Documentary

Attenborough: Flat Lizard colourful displays & fly catching - BBC wildlife

This documentary is an hour long narrated documentary but for this section I will only be looking at a 4 min section of the documentary. The use of a narrator behind the camera to anchor (Barthes Theory Of Anchorage) and link presentation together. They are the
guarantors of authority and are chosen on their personal voice qualities that are likely to appeal to the target audience. The start of this segment shows a long shot of a waterfall followed quickly by a fast frame shot to a real close up even showing detail drops water. The narrator who is David Attenborough starts talking within this shot. This next scene switches to an establishing shot of the canyon following a change of the day and night cycle. This gives a breath taking sense because of the shear size of the canyon for the viewer. This is followed by some dramatic calm music to follow the narration which adds a sort of feeling on the watcher where they can tell its early morning.

The first shot of a reptile is a close up show of the lizard coming out from under a rock. The shot is then pulled up to a bigger scale of lizards following out of the rock. The sense and feel of the documentary is meant to have the effect on the user that he/she is actually watching the daily routine of what the reptiles do with their live and the detail of the close shots gives the user a better approach on how extraordinary they actually are.

Finally in the next shot we see David actually appearing on camera for a short space of time carrying on the narration. This is changes the viewer’s aspects from just hearing a voice over clips to him actually appearing on the screen.
All of the shots are close up rather than having long shots which only take place during scene changes in the documentary. The reason for this is so the user can get a detail impression of the lizards which is what the documentary was made for. One interesting note is how background sounds are pretty much none existent only the voice from David can be heard during the segment.

Interesting in the format of the video chosen to include the narrator to appear in the video only lasts a short time. This was probably intended for the viewer to get a stronger sense of direction the documentary was going for which is to make it seem like the viewer is there witnessing the changes in reptile life.

The video is aimed to be easy watching for the watcher and I personally think the BBC have captured this aspect well. With not having any background sounds and a narrator throughout I think they executed the documentary well.