DOCUMENTARY; EXTRA RESEARCH

Barely Legal Drivers

Barely Legal Drivers is a BBC Three documentary programme in which the cameras follow two different teens each week as they embark on what they think is a 'teen lifestyle' documentary when in reality it is their driving that is being put to the test with their parents secretly watching. A ex traffic officer then decided. based on their driving, whether they need extra driving lessons or deserve a car of their own. This programme uses different codes and conventions that i can take influence from.

1) Firstly, at the start of each episode comes up some facts based on driving and young drivers, this is a very effective thing to do because it introduces the programme to the audience, its a nice introduction before we meet the characters of this particular episode. Moreover, it also gives the audience some context to what they are watching, seeing these proof based facts at the start of each episode provides some background as to why this programme is being made and it defiantly makes people carry on watching because they would want to see these facts come to life. The facts are also paired with multiple GVs that relate to the situation i.e. pov shots of driving, l plates etc.

2) Secondly, another feature of the programme is the use of an expert. In order to judge the driving of the teens, the makers bring in an ex traffic police officer, who is someone who knows exactly what they're talking about and would most likely be someone the audience would trust, increasing the validity of the programme.

3) The camera has two different aspects that i found interesting. It is in a blog style format but not in the same way that we know today, rather than the character sitting there holding the camera to their face in the typical youtube style vlog format, the character is instead sitting on her bed looking directly into the camera talking. Moreover, the camera has a very handheld feel to it, this is to allow them to follow the action as it happens and is obviously a widely used convention in most documentaries.

How it can influence my work
There are many ways in which i believe the conventions used in barely legal drivers can affect my own work. Firstly, the use of an expert is something we are trying to find, we are looking and contacting different experts with backgrounds in social media work who can provide context and realism to our work, in a similar way to how they have the expert in Barely Legal Drivers. Secondly we also want to introduce our documentary with some facts or figures, not in the same way as barely legal drivers had the facts come up on screen whereas we would like to present ours through narration.