DOCUMENTARY; PROGRAMME RESEARCH

Educating Essex is a 2011 documentary series, it documents the everyday life of students at Passmore's Academy, a secondary school in Harlow, Essex. Though no formal presenting takes place, it features the narration and interviewing of David  Clews. There are many techniques that i have deconstructed (from re-watching episode one of the first series, but still aspects that take place throughout) that i will got through.

Example of how the filming looks on screen

1) Fly on the Wall Format - fly on the wall format is what i would describe as a more modern technique of documentary. Stemming from many different reality shows such as big brother, its a good way to film something over a long period of time, whilst catching on camera everything that happens to someone. Educating Essex uses this format to be filmed, obviously it was filmed over an academic school year so using these types of camera is firstly easier as it doesn't mean as many crew need to be at the set to disrupt a school day. Secondly, it means that we get to follow the action clearly, many times within the show it portrays a teen flying off the handle, perhaps walking out of their classroom, therefore this type of filming means we get to follow the teen as they walk around the school.

2) Narrative Structure - although it is documenting real life, there is still a narrative structure there. Each episode follows a new child that flows through the episode, we get to see the start of there story, for example in episode one we see student Charlotte, who at the start of the school year starts to have many attitude problems and behavioural issues. During this episode we get to see Charlotte over the course of a few months as her issues become bigger and bigger. In the end, Charlotte is excluded for her issues, we get to see this and then watch her return to school remorsefully. Again this narrative structure is due to the way in which is the programme is filmed but it allows for a very real documentary with no artificial or fake scenes, all the stories are true and represent real life.

Interview with Deputy of the School

3) Interview Structure - Paired with the fly on the wall style footage of the school, we see interviews of both the teachers that feature and the students, there are two interesting things about these interviews that i think add to the programme. Firstly, we do not see an interviewer of some sort, occasionally we hear a voice asking some questions, but not regularly. The reason i think this is so effective is because it matches the action on screen, we have the action because it was filmed in the school, so its almost like the interviews are talking about what happened and because what they are talking about matches the action on screen, theres no need to hear what questions were asked because its self explanatory. Secondly, due to the way the interviewees are talking (in the past tense) you can understand that they are talking in a reflective way, for them everything we have seen and/or are about to see (the rest of the episode) has already happened.

Some things that i have deconstructed, will work in my own doc, however some will not. Firstly, the fly on the wall style of filming, though very effective, is more suited to a longer shot rather than a short one. As ever, with a student film and deadlines, timing is very short so we don't have long enough to film to warrant this type of filming. However, where i spoke about the interviewing techniques and the match on action, i believe this is something that can influence my own work. For 'Digital Detox' we plan to have people give up their social media and therefore i think interviewing them about how they dealt with it can they be matched with any GVS we have of them.