Big Brother and Treasure Island

Documentary is a broad area within which there are a number of genres with their distinctive, characters type, story lines, key signs, and so on.

This the definition of a documentary.

For this assignment I have chosen to compare the following two documentaries, Big Brother and Treasure Island. There’re both ethnographic documentaries, and reality TV. Big Brother and Treasure Island are both filtered, which means that not everything that happens is shown on TV, only the important things.

Big Brother is a game show that tests your mental abilities because you have to stay “looked up” in a house, with people you don’t now, with no communication from outside the house which means there is no TV or radio in the house.

Treasure Island tests mental and physical strength, the people taking part have to find food to survive an the island and pieces of a map which leads them to a treasure which worth’s $50000. Now we now where the title is coming from.

Both documentaries contain voice over and also both test communication skills. Big Brother uses film to make people look different as they are in normal life. Treasure Island presents the “characters” as in daily life. Both documentaries are reality TV. Reality TV shows exactly what happens, is not like a movie where everyone now’s what’s going to happen.

Treasure Island uses a filter to select important events to be shown on TV, Big Brother doesn’t. These two documentaries have some things in common, like they’re both game shows where someone is going to win something, people are eliminated at the end of each episode. There’re both factual but I think that Treasure Island is more factual than Big Brother because it includes physical abilities which we all use daily.

Treasure Island contestants unlike Big Brother contestants, have camera freedom, which means that they are not filmed 24hr a day. Big Brother unlike Treasure Island it’s a fly on the wall documentary, which means that the cameras are in place for long periods of time, seemingly out of the way and people forget they are filmed.

The advantages of a fly on the wall documentary is that if people forget they are filmed than you can see their “real faces”, the disadvantage is that its boring to look at people eating or sleeping.

Treasure Island is an actuality documentary. Both documentaries interview their contestants, to find out their opinion about something, this is called vox pop. There ‘re both edited in different ways. For example in the Big Brother there is no additional sound added but there is additional lighting added, Treasure Island its been edited with extra sound but no extra lighting.