if is reliable, it may or may not be valid.

What I mean by reliable-
Reliability refers to the consistence, stability, or dependability of the data. Whenever an investigator measures a variable, he or she wants to be sure that the measurement provides dependable and consistent results. A reliable measurement is one that if repeated a second time will give the same results as it did the first time. If the results are different, then the measurement is unreliable.


Going back to my results gathered from my online survey, I would say that my survey was well distributed and the feedbacks was actually very impressive as most of my audience was quite interested the topic for my documentary despite most of them not know much about the topic.

Newsreader- A connotational analysis

To start my analysis of a newsreader I decided to look for a short sequence on YouTube that pretty much summaries how it starts and finishes. Bellow I embedded an old ITV news at 10 sequence.



As you can see in this sequence before the news actually started we hear a loud bell ringing and then we are already introduced to a story which we will be hearing from later on in the news. The bell ringing connotes the fact that it is bang on 10 o'clock, the exact time the news should start. The short introduction to the story is trying to tell us that that story is the main story of the day.

Following that we are then taken straight into the title sequence which plays a big role in the news industry. The title sequence has to put up a show in order for the news to be seen as interesting and important. The title sequence is consisted of fast rushing graphics and fast pace music to connote emergency/urgency. We start at the top of the earth and are taken through a series of cities and finally we finish at the Big Ben showing a time of 10 o'clock.

Once the news starts we first see two news readers sitting at a desk in a studio. They both are well dressed and presented. Also they have a series of paper work in front of them which to us connotes importance. To start the news we have the man telling the first news and the woman sitting quietly waiting to go second. As we can see the male reporter seems to be more of a middle age and the woman is much younger compared to him. The use of the middle aged men is simply because they tend to connote knowledge. The use of the young good looking female connotes beauty. This kind of stereotype is mostly seen in news.
The reporters when doing their job have a limited face expression. When they telling us the news they cannot show feelings as happy, sad and many mores simply because they are telling us and we have the write to think and feel how we want and not how they want. They have to use formal standard English and serious tone at all the time. This implies that what they are telling the audience/viewers is very important.

Mise-en-scene of the studio:
The mise-en-scene on this ITV news at 10 is very consistent. We can see a lot of transparent blue colour. The use of the transparency may be a way of them trying to show that their work is not unbiased. There isn't much happening in mise-en-scene as it seems like there is only a desk located in the middle of the room. This desk is very clean and tidy which might connote that ITV are well organised especially because everything on the room seems new. Lastly we have a huge background which shows a dark city. Once again this connotes the time of the news as it is at 10 o'clock it is very dark.

Documentary Evaluation

Here is our finished documentary on Gym

Why I chose gym:
When I first gt the option to do a documentary the first thing that came into my mind was gym. The reason being is simply because gym is something I have been engaged with since I first turned 17. I've always been interested into finding out peoples background into gym. This is because we all have different backgrounds and different reasons to start and do gym. I decided to get together with another student from my class who was also interested in finding out the same topic and we took a trip to the closest gym to our college but also one of the best gyms around.

Documentary style:
Deciding on what type of documentary we would do was slightly hard as we had all sorts of documentary types which would go really well with the gym. At the end we decided to do an expository documentary. Meaning that we would not interact with people being interviewed and we would not be in shot at all. We also used voice over.  

Use of camera:
To be honest I would say that our use of camera could be slightly better as it was dodgy in places. For all of our shots we had the camera standing still on a tripod. Although we did this we had a few shaky shots like the establishing shot of the gym we done. For example at 0.06 seconds we started panning really gently then it gradually speed up and slowed down again towards the 0.20 seconds.
Although we had a few downs with our camera I think we also did a good job with it has we had a few shots variations from low angle shots, high angle shots, medium shots and long shots. Like i have mentioned before we also used a camera movement called pan to for our establishing shot so the audience knows where the action takes place and also for the audience to see the mise-in-scene. Most of the shots angle where repeated as the interview mostly took place in the same room. The only time the angles of our camera changed was when we had different people showing different exercises.

Use of sound:
I have to say that sound was what let us down the most. Although i done a good job with the soundtrack where I used garage band to produce my own soundtrack. Our audio was not the best us it was not clear and it was slightly hard to understand what the people where saying. Then again we can not say we could improve on that as this documentary took place at a gym where there is background music always on, people screaming and shouting and weights dropping to the floor. We tried our best to reduce the noise and improve on the clarity of our audio.
We also wrote a scrip in which we had one of our teachers to read for us so we could use it as voice over. The reason we had the teacher doing this is simply because non of us had the voice for it and it would be hard to understand what we were saying.

Use of editing:
Editing was the easy part of our production. This section did not take long at all as we used simply cutting and fading techniques.

Use of mise-en-scene:
To show the mise-en-scene we used two establishing shots, one at the start of the document to show the audience where the action is taking place and also another establishing shot in the middle of the documentary to remind the audience where the action is taking place.

How happy am I with the finished product:
Taking in consideration that my partner most of the time was of college and i did most of the work myself i am really happy with my finished product. Although all the negative feedback i think our work came out better then we expected. We managed to gather a few interviews which were actually really good. I am a bit disappointed as we had arranged an interview with the gym owner and at the last minute decided to not do it.

3 Minutes Wonder

A 3 minutes wonder is a short section of documentaries which are shown on channel 4. These normally appear during weekdays. The purpose of this is to give first-time directors and assistant producers the opportunity to air their work to a large audience. Since a 3 minute wonder is a sort of documentary I would expect it to be about any topic as documentaries can be about anything.

Here are some examples of a 3 minute wonder.

I choose this 3 minute wonder as one of mine examples because I quite like graffiti and the fact that in this 3 minute wonder it is not seen as an illegal thing to do. It is fun and actually a good way to spend free time. I have learned that graffiti is not always seen as illegal by everyone, there are some people which actually likes and appreciates the art of graffiti.

This is another 3 minute wonder which i really like and I decided to show you guys. The main reason I personally like it is because they started something new and unusual and everyone went with it even knowing it is quite stupid. With this 3 minutes wonder we can learn that just because something new came out does not mean we all have to follow it or do it, especially when it can be quite stupid and dangerous.

Lastly i choose this 3 minutes wonder by Karl Pilkington. Once again i choose this 3 minutes wonder simply because I like it. I like the fact how it is about earth and life on earth. The fact that he takes us for a trip around the museum and gives us his own personal view on the museum and things in it. What I've learned with this 3 minutes wonder is that we all have our own views and we should be aloud to share it without being judged. I quite agree with most of his points as all he says is true.

Gym Research......

Weight issues within young people.

Obesity levels in the UK have more than trebled in the last 30 years and, on current estimates, more than half the population could be obese by 2050.

The number of children aged 13 to 19 having weight loss surgery has risen from one a year in 2000 to 31 in 2009

In 2008 among children aged two to 15, more boys (32%) than girls (24%) met the recommendation to do an hour of activity every day (1).

Risks associated with being overweight.

Compared with a healthy weight man, an obese man is:

• five times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes
• three times more likely to develop cancer of the colon
• more than two and a half times more likely to develop high blood pressure – a major risk factor for stroke and heart disease (1)

An obese woman, compared with a healthy weight woman, is:

• almost 13 times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes
• more than four times more likely to develop high blood pressure
• more than three times more likely to have a heart attack (1)

How industry of fitness has increase:
With the existence of technology it is right to say that most of the population have now became less and less healthier compared to a few years ago. In addition to all the technology which are trapping the humans at home, we also had a massive increase on fast foods production. The rate of obesity has grown massively since 1987. It is said that 72 million Americans, approximately one third of the population are clinically considered as obese. Also in UK,61.7% of the population are either overweight or obese.
Here are some more examples of obesity (1):

• UK: 24.9% 
• Ireland: 24.5% 
• Spain: 24.1% 
• Portugal: 21.6% 
• Germany: 21.3% 
• Belgium: 19.1% 
• Austria: 18.3% 
• Italy: 17.2% 
• Sweden: 16.6% 
• France: 15.6%

With all the problems with obesity and being overweight fitness and weight loss has also grown rapidly, for some it even became an addiction. Fitness centers and industries started quite long time ago, since 1970s/80s. However back then fitness was not as important to us as it is now. Exercise those times would be led by running and aerobics. Between the years 1990s and 2000s gym memberships grew however it was not until a few years ago where gym has massively became a home for most people. Its growth number nearly doubling. At the start of the decade there were 16,938 clubs/gyms, by 2008 the number of clubs/gyms went up to 29,636 (1).

When weight lifting first became popular it was only used in Olympics as a sport. This was recognized as an Olympics sport in 1904 and became a regular Olympics sports from 1920. Back in those days weightlifting was not seen as a way to keep fit or bulking up, it was only an Olympics sport (2).

Now most of us do or have tried to do some sort of exercise which includes weightlifting. In other words most of us have tried to start doing gym in order to keep fit/healthy. However not everyone chooses to stay once they started. I mean there are 67% of people which have bought a gym membership and has never used it (3).
Although over half of the people with memberships do not use it we had an estimate of 19 billions memberships renewed in 2008 (3).

Gym is not always about keeping fit and looking good, sometimes it is all about exercising. A question we find hard to answer is whether people would much rather attend gym or just exercise outside.
Here is a youtube clip which may help:


Exercising outside can have its benefits such as not monthly fees, no waits to use the equipment, no need to travel far to exercise and best of all you can appreciate the nature. The problem with outside training is that it requires dedication and motivation. Because of this the results are not the same as in the gym. In the gym you have a trainer and other people who are there to push for you and motivate you to go to a point in which you can no longer exercise.

1- https://www.franchisehelp.com/industry-reports/fitness-industry-report/
2- http://www.teamusa.org/USA-Weightlifting/Weightlifting101/History-of-Weightlifting
3- http://www.statisticbrain.com/gym-membership-statistics/   

Individual proposal

Ideas

I sat down thinking and mind mapping some ideas for my 3 minutes wonder. I originally came up with a few different ideas were I could not decide on the best one. My very first idea was to do about skate parks in Great Yarmouth as I personally think they are quite small and would do with a bit of extended. Then I decided to do a 3 minute wonder on gym as am a fitness person and quite enjoy the gym. I would like to know about other teenagers views on gym. Also I was going to ask them some personal questions related to the subject. Lastly I though about doing a 3 minute wonder on football as it is a quite interesting and popular subject. 

However after all the thinking I finally came into a conclusion and decided to do my work on gym. The reason for this choice is simply because it will be easier for me to find some people to interview as i know lots of people who workout. Also because we can interview the gym instructor/owner and see his views on the gym and the people who attend it. 

The Gym

My idea is based around the gym and the types of people that go to the gym. I will interview a selection of randomized people that I have not spoken to before, the reason being that they will then not know me on a friend to friend basis and so will just answer with their own opinions and voice them in a serious manner. I will visit the gym at different times in order to catch as many different people as I can, the reason being I cannot guarantee that everyone will be willing to take the interview and I also will have more opportunity to meet people of different backgrounds and a range of people that do the gym either casually or religiously.

The genre of my 3 minute wonder will be one of expository/observational origins and this is because the film makers will not be directly involved in the film but there may be a voice over of sorts. There will be an element of interviewing/talking heads as well as cuts of each person working out while their voice carries over as to keep the scenes interesting as well as provide an insight on what sort of workouts they do.
The target audience of my production would be younger to middle aged people as these are the primary demographic associated with fitness. Even though it is based on people that go to the gym it is not necessarily aimed at people that go to the gym, instead it aims to educate people.

The overall aim of my production is to educate people on the types of person that would go to the gym and find out why people decide to go to the gym. This will hopefully help to distinguish away from the stereotypes of all people that go to the gym are dumb meat heads and just want to stare at the women/men. 

The types of questions that I will be asking:

'Why did you start training?'

'How often do you workout?'

'Which of these would you rather be like?' (I would show pictures of different bodybuilders and fitness models ranging from slim to massive)

'Do you use any supplements and why?' 

'Do you prefer to go alone or as a social group to the gym and why?'

'Dedicated or casual?'

'Do you find the gym addictive?'

'What do you get out of going to the gym?'

I plan to film and interview at the college gym and perhaps Marina gym in Yarmouth. If I just stick to filming in the college gym it would be of great convenience since I would have easy access to it during and out of lesson times.
I plan to also interview the gym instructors as they will have their own views and Kevin is also a professional sprinter.

UPDATE AFTER DISCUSSION WITH MY TEACHER
The aim has been changed to become more focused upon the motivation behind the people that go to the gym. Why the gym specifically over other alternatives? Try to go to a gym other than just the college gym since the one at college is not typical of a gym and the three minute wonder needs to generalize the gym as a whole.

TV Listing & Viewings

For this bit of coursework I was told to go through channel 4 and see the number of documentary shown and work out a percentage. I can choose to do this for a minimum amount of 24 hours (1day) and a maximum amount of a week (7days). I choose to work out the percentage of documentaries shown on channel 4 for 2 days. I also choose to do both of my days on a week day, Wednesday and Thursday.

For channel 4 I found out that they shown 10 documentaries in just 48 hours. Each documentary vary in time, some were 30 minutes, some were 1 hour and 30 minutes. However adding all of the time together I had a total of 525 minutes of documentary shown over 48 hours.
To work out the percentage of this first I must convert 48 hours into minutes. There are 60 minutes in just 1 hour so to work out the amount of minutes in 48 hours I do:

60 x 48 = 2880 minutes.

Now that I have the minutes in 48 hours i can work out the percentage of 525 minutes of documentary.

525 / 2880 = 0.1822    
0.1822 x 100 = 18.22

So the percentage of documentary shown in two day on channel 4 is 18.22%.

I also was told to do another channel either than channel 4. So I decided to workout the percentage of documentaries shown for two days on ITV2.

For ITV2 I found out that they only showed 6 documentaries types within a period of 48 hours. Adding all the minutes for these 6 documentaries it came up to 350 minutes worth of documentary. With this number I will workout the percentage of it for 2 days.

So 350 / 2880 = 0.1215
0.1215 x 100 = 12.15

So the percentage of documentaries shown in two days on ITV2 is 12.15%.

I was also told to use BARB and find out the viewing figures for factual programmes in general. BARB is shorten for  Broadcaster Audience Research Board. On BARB website I got to this page where i found the top 30 most viewed programs on Channel 4. Here is a print screen of it:

Looking at this list we can see that most of the programmes shown on Channel 4 are documentary or a type of documentary. The programmes with most views on Channel 4 are also documentaries. For example the very first program on the list is "One Born Every Minute". This is a documentary type with the highest view on channel 4. It has 3.18 millions views. Other than this program there are other documentary in that list which are in the top 30s with lots of views. For example the one in 3rd, 4th, 5th and 7th are also documentaries.
I have came into a conclusion that channel 4 is more of a documentary type channel and if you are interested in documentaries then channel 4 is probably the most useful.

ITV2 is not so popular when it comes to viewings. As you can see bellow only one programme from ITV2 managed to come up on the top 30s most viewed programmes. "The Only Way is Essex" was the only programme from ITV2 which managed to be on the to 30 most viewed with a 1.25 millions views.

Documentary mini-tasks

Documentaries is a sort of non fiction media used to show and educate people on social realities. Documentaries use pictures, moving images and interviews involved with real events to provide a factual report on a particular subject. Again documents are there to provide us with some facts and truth of the world around us. Documentaries are normally interesting and unusual because there are various types of documentaries.
Here are some example of different documentary types:

• Expository Documentaries
• Observational Documentaries
• Interactive Documentaries
• Reflexive Documentaries
• Performative Documentaries

Expository Documentaries-

This type of documents normally expose a person or a topic, it is the most classic form of documentaries. These types of documentaries are famous for having a talking voice over the footage explaining and telling the audience what is happening. Expository documentaries also use rhetorical questions, facts to back up the footage, opinions and lots of persuasive techniques to really makes us believe what they are telling is true. A classic example of expository documentary is the nature documents.

Key points:

• Voice over most of the time
• Facts and arguments are provided
• Images are used alongside the voice over to back up evidence

Here is a classic example of this documentary:

Observational Documentaries

This type of document involve following the character around to observe their day life events. However the filmmaker is not seen on the screen. Usually the scenes can be very shaky as equipment can be informal, for example the use of hands to control the camera and carry it around. This documentary type does not have a voice over and normally no interviews are included. This documentary type is famous for its long takes. An example of a observational documentary is High School written by Frederick Wiseman, 1968. I am sure there are various observational documentaries shows you may watch/follow and you don't even know it is an observational documentary. For example:

• Teen Mom
• 16 and Pregnant
• Big Brother
• Jersey Shore 
• MTV's teen Cribs 

Here is a section of 16 and pregnant:

Key points:

• No voice over
• Film maker is not seen on the screen
• Shows a bit of a persons life 
• Some interviews at point

Interactive Documentaries

The most unusual thing about this documentary is that the presence of the filmmaker is evident meaning that they are a participant in the documentary. This documentary type takes us through some some interviews from the presenter and the the audience. Since there is an interaction between the presenter and the other characters normally arguments are presented to show more evidence. This documentary is slightly more organised and constructed then the previous documentaries we have looked at. It is way more noticeable that the presence of editing techniques were used to provide us with a more understandable and easier to follow document. An example of this type of documentary is "Clouds over Cuba. This is an interactive documentary commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis and President Kenedy's handling of the crisis".

Key points:

• We see the film maker
• Arguments and back ups to comments 
• Some editing techniques used to make it more constructive
• Voice over

Here is a section of Clouds over Cuba:

Documentaries like this type can sometimes be quite hard to record. This is because the filmmaker before he even records anything he must have permissions and releases from each character and its properties. If he does not manage to get them so sign all the paper work he can not record that particular scene. If he does and publishes the video it would be illegal and banned. Also the maker could face further consequences.

How is Access & Privacy is affected in a interactive documentary?
Without having access to certain scenes which could have a big impact on the documentary may affect the validity of the documentary. For example not getting sufficient interviews and reports may affect the way the audience sees the documentary. It could even lead to bias result as there is not sufficient data.
As I have mentioned before privacy is a very important part of media, not just documentaries but media as a whole. Without having the write paper works and legal permissions to film in a certain place or a certain participant in the film, the filmmaker could lose out on important or needed information that could help back up his point.

Reflexive Documentaries

This is a unique way of exposing the reality, sometimes the filmmaker is present. There is also voice overs to this documentaries, however not all the time. This document is consisted of enormous amount of shots which are all put together in such way to make us think a little and give our own opinion about the document subject. Because of the way the document is constructed viewers may sometimes be confused. This is because various type of editing techniques is used in this documentary. Reflexive documentaries are seen as the most trustful documentaries because they focus on realism and show things exactly how they happen, mostly without any editing or especial effects.

Key points:

• Exposing the reality 
• Shots from everyday life
• Voice over
• Shows video which has happened or are happening on time

Here is an example of reflexive documentary:
"The Making Of"

Performative Documentaries
This document type is normally presented to the audience with lots of interviews and investigations. This is done to grab the audiences interest for the final conclusion which may or may not be satisfactory. This documentary is normally done by re-enactments so what is really happening on the screen is not happening on time and the characters are not always the actual characters.

Key points:

• Re-enactments
• Actors taking place of real characters
• Exaggerated cameras positions 
• Sound tracks  

Here is an example of Performative documentary:

"The Thin Blue Line"

My Film-making philosophy:

I have not quite decided on a documentary to do however i am thinking on doing something i really like and think it should be really important to everyone. The topic would be "The importance of fitness". I would do this documentary as a performative documentary. I will have shots in the gym with real gym members, I will ask each individuals a couple of questions based on fitness. I will also try to hold of owner/manager of the gym to answer a few of my questions on fitness.  If i'm lucky i might also get hold of a doctor talking on his views towards fitness and how important it is to a human. I will have scenes in between the characters talking to show and back up evidence. The use of some soundtrack will also help my documentary to look a bit more professional.

In my opinion I think that all the documentarist should only provide the audience with the true and realistic scenes, scenes that are being filmed on time. I don't think that re-enacting scenes are the same as a scene that was recorded has it happened. The fact that there are pictures, facts and other evidence in documentaries is good. This makes the viewer more interested as he/she will know that the information they are being provided with is true and realistic facts.