Codes and Conventions of Factual Programming By Eoin

Codes and Conventions of Factual Programming By Eoin Canning

News Programmes

Studio News Readers • A news reader is someone who presents the news/current affairs during a news program on television, radio or through the Internet on a web show. • Example: https: //www. youtube. com/user/The. Young. Turks • A news reader may also be a working journalist, who assists in the collection of news material. They may also, in addition, provide commentary during their program. • Example: https: //www. youtube. com/user/The. Alex. Jones. Channel • Studio news presenters often work from a television studio or a radio station.

Field Reporters • A field reporter is a journalist, commentator for magazines or an agent who contributes reports to a newspaper, radio, television news or another type of company. They often report from distant locations. • A foreign correspondent is a field reporter stationed in a foreign country.

Links to Studio • Links to studio are when news teams on a certain studio may want to discuss a news story with a different news studio who may have more information to share on the topic, or a guest on the show is an expert on the topic being discussed.

Modes of Address to the Viewer • The modes of address to the viewer is how a piece of media is presented to the audience and how it addresses them. Most pieces of media usually address the audience to make the audience feel a positive connection to the media (news, etc).

Interviews • Interviews are an important role in the media industry. Interviews allow for an audience to understand others’ viewpoints on specific subjects or abstract ideas. The audience can learn about topics they’d have never researched or known about through good and in-depth interviews.

Experts and Witnesses • Interviews with experts and witnesses give credibility to what is told by news programmes. • The opinions and facts presented by experts can change the opinion of the audience viewing them.

Report Structure Newswriting uses a structure called ’the inverted pyramid’. The structure is identified by having the most important and heaviest pieces of news at the top (of the pyramid); these stories are told first and then the stories get gradually less important/impactful, until you reach the bottom of the pyramid where the least important stories are. The reason why these stories are at the bottom of the pyramid is due to there being much more unimportant/minor news stories than urgent news.

Actuality Footage • Actuality footage is footage that relates to whatever the news readers are discussing at the time. Actuality footage is used as a visual aid and it also gives the viewers a better understanding of the conditions/effects of what’s being discussed (Examples; war, famine).

Documentaries

Expository • Expository documentaries speak to the viewer directly, often the commentary is an authoritative voiceover proposing a strong argument and point of view. These films make use of rhetorical points in an attempt to persuade the viewer.

Observational • An observational documentary is a documentary in which the cameramen and producer/s observe a person, group, animal or item as they/it acts naturally. • Cutaways to discussions and long scenes are common among this type of documentary due to the producer wanting to cover as much of the subjects life/work as possible and discussions are shown as exposition of what the subject thinks and/or is doing.

Interactive • Interactive documentaries are documentaries in which the film crew interact with the subject they are documenting. • This type of documentary, usually, makes heavy use of archived materials; these can be news articles, footage of the subject and research such as essays, expert/witness statements and heavily researched web articles/graphs.

Reflexive • Reflexive documentaries use techniques found commonly in fictional pieces to create a much more emotionally provocative, powerful and impactful documentary. • This type of documentary, usually, makes use of reenactments and music to evoke an emotional response from the audience whether it be sadness or excitement is completely dependent on the subject and purpose of the documentary. • Reflexive documentaries use both fact and suggestion to relay their message to the audience.

Performative • Performative documentaries are the direct opposite of observational documentaries. • Performative documentaries emphasize the involvement that the film crew has with the subject. • Usually this type of documentary doesn’t use as much expository as other documentaries, rather they use the filmmaker or an actor as a personal guide who takes the audience through their experience with the subject. Their story can be manually tailored to suit a certain meaning or to evoke a certain response/give a certain point of view from/to the audience.

Realism • Realism documentaries are documentaries which focus on the factual reality of a situation, group, person or object. • Realism documentaries cover a subject

Dramatisation • Dramatisation documentaries are documentaries which use actors to recreate certain scenarios and scenes, from an event or action. The use of actors adds emotion and a better audience reception of the documentary.

Narrativisation • Narrativisation documentaries are documentaries in which the story of a subject is told from the beginning to the end.