Documentary Workshop

Documentary Workshop

Our teacher set up a workshop for the people doing their FMP on a documentary. We got given task sheets that involved group work of mind mapping different types of documentaries we see every day. In our mind map, we involved programmes such as Big Brother, Sun sex and suspicious parents, My big fat gypsy wedding and party paramedics. We had to put them in what type of documentary we believed they were, such as fly-on-the wall, observational etc. 

After this task, we were briefly informed of a very popular documentary that had been made and recognised a few years ago called Bowling for Columbine. It was based around gun crime in america and focusing on the columbine high school shootings that happened in 1998. He informally researches and discovers how easy it is for people to purchase guns around america. He interviews families that own their own guns to protect themselves, He asks how is to blame; TV, Film, Toy Guns, Police, Rock and Metal music. There is no answer,  there is multiple things that people could blame for the huge amount of gun crime in the united states of america. 

The Trailer for Bowling for Columbine

Some techniques I picked up on through watching this documentary was various things. One of which was like a video vox pop. The narrator would ask someone a question, show their answer and then somewhere else, somebody with the opposite answer or opinion would be played. It gave more than one persons insight into the questions asked. The documentary also used animation, characters to show a humorous side and although for my own documentary research, somebody said animation would take the seriousness away from the documentary, I did not feel this happened for this documentary, it was a very serious documentary which covered upsetting and emotional stuff, but the animation did not take that emotion away, it just made it a little more light hearted in some places.


I really liked the use of CCTV footage, that was a very personal touch. It made you feel involved. I like the way he used himself to discover the information everyone is trying to seek, such as; finding out how to purchase a gun etc. 


At one point during the documentary, he points out that there are more important stories in the world, not just gun crime. For instance; pollution. At this time, he was around police officers and camera crew, asked them about the pollution but they were not interested, all they were interested in was the potential gun crime use at that moment. It showed us what people's intentions are and their priorities.