North Korea

Role of presenter - The presenter is who makes the documentary because he has a huge involvement with the documentary as he is in the shot mostly every minute but if he is also not in the shot you can hear him speaking over the footage, he always speaks to the camera, by him talking directly to the camera it makes us feel as if he is talking to us one to one making us feel more involved and interested in the documentary. The presenter is also informal when he speaks as through the video you can hear him swearing, this is because we get to see what it is like to be in North Korea because through him swearing it allows us to really experience and weird North Korea is rather than a formal presenter having to choose his words, with this it gives us a more realistic view on how North Korea is.

Techniques - The camera you can see is mostly free hand, this gives it more of a realistic feel as you can see what it is like from the camera mans view which allows the audience to feel more involved as they can get that actual view and see what the camera mans sees in front of him, this is shown a lot through the documentary but for an example here is a time code of free hand recording 18:45. For editing there really isn't that much in the documentary, in general it is all just cuts from one thing to another about North Korea, this is most likely to do with that the documentary is not supposed to be an intense one because they are doing this recording when they are not suppose to and the presenter himself is informal throughout the whole thing so this would most likely not be aimed to a large audience unless they are interested in North Korea.

Techniques - Throughout the documentary there is quite a bit of voice over, for example at 8:35 he is talking but on the screen you don't see him talking, but what this does is, it allows you to visually see the journey while he can tell you information about his journey, its a kind of way of multi-tasking and fitting it information to keep the audience entertained. The music they use in the documentary is Korean which is show at 8:20, this is because the documentary is about North Korea so it would be weird if they started using music from America or England because it has nothing to do with North Korea, so why they have done this is because they want to keep everything related to North Korea and it also allows you to hear what North Korean music sounds like.

Balance of archive footage vs original footage? - The original footage is where the presenter is talking to the camera and you can see the presenter in the shots, this is original because this is them filming it first hand and it is their own footage this is shown at 4:06 where you can see him talking to the camera, this is original footage because it is their own footage, the archive footage is of when we see clips of things such as the North Korea army because the presenters crew did not record this first hand, they are older clips that they have added into the documentary for information purposes this is show at 0:44 where you can see the North Korea army marching, this is archive footage. But through out the whole documentary i feel like it was mostly half half with the archive footage and the original footage.

Interviews - From what i see there are no interviews, as he is just talking to them and not really sitting them down and asking them questions, and this is what i saw from the whole documentary, there are no interviews. Apart from when he said he interviewed North Korea refugees in South Korea but we don't see this.

Exposition - We are given information through the presenter who talks into the camera telling us where they are and what this place is, the presenter also has a tour guide who also tells him what these places are and the history, he than tells us his opinions about it and what is going on, we also get to see what North Korea looks like through the camera, from what we see we can tell that North Korea is a strict country, the most secretive country in the world as they still go by the communist rules they seem more like they are isolating themselves from the rest of the world.

How are we engaged - I think what keeps us interested is that the Presenter himself is informal and acts more freely on camera because in my opinion i do not want to watch a hour documentary of a formal person who looks like they are trying to stay inform, i also think that the fact that your not allowed to record in North Korea also comes into factor because it allows us to see what you wouldn't be able to see because North Korea are an isolated country who keep to themselves, so because we are able to view what we wouldn't be able to view before makes us more interested, another factor is the fact they are a strict country and you wonder why, this makes you want to see how North Korea is run and how they live life and this keeps us entertained.