Documentary Analysis - The Devil Made Me Do It

An Analysis of “The Devil Made Me Do it”

Type of Documentary:
Mixed


Themes:
Devil worship vs Religion
Crime/media investigation
Youth
Powers of the media…can media influence an individual’s behaviour?

Narrative Structure:

Open – question which is main theme is not answered
Non Linear  - It does follow chronological events of crime from the girls being caught to them going into court yet the programme has cuts to different events throughout.

Camerawork:

Close up/medium close up of interviewees framed either to left or right

Conventional lighting reinforces Good vs. Evil, when Manson is being interviewed and half of his face is in the light and the other in the dark which connotes a dual personality.

Low angle of Manson signifies power.
Slow pans of the town which suggest nothing exciting happens in the day or night as the streets are deserted.

End of programme – busy streets, teens sat around drinking, cars speeding which is a contrast from the empty and abandoned streets at the beginning of the programme,

Camera is positioned in the back of the room at the Manson press conference as the cameraman is filming through the viewfinder of another camera which puts distance between documentary person and other people filming Manson, the intentions are different.

Shots of religious iconography (statues of angels and Christ) Christ shot in low angle which matched Manson's low angle.

Marilyn Manson gig – filmed the crowd as well as the concert, filmed as an observer

Hand-held actuality footage so cameraman can react quickly to action

Zoom is used on still images on inanimate objects to keep the audience interested


Mise en Scene:
Interviews – reflecting something about life or occupation police sat at desk with a police cap on it
Contrast between old fashioned town and noisy town
Religious iconography
contrast between Manson and persona and scene in McDonalds

Sound

Voiceover – narrator, male, young, Standard English – no clear accent
Voiceovers used to translate Italian into English
Translation with Italian accent to anchor that they are watching an Italian person.
Age and gender matched visuals.
Music reflected subject matter/mood
Religious music – choral contrasts against the Manson music used
sound effects used e.g. heartbeat, dogs barking


Editing:
Cuts – most common edit in documentary
Montage – at the beginning from later on in the show, teaser of what is coming up

fade to black and fade from black used to signal end of scene or to take us from one location to another

Creates tempo – slow pans of empty streets, when the narration was one of the girls relaying the murder, shots became shorter – cuts quicker




Archive Material:

Recordings from time of murder

News footage – nuns death and columbine massacre

Manson's music video

Graphics:

Lyrics to words of Manson's songs

Who? When? Where? In white sans serif

Ranged to right or left of screen, with the top line bigger

Subtitles to anchor the audio

Title was Gothic and stylised

Text was used to close the narrative of the documentary what happened to girls after documentary was made

This a clip from the documentary I analysed:

Codes and Conventions of a Documentary

Narrative Structure:
Single strand


Camerawork:
Varied shot types and movement to keep the audience interested
Stationary camera (tripod)
Handheld camerawork is used for actuality footage where necessary
Establishing shots used
Pan and zoom are used when filming still images – slow zoom
P.O.V shot sometimes used to position the audience in the action
Interviews: close up or medium close up is conventional. Big close up or extreme close up can be used
Eyeline roughly 1/3 way down screen
Framed to left or right of screen


Mise en scene:
If chromakey is used it shouldn’t detract from the interview
The mise en scene is carefully constructed


Sound:
Always a voiceover – holds the narrative together, standard English, usually calm and clear delivery. Gender and age is sometimes relevant depending on the topic.
Music used relevant to subject – it shouldn’t interfere with interview
Interviews – no background noise, so audience can clearly hear what is being said


Editing:
Questions are edited out
Editing creates pace
Cuts most common edit
No editing effects used unless relevant so it does not distract the viewer
Cutaways are used - relevant to what is being talked about
Other visuals are used over the interviewee – creative editing


Archive material:
Still images require camera movement to keep the audience interested in the documentary
There is a variety of relevant material: newspapers, photographs, website, video footage.


Graphics:
Used to translate were necessary
Title – Title is unique
Credits – usually scrolling off screen and all archive material is credited
Name and relevance to subject or role of interviewees – usually two lines.

General Analysis

Documentary

The purpose of the documentary is to document, that is to report with evidence something that has actually happened. It can be shown by using “actuality footage” or reconstruction. It can use a narrator’s voiceover to anchor the meaning or rely on the participants themselves with perhaps occasional interjection by the narrator.

John Grierson

He ran a team called the General Post Office Film Unit in the 1930’s. In the second world war the GPO made documentarys showing everyone working hard, laughing and singing they were seen to be used as a propaganda tool. Grierson defined documentaries as the creative treatment of actuality (or reality).

Features of documentaries

John Corner of the University of Liverpool believed there are five central elements of documentaries:


Observation: The programme pretends that the camera is unseen or ignored by the people taking part in the events. The audience is an eye witness observing events as they unfold. However, the Hawthorne effect may also occur during this element as the participants may change their natural actions to appear in a better light.


Interview: The most important part of the document whereby the participants give their opinions and views, documentaries rely upon these.


Dramatisation: All documentaries use a sense of drama through the observation element, such as creating drama through the observation process or through reconstruction.


Mise en scene (put in the picture): Documentary makers carefully construct the shot.


Exposition: The line of argument in a documentary. It is what the documentary, quotes saying.

Different types of documentaries

Fully narrated: A voiceover is used to convey the exposition, the voiceover is to make sense of the visuals and dominate their meaning e.g. Natural history documentaries.


Fly on the wall: It draws on the French film movement, cinema verite. The camera is unseen or ignored and simply records real events as they unfold.


Mixed: A combination of interview construction, actuality and archive material and narration to advance the argument/ narrative.


Self- Reflective: When the subject of the documentary acknowledges the presence of the camera and often speaks directly to the camera maker.


Docudrama: Re enactment of the events.


Docusoap: A combination of a documentary and soap opera which is centred around a group of central protagonists.

Structure of a documentary

Narrative Structure


Open: Loose ends which are not tied up at the end of the documentary i.e when questions are left unanswered.


Closed: There is a definite conclusion to the narrative


Linear: Follows chronological order (order of time)


Non Linear: Things are not in time order, by use of flashback or flash-forward

Single: one narrative

Multi: more than one narrative thread

Circular: The narrative goes from one point and at the end returns to the same point


Visuals: Television is a visual medium. The programme needs to be visually stimulating, to maintain the audience’s attention


Stock Footage: Archive material – street scenes, open countryside, and close up of faces


Interviews: An interview can be held anywhere but the setting does affect the meaning


Vox Pop (voice of the people): Ask random people the same question and pick the best, most entertaining or the most boring answers

Construction or Reality

Camerawork: handheld camera as th etripod restricts a cameramans movement

Gate keeping: Producer of a documentary either selects or rejects certain facts and information, for inclusion in a media text. This is done during the editing process, voiceover can affect the meaning… the voice of God, it can alter and anchor the visuals.

Edited

Evaluation

During the filming of our mobile phone interview/documentary we kept in mind the codes and conventions that featured in the existing products we had previously watched, with this knowledge, we then tried to apply the conventions to our own interview. We have a few strengths in our interview; mainly the cutaways which we used to break up the interview, the cutaways are relevant to the topic f the documentary: mobile phones. Another strength was the backing track we used as it had no lyrics to distract our audience from the main focus of our documentary; the interview.

However, our interview had several weaknesses such as; the interviewee was positioned to the right of the screen but was also looking right this means that the interviewer was on the incorrect side of the camera and should have been standing to the right of the camera. Another weakness was that our interviewee had too much space above her head which means the rule of thirds was not followed correctly, also our cutaways had a few jump cuts which means we had made a mistake in the editing process.

To conclude, we made a lot of mistakes in both our filming and editing of our interview, and many of the conventions were not followed thus making our documentary poor in comparison to existing products. However, we will be able to compare this interview to our final documentary and see a mass improvement.

Interview

Editing

This is a screen grab of the editing software Adobe Premiere Pro that we used to edit our video

This is the title designer tool that we used to create the title for the video

This is the tool we used to record the cutaways so that we would be able to insert and edit them into the final video

Filming

We filmed the interview using a medium close up of our interviewee and we framed her using the rule of thirds in which the interviewee’s eye line is roughly a third of the way down the screen. The interviewee is positioned to right side of the screen as they would in any conventional documentary with the interviewer standing at the side of the camera. We filmed the interview with a white wall behind the interviewee so that the mise-en-scene would not be distracting for the viewer.
For our cutaways we filmed an assortment of clips that are related to the topic of mobile phones; we filmed a clip that began with an extreme close up of buttons on a mobile phone, which then zoomed out to reveal a wider shot of multiple phones. Another clip we filmed was a medium shot of a person talking on their mobile phone. Our next cutaway featured two clips of a close up of a mobile screen, one receiving a text and another showing the phones contacts.