For this documentary analysis, I will be analyzing the documentary 'Is it better to be mixed race' which was aired on channel 4 on the 2nd of November. Modes First aspect of the documentary I noted was the mode of which it was presented in. This documentary's mode was the participatory mode, similar to the films/documentaries of Micheal Moore, in which the documentary maker is engaging with situations, they are visible in the interviews and it is treated not only as a documentary to inform us, but as a docuementation of the makers journey of discovery. This is evident in this screenshot here, in which the presenter is interacting with an interviewee, 'Dr Jim Wilson'. In this portion he maps out the journey humankind made on its emigration from africa, not to the audience, but directly to the documentary maker, Aarathi Prasad.

Mise-en-scene The presenter herself is in fact a geneticist, so I was surprised to find at no point throughout the 47 minute documentary was mise-en-scene used to encourage the viewer to believe her role, and she came across more as just a member of the public than anyone of any particular repute, or even of any profession. But the Mise-en-scene was used to back up claims of others professions throughout, such as in this interview with Geneticist Professor Bill Amos, Who works in the zoology department of Cambridge university, specialising in the fitness of marine mammals. Throughout this interview we have cutaways of the skeletons of numerous different marine mammals, backing up the claims of his expertise in marine biology. And even in the interview itself, we see in the background models of marine life, and even more skeletons

Similar use of Mise-en-scene is used in an interview with Dr Philip Koch, who does screening tests for tay-sachs disease in Jewish Communities. Prior to his interview, and during his inroduction, they feature cutaways of him taking blood samples from members of Jewish Communities (And because of this, the audience can assume he is screening for Tay Sachs disease)

And during his interview, despite the focus being on him (also an over the shoulder shot of our presenter, Aarathi Prasad) and the background being out of focus, it is still clear to the viewer that we are in a hospital environment, with what seems ot be boxes of blood samples in the background.

This use of mise-en-scene to connote the interviewees job is ued all throughout the said documentary, and is a convention used in the vast majority of other documentaries. It was

interesting to find in one of the few interviewees with Dr Jim Wilson, (see first pic), the use of mise en scene there didnt really aid the viewer at all, which I found peculiar as it was the first time we were introduced to him, and I felt was quite bad practise. Editing; The editing in this documentary is definetly nothing out of the ordinary. Cutaways feature fairly heavily, and are generally of young, good looking mixed race people, almost as to persuade the viewer that being mixed race is definetly a better thing, convincing them that the average mixed race person is fitter, healthier, and better looking than those of non-mixed descent.

Other cutaways that are actually much more frequent than those of mixed race people, are that of the presenter, Aarathi Prasad. Many of which are of her driving her car to different destinations, or researching things on her laptop. These sort of shots seem to bring the viewer closer to Aarathi, almost so we see her on a much more personal level. The viewer relates to her as they see her not as a geneticist, but as an every day person doing day to day things.

In many of the interviews, I noticed the camera cuts back to Aarathi fairly often. While it may not be clear to some, I certainly could tell that what the interviewee was saying, and the way their mouth was moving (as they were only seen from behind this was hard), they audio was not matched up with the video, and this was their way of stitching the interview together to shorten it, without relying on cutaways of things going on elsewhere, and keeping the viewer focused on the interview.

Very often throughout the documentary, stock footage is used. Examples of this being videos of nazi propagandha, and later on, some footage of breakthrough moments in british TV in which interracial relationships were featured on britis TV, during a time of racial tension.

All this found footage is very powerful image. The image of hitler to this day is powerful to use, whereas the interacial kissing in this day and age doesnt cause offense to most people, in the context it is used the audience understand that during the period it was aired, it was highly controversial, but represented a breakthrough in racial equality. Cinematography Shots used in this documentary keep within the conventions of what you would expect from a participatory mode documentary, many of which featuring the presenter/documentary maker during the interviews. To do this they frequently make use of shot reverse shot, and over the shoulder shots.

Throughout the documentary the framing of interviewees seems fairly sporadic, and there is no set angle for each interviewee, while the most frequent is the over shoulder shot of interviewee, codes such as the rule of thirds do not seem that important, with the scale of each interviewee in the frame being different in almost every interview.

It seem this documentary is VERY different to the documentary i've had to make, in many different ways. Its informal approach is unlike that which you may find on news night (although they are often similar, with less of a voice of god approach and more focus on the presenter). It's still a good documentary, but seems to have no clear direction.