The documentary ‘Life on Barges’ explores and focuses on the main aspects of living on a boat on the canal. I feel that we used very detailed shots of the canal and atmosphere as well as a detailed interview of our main subject. The introduction is neat and introduces the subject nicely, for example, the first 10 seconds are shots of boats, which automatically gives the audience the idea that this documentary is focusing on the boats on the canal.
I feel that the mise-en-scene shows the audience a good outlook of the atmosphere of the canal, for example, the rubbish in the canal would hopefully give the audience a sad emotion to relate back to our subject explaining the public.
The way we have positioned our subject in the interview I think, is quite simple however the only issue we encountered is that we were filming on land and our subject was sitting on his boat, which caused throughout the interview we could realise our subject was floating out of frame however it wouldn’t be really noticeable if in the editing process we added cutaways.
The location we filmed it in is very relatable to the subject, however, there is too much audio during the interview as the atmosphere is noisy in general. When the interview takes place, we used relatable shots to what their subject is saying for example, when Fergus talks about people trespassing on to his boat and ‘moving the flowers to aside’, there is a tracking shot of the flowers on his boat, this can be very effective to the audience because they would be able to imagine the couple trespassing on the boat visually.
The structure of the documentary can be seen quite neat, the interview structure is edited nicely for example at the beginning of the documentary, where the main subject is being introduced we used archive footage of our subject on a boat when he was younger, I think this is super effective as the audience can get an insight of the subjects’ past on boats. And towards the end of the documentary, it ends on our subject explaining what it’s like to live on a boat and if he would recommend it to the public.