Documentary analysis

My Big fat gypsy Weddings – My Big fat gypsy Christmas

As one of the most popular and most controversial documentaries of 2011 I felt it was important to analyse ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Weddings’ This is the sort of documentary that gets everyone talking about it, whether they happen to love it or hate it, they all know about it.

This episode of ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Weddings’ entitled ‘My big fat gypsy Christmas opens with an establishing shot of what looks like a small city at night, complete with Christmas lights and non diegetic  yuletide sound effects. There are reasonably fast cutaways of houses, trees etc all the while being narrated by an authoritative female voice. There are focal zooms on things such as Christmas trees to further emphasise the time of year in which this documentary is set.

There is a sudden change in music after the narrator says “A time to celebrate” at which point the music becomes more upbeat and a collaboration of different shots of girls clad in bright clothes hanging out of white stretch limousines, young girls in ball gowns and general clubbing is shown. I find this an interesting technique in the way that it was almost the calm before the storm so to speak, this is more what the reader expects to see when sitting down to watch ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Weddings’

I find it interesting how in this documentary opening, there is no presenter, there is a narrator of course, and there are the typical ‘experts’ in the form of a woman who specialises in making Gypsy wedding dresses and a man who owns a club that specially caters for gypsy gatherings, and in a way I think this draws the reader in more as they are not watching two people have a conversation almost, they are listening to people talking directly to the camera.

There is a diverse range of shot types and editing in the opening five minutes of this episode of ‘My big fat gypsy weddings’ on two occasions they almost seems to come together in a montage of three to four second clips. Over the shoulder shots are also used to show the dress making which further makes the reader feel as though they are there. As well as this, the camera crew have taken full advantage of the enormous dresses worn by both young and older girls with long shots that emphasize just how extreme these dresses are and extreme close ups of some of the many sparkling jewels that are sewn onto these dresses. In my documentary opening I would very much like to be able to use such a diverse range of camera shots  

In terms of editing and special effects, there is not a long session of opening credits, but instead a very short, five seconds at the very most, shot of the words ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Christmas’  which blooms in the middle of the screen surrounded by holly which further emphasises the time of year. This is something I would definitely like to incorporate into my documentary, in other words I think I would prefer to spend more time on the documentary footage, as opposed to spending a long time editing a long title sequence, I think if I did it this way it gives ff the impression that there is more information, exciting footage and interviews to get through, as it does in ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Christmas’.