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.