Analysis of a Documentary: Planet Earth

Planet Earth (TV series 2006)

Planet Earth is a documentary television series that was produced in 2006 by the BBC Natural History Unit. It took five years to make due to its ambitious and large scale of it all. It was the most expensive nature documentary series ever commissioned by the BBC to this very day, and also the first to be filmed in high definition. The series was co-produced by the Discovery Channel and NHK in association with the CBC, and was described by its makers as "the definitive look at the diversity of our planet". The series is made of 11 different episodes of approximately 50 minutes. Each of these presents a global overview of a different habitat of the Earth. At the end of each episode, there is a ten minutes featurette which gives us a behind-the-scene look at the challenges involved in producing such a project.

Planet Earth was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One in March 2006, and premiered one year later in the USA on the Discovery Channel. By June 2007, it had been shown in 130 countries worldwide. The original BBC version was narrated by David Attenborough and produced by Alastair Fothergill. For Discovery, the executive producer was Maureen Lemire, with Sigourney Weaver's voiceover replacing Attenborough. The opening episode was its first ever scheduled programme in the HD format, to shown on the BBC HD channel. Besides being BBC One's featured "One to Watch" programme of the day, Planet Earth was heavily trailed on the BBC's television and radio channels both before and during its run. The documentary series received an extremely good reception with Time magazine's James Poniewozik named it one of the Top 10 New TV Series of 2007, ranking it at #4 and it also tops IMDb's list of the highest rated TV shows with a score of 9.6/10. It also won the Science or Natural History award at the Royal Television Society Programme Awards in 2007 and picked up two awards from the Broadcasting Press Guild for Best Documentary Series and Innovation in Broadcasting. It was so successful that a feature film version of Planet Earth
was commissioned alongside the television series.

The genre of this documentary is nature documentary.  A nature documentary film is about animals, plants, or other non-human living creatures, usually concentrating on film taken in their natural habitat, which is what Planet Earth is all about.

The target audience for this series would be extremely varied. It is targeted more toward adults and the older generations as they are more likely to watch a documentary about wildlife than children and teenagers are. It mainly targets people as well who would have an interest in wildlife and mature, it could be used for educational purposes within the classroom too therefore targeting teachers and students.

I will do a textual analysis on the episode: Jungles

This episodes narrative  examines jungles and tropical rainforests. These environments occupy only 3% of the land but is home to more than half the species in the world. This episodes touches a range of topics within the jungle such as: how chimpanzees live, to the many different types of rare birds that live there etc. 

The opening of the show uses an establishing shot of Earth orbiting with the sun gradually appearing from behind it, the titles are faded into this shot as they progressively become more dominant and visible with the use of a plain & simple white font. 

Incidental music is also playing in the background with its pitch getting louder as the sun gets brighter.  The next shot we see is an aerial shot over the Jungles tree tops which shows the audience what this episode is going to be about. As well is narration from David Attenborough (narration is a common convention for documentaries), his voice is calm and clear to understand which goes well with the incidental music which had a slow and peaceful tone to it as well as non diegetic sounds of animal and insect noises. We next see a slow forward tracking shot from within the Jungle and then pans also. The first animal we are introduced to is a male blue bird of paradise we first see this bird in a close up. 

Throughout the whole documentary the camera movements have a slow pace to it; it uses a variety of different shots from pans; tilts; tracking; close ups; long shots; medium shots the list goes on. It uses such a wide range of shots to make the documentary more visual attractive and engaging, especially as it was filmed in HD and this was the first nature documentary to be filmed in HD it needed a stunning diversity in shots to show off this new technology. The camera movements are also slow to coincide with the general calmness the documentary presents. Planet Earth also states facts and statistics throughout such as “only 2% of sunlight filters down to the forest floor”; this is another convention with documentaries. The editing of this documentary mainly uses seamless cuts or jump cuts to show a change of scene; the pace of the editing is slow to yet again to go with the tempo of the incidental music and the general tone of documentary.

Analysis of a Documentary: Foo Fighters: Back & Forth

Foo Fighters: Back & Forth
Director: James Moll 

Back and Forth is a 2011 documentary released by Foo Fighters, directed by filmmaker James Moll. The film documents the band's 16 year history, from the band's very first songs created as cassette demos Dave Grohl recorded during his tenure as Nirvana's drummer, through its ascent to their Grammy-winning, multi-platinum, arena and stadium headlining status as one of the biggest rock bands on the planet. Produced by Nigel Sinclair (No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, Amazing Journey the Story of the Who, The Last Play at Shea) of Exclusive Media Group's Spitfire Pictures, and produced and directed by James Moll, ‘FOO FIGHTERS BACK AND FORTH’ culminates with the making of the band's new album Wasting Light: a process in which the band pushed itself forward by going fully back to basics and recording in Grohl's garage completely on analog tape. No computers, no software - just a band recording an album to tape in a garage. The new record also marks the Foos' first full-length effort with legendary producer Butch Vig, with whom Grohl worked on Nirvana's classic album Nevermind. The documentary also gets its title from a track on the Foo Fighters' seventh studio album ‘Wasting Light’.

Back and Forth saw its debut on March 15, 2011 at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. The first session was followed by a surprise Foo Fighters live performance, which included the entirety of Wasting Light in its setlist. The documentary received a very welcoming reception with it eventually winning a Grammy Award in the Best Long Form Music Video category in the 2012 Grammy Awards. The documentary was also broadcasted international in cinema releases and then tv broadcast’s of it as well, with it show casing in the UK on BBC2 on 3^rd June 2011. On IMDb it got a rating of 8.3; later a full version was put on YouTube which has a viewer rating standing at 41, 291 currently.  

This documentary is a hybrid to the different genres documentaries have. It is an autobiographical documentary as it tells all the tales of the bands history and is produced by the band itself but its also a ‘making of’ film due to it also being about the making of their seventh studio album ‘wasting lights’ and can also be seen to be a concert or rock festival documentary in some parts as the film heavily features footage from concerts and festival, superficially looking at their Wembley stadium concert in 2008.

The target audience for this documentary would undoubtedly be Foo Fighters fans and fans of rock music, as Foo Fighters are on the world’s greatest rock bands. Their fans span from such a wide variety of people due for them being about for 17 years meaning they have young teenage fans to fans that are middle aged and even older. 

The film includes material taken from over 1,000 hours of historical and new footage, and interviews with the current members of Foo Fighters, former band members William Goldsmith and Franz Stahl; producer Butch Vig and current members of the band. Frontman Dave Grohl has said the main inspiration for the film was the decision to record Wasting Light in the garage of his mansion in Encino, California. 

The documentary opens with a montage of images of the band members growing up with the opening credits placed with them, incidental music of famous rock bands play throughout to show music that inspired them whilst growing up, archive footage is also used in the title sequence and eventually ends with the actual title of the documentary and the bands logo. 

The whole documentary consists of interviews of past and current band members along with the producer of the new record Butch Vig, all the interview shots are framed using either medium shots or close ups. Archive footage is heavily used throughout in the forms of homemade videos e.g in early days when they were on tour; news coverage items e.g Kurt Cobains death; photos; recording of their gigs; award ceremony receptions etc. Captions are also used throughout to introduce who the people were and when & where the archive footage is from. The use of interviews, archive footage and captions are all conventions of documentaries. During the filming of the actual making of the 'Wasting Light' album a handheld camera is mainly used to follow the band around Grohls house in his garage studio to the band's families playing in the swimming pool. 

The editing of this film is mainly uses fades, this is because fades worked well to show the passing of time and it worked well with the pace of the documentary as a whole with was calm and collected as it is a reminiscence of the past for them. Seamless cuts were also just for the smooth pace.

Incidental music was used throughout mainly of music from their new album which the documentary promotes. However other bands music was used as well. 

Analysis of a Documentary: Super Size Me

Super Size Me (2004)
Director: Morgan Spurlock

Super Size Me is a documentary film directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock, an American independent film-maker. The documentary follows Morgan Spurlock on a month long McDonald’s binge whereby he can only eat food produced by McDonald’s, three times per day; he has to have eaten everything on the menu at least once. Also, he has to “Super Size” his meal, but only if he was asked. The documentary then documents how this experiment affects his physical and psychological health and explores the fast food industry's corporate influence, including how it encourages poor nutrition for its own profit.

Super Size Me first premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, where Morgan Spurlock won the Grand Jury Prize for directing the film.  The film opened in the U.S. on May 7, 2004, and grossed a total of $20,641,054 worldwide, making it the 12th highest-grossing documentary film of all time. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary. However, the documentary did not go without criticism. Some critics of the film, including McDonald's, argue that the author intentionally consumed an average of 5,000 calories per day and did not exercise, and that the results would have been the same regardless of the source of overeating. 

The genre of this is an investigative documentary this is because it an experiment which Spurlock carried out himself to find out results of what affects McDonalds can have on you. The documentary was distributed by: Samuel Goldwyn Films & Roadside Attractions.  These are not major studios, as Roadside Attractions mainly specialises in disturbing independent films. The film was made on a budget of $65, 000 for production and $ 1, 000, 000 for advertising. The low production budget is evident throughout the documentary due to the poor camera work (shaky in majority of parts); the use of only one camera and the sound quality being muffled and of poor quality too.


The target audience for Super Size Me would be very diverse, mainly aiming at parents in an attempt to limit the amount of fast food their children consume in an effort to save future generations from growing rates of obesity. But it is also targeted at the main consumers of fast food e.g teenagers and adults who have busy lifestyles, as fast food is a quick an easy substitute for a healthy home cooked meal. 

‘Supersize Me’ contains many of the codes and conventions you would expect to find in a documentary. For example the documentary opens with archive footage of children singing a song about fast food. The film also contains captions to show information, titles, interviewee’s names, number of day etc; graphics and animation are used to demonstrate statistics about obesity levels in America, the number of McDonald’s restaurants in America e.g there are 80 McDonalds just in Manhattan alone etc.

Also there is a voiceover recurring throughout the documentary to allow Spurlock to give key information and introduce a topic of debate; voiceovers are a very common feature to expect in this genre; along with many vox pops which appear, this is when you can tell of the production being slightly amateur due to its poor sound quality whilst conducting the vox pops. The film has professional interviews too such as with a nutritionist. Incidental music is present throughout the documentary but it doesn’t dominate the actual film, the only part where it is dominate is in with the opening titles sequence where a Queen songs plays. Another convention used in fly on the wall, whereby there is filming of real people as they do real things focusing on their lives an example of this is when Spurlock meets a man who eats a Big Mac or multiple Big Mac’s every single day without fail.  

Codes and Conventions of a Music Video

A History of Music Video:


A music video is a short film which accompanies a piece of music, which is produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. Music videos have been around for many years with the first being made by the Beatles for their song: Strawberry fields (1967), this was originally described as a ‘promo’. However, the music video became more prominent during in the 1980s, when MTV based their format around the medium. With the massive success of the ‘thriller’ music video; Michael Jackson (1982) broadcasted on MTV, music videos became very popular in modern culture. In the UK the first major music video to made and shown on TV (on the very popular show ‘Top Of The Pops’) was Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen (1975), this was a massive landmark in music video consumerism. 


Music videos use a wide range of styles of film making techniques, including animation, live action filming, documentaries, and non-narrative approaches such as abstract films. Some music videos blend different styles. Many music videos do not interpret images from the song's lyrics.


Codes and Convention of a Music Video:


There are 3 main types of music videos, these are:

• Narrative - This is when a story is told throughout the music video. Often depicting a story in relation to the song lyrics, but not always.
• Performance - This is when the artist is shown actually performing the song e.g: showing the artist playing a gig or at a concert hall. Other forms of performance would be dancing. 
• Abstract - This is when the music video is totally random and has no relation to anything. 

Music Videos may be a mixture of all the main types.

I decided to watch a selection of music videos and categorise them depending on the content of the video:

Narrative	Performance	Abstract
Eminem – Love the way you lie	Madonna - Vogue	Blink 182 – I miss you
Britney Spears - Everytime	Rihanna – Umbrella	Red Hot Chili Peppers – Can’t Stop
Green Day – September Ends	Green Day – American Idiot	Metallica – All Nightmare Long
Katy Perry – Thinking of You	Beyonce – Single Ladies	No doubt – Hella Good
Ed Sheeran – A Team	Robbie Williams – Let Me Entertain You	MGMT –Time To Pretend
Aloe Blacc – I need a dollar	Take That – Rule the World	Soundgarden – Black Hole Sun
All American Rejects – Gives You Hell	Florence + the Machine – Dog Days are Over	The Naked and Famous – The Sun

Codes and conventions for music videos are very varied due to there not being specific ones for all music videos but more specific ones depending on the genre. However, the codes and conventions of music videos can be divided into two separate categories of: technical and symbolic. 

• Technical:

How equipment and technology are used to construct meaning eg:
- Camera: different angles and shots
- Editing: pace, style
- Sound - Diegetic/non diegetic, genre

• Symbolic

The meaning created beyond what is obvious to see e.g through the use of mise en scene 

Music Video Analysis: Abstract

No Doubt - Hella Good
Directed By: Mark Romanek 

Hella Good" is a song by the band: No Doubt. It’s from their fifth studio album Rock Steady (2001). The target audience is fans of the ‘alternative rock’ genre. It appeals to both males and females, as No Doubt can been seen as a rock band that males tend to be fans of, but due to the band being fronted by a female, the song will appeal also to females. The band is not so much mainstream, therefore the audience is mostly ‘No Doubt’ fans. The genre of this song is: Alternative Rock. 


The music video for this is one of an abstract form. This is because everything that happens in the video is unrelated to the song and is seen as random as the video does not follow any plot; the video depicts the band as a group of punk rockers squatting in an abandoned ship while the rest are chasing Stefani throughout the ship. During the course of the video, the band members perform the song, using bodyboards to float electronic equipment, and they and their friends explore and dance throughout the ship. There are also sequences of people riding on personal water crafts, Stefani performing on a coiled rope, people playing Jet Set Radio Future, and Stefani broadcasting on a pirate radio station. However there is some performance as there you can see the band playing at some points and lip-syncing. The video has an artistic feel to it due to it being filmed in black and white. The video is completely location based, using such locations as: an abandoned ship and sequences of people riding on water jets, on open water.  

The music video was moderately successful. Following a premiere on an episode of MTV's Making The Video, it reached number four on the network's video countdown Total Request Live. On YouTube its current views are: 4, 948, 826.

The video uses a wide range of camera shots, some of these include: long shots, close ups, extreme close ups, medium shots, forward tracking, panning, wide shot etc. The editing is mainly is jump cuts as it changes from one location to another and from one shot to a completely different; this gives the effects of it being abstract too as the camera movements seem to be completely randomly organised. Also, the editing is of a quick pace to reflect to temp of the song. 

Music Video Analysis: Performance

Beyonce: Single Ladies
Directed By: Jake Nava

"Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" is a song by American recording artist Beyonce Knowles. It was released by Colombia Records with "If I Were A Boy" as a double A side lead single from her third solo studio album, I am ... Sasha Fierce, on October 12, 2008. The target audience for this is teenage/young adult females, as the song lyrics are directly aimed at females. Also, due to her fan base predominately being of this age range. The persona she portrays in this video, creates a female icon for many women by showing dominance, however the provocative dance she performs throughout the music video caters for her male audience viewers through entertainment. The genre of this song is: R&B/pop. The music video is one of the performance form; the video is a complete performance, demonstrating dance throughout it and singing of the lyrics. It is very artistic looking due to it being filmed completely in black and white.r. The video shoot took approximately twelve hours to shoot, many performances of the song were filmed without interruption, and edited together to give the impression that the final video was filmed in a single take. It was shot in a studio in New York.

The video received a good reception. Beyonce herself said: “Out of all my videos, it was the least expensive and took the least amount of time. And it ended up being the most iconic”. The video spawned a dance craze and inspired thousands of imitations from all over the world, which were posted on YouTube. "Single Ladies" was nominated for nine awards at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, ultimately winning three including Video of the Year.The viewing figures for it on YouTube currently stand at: 171, 692, 662.

Knowles wanted a simple music video; it was therefore filmed without alternative camera shots and cuts, or changes to hairstyles, costumes, sets and lighting. The director Nava deliberately used lengthy shots so that viewers "would connect with the human endeavour of Beyoncé's awe-inspiring dance" with all the changes in looks, angles, and lighting executed live on-camera because he wanted to keep the feel "very organic and un-gimmicky". The camera constantly follows Beyonce around using mainly long shots to show the full dance, zooming in and out throughout to show focus on Beyonce to show the importance of the alto ego she is portraying and the robotic glove with the ring on, in relation to the song “if you like it then you should of out a ring on it.”

The editing is done to make the video seem seamless and give the impression it was done in one take as mentioned before. However, near the end of the video there is extremely quick editing when there are quick shots overlapped on each other, to go with the sudden increase in tempo with the song.

The lighting used of flashes of intense light, yet again reinforces the dominance of her in the video. In the video for "Single Ladies", emphasis is laid on Knowles' more aggressive and sensual side, her alter ego Sasha Fierce. It shows her in an asymmetrical leotard and high-heels, with two look-alike backup dancers.

Music Video Analysis: Narrative

Eminem ft Rihanna: Love The Way You Lie 

Directed By: Joseph Kahn 

"Love the Way You Lie" is a song by American rapper Eminem from his seventh studio album, Recovery (2010). The music video for the single was released on 5^th August 2010. The audience which this video is aimed at is teenagers and young adults, due to that being his majority target audience being of this category. Also, as the video includes: Megan Fox and Dominic Monaghan, who are well known actors of the block buster’s such as: Transformers, whose target audience is yet again teenage/young adult based.  As Eminem is seen as a main stream artist, the music video attracted many viewers; on youtube the views for it currently stand at: 485, 873, 755.

This genre of this song is rap/hip-hop. The music video is one of a narrative form; it tells the story of domestic violence, which showcases a love-hate scenario of an unstable relationship between Megan Fox’s and Dominic Monaghan’s characters. However, the video does contain both performances from Eminem and Rihanna, when they perform the lyrics to the camera outside the burning house and the cornfield. Therefore this video can be seen as a hybrid. The video is mainly set at the home of the couple but includes other locations such as: a bar, cornfield. The video was shot on location but also studio based.

The reception it received was majorly successful. The music video became an online phenomenon, earning 6.6 million views in its first 24 hours on VEVO, and 18 million views after five days, breaking a YouTube record for having the most video views in 24 hours However, the video sparked controversy for explicitly and using domestic violence as a principal theme.

The video opens with a close-up on Rihanna, who sings in front of a burning house, as an interspersing scene shows fire on the palms of a woman (Fox). A couple (Fox and Monaghan) lie asleep, but the woman suddenly wakes up, while Eminem begins to rap in an empty cornfield. After the woman sees the name "Cindy" and a phone number written on her boyfriend's hand, she attacks him. He tries to kiss her, but is spat on the face. She then attempts to leave him, but starts to fight again after she is brought back. The man slams his girlfriend onto the wall and aims his fist at her, hitting through the drywall instead. After Rihanna sings again, the video flashes back to when the man and the woman first meet "at a seedy dive bar next door" to a liquor store, in which the man steals a bottle of vodka after they fall in love and kisses his girlfriend on the rooftop.

The video shifts back to the present, as the man apologizes to his girlfriend and later drinks a glass of liquor. Rihanna sings, while the couple are reconciled. In another flashback, the man attacks someone who played pool with his girlfriend. After the video returns once again to the present, Eminem joins Rihanna in front of the burning house and raps the final verse. The man follows his girlfriend, who walks away but locks the door to stop him from coming. In a different scene, she handles fire in her hands again and closes them to extinguish the flame. The couple, along with Eminem, are then engulfed by flames. A scene shows them in front of the burning house. In the end the couple remain together and the video returns to the first frame, in which they lie in bed asleep.

The video uses a mixture of camera shots & angles. Close up and medium shots are mainly used for when there are performance shots of either Rihanna or Eminem this is to show the lip syncing and the emotion of they are trying to get across whilst performing, especially in Rihanna’s performance pieces she is visibly seen as upset. However, for Eminem there are many long shots also used for this performance to show his complete body language. For the narrative scenes a variety of shots are used, these include: close ups, long shots, panning, tilts and tracking.

The editing for this uses jump cuts between narrative and performance scenes to show a clear change. Otherwise the editing is seamless as the edits are hardly noticeable especially during the narrative to show the flow of the story. As well shot reverse shot is used between Megan Fox’s and Dominic Monaghan characters.

Special effects are also used in this video, the effects are mainly to do with the fire, this can be seen when the characters and performers appear to be engulfed by flames.