Evaluation Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real

In what ways does our documentary use forms and conventions of real media products?

Our documentary borrows from the expositionary type of documentary mostly, in that we have a presenter (Luke) who is trying to uncover and expose something (tattoo related controversy, specifically work environments, social environments and approaching age of consent for a tattoo) and uses interviews (Lauren and Matty), recent news (David Dimbleby) and other means to present this truth.

We’ve also borrowed from other styles of documentary and incorporated elements of those into our documentary too. I personally think that it takes some aspects from the end desire of performative mode, in that we want people to have an emotional and social revolution almost about tattoos and that they’re not some evil markings that should be hidden. Physically, they’re just ink under your skin, emotionally, they can mean anything and this would’ve been our end goal in a full documentary. Making people understand tattoos true meaning.


The final DPS product adheres strongly to traditional DPS rules such as column system whereby all text is equal size, same font style and has 4 columns of text. It also features pulled quotes from the documentary that we think would really grab the audience and make them think about hearing more from this source. For example, the pulled quote from Matthew “It’s not an addiction, you want more, but no it’s not an addiction” or words to that effect, I personally would like to hear more about what the difference is, what is the boundary between classing something like this as an addiction and just wanting more. It was things like this that we took into account. What did these quotes make us think and feel on just hearing them alone?  It was difficult of course, given we knew how it would pan out, but I think we chose the right quotes to grab and draw people in. Upon reflection the columns are still not completely equal although we have stretched the writing, we could have done with making the columns equal.

We also have images and pictures of tattoos that would be in the documentary as again, a teaser and a hook to snag people and almost get themselves to force them to watch. We thought this would be a great lure to draw in those interested in art and who appreciate elaborate designs and beautiful images, but also those who maybe don’t. It could’ve been an eye opener for them. For example, they may not like art and they may find it boring. But maybe they like the look of one of the tattoos. For example, the owl chest piece is a very strong and very striking tattoo that I think would appeal to those who don’t like art but I think they’d find it pretty cool as a design.

In what ways does our documentary develop forms and conventions of real media products?
When doing our similar product research looking at different documentaries that have been on TV and see if there is any specific conventions that all documentaries use that are effective to the audience. When we found these conventions we listed them and thought of ways we could incorporate them into our product.

We also spoke to someone from Blue Print who gave us some great ideas for our documentary. He told us that documentaries are big on cutaways, mostly from presenter to interviewer, so we developed that by cutting from our interviews with Matthew and Lauren to talking to the presenter throughout the documentary. When watching other documentaries we found that most of them have title sequences and subtitles to explain who someone is. We developed this by using a text tool on Final Cut Pro X and making a title sequence explaining who the production company is, what the title of the documentary is, we also used sub titles to explain who the interviewees are.

We also found that a lot of documentaries have a backing track with them, usually a popular song, to add a bit of energy and flow to the documentary. We developed this convention by using Rihanna'a 'Diamond' in the background to our documentary as it's quite a young, modern, edgy song. When using the cutaway conventions some of the cuts looked quite sharp so we used transitions to smooth them out, such as a cross dissolve, as they do in real media documentaries.

Upon reflection we could have taken two camera's to each interview to do more shot - reverse - shots as they do in real media products. This could also have been an effective convention to use.