Documentary analysis

The Biggest Loser series five episode one

In this essay I am going to analyse the opening five minutes of the popular weight loss documentary ‘The biggest loser’ the reason I chose this documentary to analyse is that I am quite interested in documentaries that almost seem to cross over genres, for example in ‘The biggest loser’ it could be easily argued that there are elements present that follow the conventions reality TV.

‘The biggest loser’ series five episode one opens with an image of a clearly very overweight mans torso in a high angled shot. I find this quite interesting because often in our society, and particularly more stereotypical television programs, those who are overweight are looked down upon, however this camera angle reveals them to be in a position of power, perhaps because they have made the decision to lose weight by being on the ‘The biggest loser’ they are supposed to be looked at differently. All the while this is being narrated by a female voice and snippets of what she is saying are bursting onto the screen in bold writing such as “Highest in Europe” when she is talking about obesity figures. This further emphasizes what she is saying and is clearly there to add extra impact to what are supposed to be shocking revelations.

Everything about this opening is fast paced and exciting, there are quick zooms from medium shots of the contestants up to their faces, snippets of conversations, footage of them doing tough exercises as bridges of  fatty food being gorged on and sweaty crying faces. All this comes together to tell the reader that this is a very tough program, but one that gets results. I think this is really effective because this episode of ‘The Biggest loser’ really starts as it means to go on so to speak. The reader may very well be hooked already; they will want to see these people lose weight.

The title sequence is reasonably long for ‘The Biggest Loser’ but it features full body shots of each of the contestants and so it clearly changes after each series. There is very emotive, inspiring even, music featuring electric guitars and most likely keyboards to go with this title sequence. The images of the contestants have been merged with almost translucent animated tape measures that are moving. This is clearly symbolic of the contestant’s weight loss, and extremely subtle, in fact I watched this three times before noticing the tape measures were in the background at all. The title sequence is then concluded by the ebbing away of the music and the tape measure squeezing in the middle of the words ‘The biggest loser’ which is again, symbolic of weight loss.

Establishing shots of green fields followed by high angled shots of Presenter Davina McCall, which of course gives her a position of authority. After this, the personal trainers are introduced with quite serious, tension building sound effects which reinforces that these people mean business, followed by small, highly emotive, back stories of some of the contestants. This is another technique that draws the reader in, it makes them feel they know the contestants better and in many cases feel quite sorry for them.

In terms of applying this to my documentary opening, I think there are certain elements that I would like take out of this, such as fast paced montages of footage. I think the use of different styles of music have been extremely effective in this opening as well, and is also something I would very much like to incorporate into my documentary as I feel sound and sound effects can sometimes be overlooked (especially by amateur film makers) but is definitely a key aspect of documentary when trying to make the audience get a real emotional sense of what the documentary is about.