The first textual analysis essay will be on Gold Fever, it’s a documentary, sporting documentary to be precise. The documentary explores the lives of five Olympic rowers during the closing stages for the Olympics. The unique thing that you notice when you watch documentaries are that you’re never really restricted in the way you go about filming, for example weather, it could be raining one moment and the next it will be sunny , continuity isn’t essential in a documentary.
Gold Fever is a sporting documentary; the whole point of this documentary is to get up and personal with the characters that the documentary follows. Pretty much the documentary has a narrative voice over. The first five to six minutes of the documentary will highlight the reason of the documentary and how the personal it will get amongst each of the characters. The introduction sets the tone and straight away you get the understanding that it’s up and close, every step of the character is tracked and recorded, from the frustrations and pain to the joy and laughter.
The shots are at random, some of the shots are done still e.g. hand-held by the characters themselves whilst the others are done with a tripod. The shots in this specific documentary represent different things, for example when the characters are training and feeling pain footage is more surrounded by close- ups and medium close-up. Being a personal documentary into the lives of these individuals, there isn’t much variation between shots. Cuts are all dependant on the activity for example when the individuals are racing or training the cuts will be quicker and when the camera is hand-held then the cuts will be more slower as it’s either personal or in a interview.
One thing that is clear about this documentary is that mise en scene isn’t vital the characters will change clothes quite frequently, as this documentary is narrative based the sound is rather simply to deal with. Diegetic sound and non diegetic sound is both features of this documentary. Ambient sound for the realism of the activity. The realism of the sound is to connote pain, aggression, joy, all aspects in fact.
As you can see this documentary is open minded, in the sense that the creativity with the camerawork isn’t there, however that’s understandable as its personal documentary and their no need for flashy artwork when someone is trying to express their feelings.
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