Thursday, 22 September 2011

Documentary Analysis - The music biz

Type of documentary
The documentary is mixed as it uyses a blend of codes and conventions from a documentary such as the use of observation and interviews. The documentary aslo uses archived footage and conflict to keep the story flowing.

Themes
The themes used reflect around the music industry as a whole. This documentary also uses the theme of comebacks in the music industry and the lengths companies can and will go to try and bring back and old musicians music or try to make them competitive in the music business again.

Narrative Structure
The narrative in the documentray is linear, this is due to the story being unfloded throughout the documentray so the audience would need to continue to watch in order to go more in depth in the story. In the beginning of the story we are introduced with the past of the singer Meat Loaf and his success in the past, a problem is then created as we are shown that he needs to be sold to the public again and needs to be bought by a music company. In the middle of the documentary conflict is shown as we are shown with many different views from the public as some of them support the idea of a comeback by him and others do not like him. We are also given the information about the sacrifices the music company went through in order to fund for the shooting of a comeback music video so it is not just the singer that is effected in an attempt to remake music. The ending ties up all the loose knots of the story and we are shown that all the sacrifices made did go the right way as we see that Meat Loaf becomes a success again as we are shown clips of him during interviews and his popularity at them.

Camerawork
In the documentary the camera uses extreme clos ups in some clips to signal who is the most important characters while they are speaking. The documentary also uses tracking shots when the camera moves through stage doors, this makes the audience the eye witness of the scene. The camera work follows the codes and conventions of documentaries as it uses close ups on the interviewees and uses head and shoulder shots while they are talking.

Mise en scene
The backgrounds used during interviews are relevent to the subject of the documentary or the subject mentioned for example the use of music company logos such as Virgin records being super imposed on the background of an interview, the backgrounds uses also reflect the subject as a uses of a moving background is used and in this case the music video as an interviewee is talking about the music video as a whole.

Sound
The sound used during the documentary is relevent to the subject as it has the song of the music video playing quietly in the background while the interviewee is talking about it. There is no use of of sound effects during his documentary as they are not relevent and are not needed. At times narration is relecting what is going on in the interview such as repeating what the interviewee says.

Editing
The editing follows codes and conventions of documentary as it uses shot/ reverse shots, At the beginning of the documentary we are shown a montage of the singer so this gives the audience an insight to the character and in some cases what the documentary is about as it shows clips of award ceremonies and interviews. Images are also super imposed in the background of interviews to reflect the subject mentioned and are relevent to the subject.

Archived material
The material used is relevent to the subject and at times gives the audience an insight on what is going on such as the final product of the music video, we are also shown material of award ceremonies while the narration is over it, most of the material used presents the audience with a problem as we are shown a music video of another comeback group in attempt to beat Meat Loaf. The archived material used reinforces the narrative for example the clips of the Brit awards while the narration is talking about the awards.

Graphics
The graphics used during the documentary is simple font introducing characters so that the audience does not get distracted and is focused only on the narrative, it also uses the logo of the documentary itself but is still simple. During the opening credits the graphics used give the audience an insight on the subject the opening credits is in a form of print based media and in this case a music magazine.

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