The Presenter – Success In

Documentary

Presenter RolesTo be a part of a documentary as presenter on screen is a very difficult role.You have to exactly know what your traits are, e.g. Persuasive, Daring, Friendly Tone/Speech.Your voice has to engage an audience, it has to be clear and your structure has to be easy to understand.Another one of my roles apart from being on screen is to narrate the documentary, this will be achieved through voiceovers off a script. It is also important to note this script can change tense between reflecting on the past and commenting on your future journey. Within our group we decided that I would be script supervisor also which is important because it is a big part of my role of presenter.The main difficulty for me as presenter is to engage the audience without being the participant that has the story. To achieve this can be quite tricky and I knew I had to focus on my favourite documentary presenter, Louis Theroux, who certainly extracts information from his subjects without being ‘big and tough’ like for example, Ross Kemp.

Taking Inspiration from…

Learning From Louis… The main thing that attracted me to Louis Theroux is the body language he uses. Here are some key points I noted down whilst watching multiple documentaries of his:A smart/casual fashion throughout.A very friendly approach to anyone he meets, e.g. handshake to greet subjects.Very basic questions to begin with before attempting to discover their true story. Even though everyone including the subjects knows Louis Theroux is very intelligent he still acts very confused after being told a story or before asking a question. This is something that is very useful to my practice because I believe its one of the reasons why Louis Theroux gets so much information out of his subjects. Theroux also is very direct with his questions, however never raises his voice no matter what the scenario, he always remains polite with even the strongest and immoral people.

The End Outcome…A documentary always comes down to the content and we realise our participant will most likely not give out his/her personal stories straight away.Therefore, its my job as presenter to make sure we come across as trustworthy, that I will be a presenter whom can be trusted.Its also very important that I ask the right questions to avoid conflict with our participant, to be a good reader of personality and body language. This is a subject that research and analysis is less useful as every persons personality and attitudes are different and this is something to always consider during documentary.The end outcome should hopefully be that I will be a likeable presenter who extracts good stories, which concludes with a great on screen production.