Friday 15th October

In today's session we were discussing the purpose of 'Behind the Scenes' documentaries for instance, to increase interest in the product. A recent successful behind the scenes show has been T4's movie specials. With T4's target audience being primarily teenage to early twenties they have chosen a number of film premiers that would appeal to that particular audience. While satisfying their audience with behind the scenes footage, interviews with cast and footage from the premier, they are also increasing interest and hype in to the movie.

I also had a look at behind the scenes of a music video "Skeletons" by Yeah Yeah Yeahs.



While watching the video it is clear that this is probably for people who are already fans of the band who just want something extra to keep them satisfied. However, this could also be used to generate hype to people who have never listened to their music before. I also think that there is probably a market for people who are interested in making music videos and using special effects like the use of the green screen and the images being projected on to smoke so would probably appeal to media students too.

In class, we watched behind the scenes of the movie Hunger by visual artist Steve McQueen. The documentary explains in-depth the story and the reasoning behind certain filming and editorial decisions. This made it insightful and made you aware of things you may have never known while watching just the movie itself. We also found that the cast sang high praises of the director, being his first feature-length film, it helps to build up hype for him. Having never seen the film before I was surprised that I felt compelled to watch it after viewing the documentary. This goes to show that this kind of documentary holds a great promotional purpose and people who may not have wanted to watch the film, may want to after watching the documentary. This behind the scenes film was insightful, sincere and used minimalist music that didn't detract from the seriousness of the films subject matter.

We also watched the making of Ridley Scott's Gladiator which tackled the film in a completely different manner. Rather than using subtlety or sincerity there is epic battle style music throughout and the focus seems to be more on the talent, ie Russell Crowe and Jaoquin Phoenix rather than the storyline or editorial decisions. There were lots of quick cuts and close-ups of the actors faces. All of the interviews were either on set or surrounded by appropriate images relating to the movie. They also showed raw footage of the scenes being filmed, but with their cameras and mics in shot so that the audience feel like they're on the set. This would be then be followed with the finalised edited scene. With a huge Hollywood movie like Gladiator, it is clear to see why they decided to focus on the actors because this will appear to an audience on a large scale. If they had focused more on the editorial and production side of the film they would probably lose audience numbers.