Louis Theroux Behind Bars - Textual Analysis

Textual Analysis

 

The opening scene of Behind Bars in San Quentin has many stereotypical features of a documentary. It has an opening title after 1:17 minutes and this has the producing company which is BBC. The opening title has the name of the programme, this includes its logo. At the start of the documentary there is a hook. This is to engage the audience and make them want to read on. The hook in the documentary was “500 years in prison”. This makes the audience want to read on as they are intrigued as to why this man has been sentenced to 500 years in prisons.

 

Also, at the very start of the documentary there was an establishing shot which introduced where the documentary was being set, San Quentin. There was an effect used here which was a fade from black into the establishing shot. There was a lot of shot reverse shots in the documentary, this was to show both sides of a conversation by switching from person to person. The camera was mainly used freely and was hand held by the cameraman. This was effective for this type of documentary as it gave a more realistic feeling so that it did not look like it was being staged. It also made the audience feel as if they were part of it and were in the prison as the camera gave the effect of someone walking around, this engaged the audience.

 

The Behind Bars documentary was presented by Louis Theroux. He spoke to a different people in the prison and asked various questions to gain information for the audience. Theroux controlled the tempo of the documentary as he was the one that was asking the questions. He sometimes asked questions that did not need answering as they were simple but he asked them purely to engage the audience and to exaggerate what he is doing. An example of this is when he was being told to wear a protective vest and he was asking why he has to wear it. Both the audience and Theroux knew why he needed to wear this protective vest, because he could get harmed, but he wanted to highlight this danger to engage the audience and let them know that what he is doing is dangerous and is real.

 

In the documentary a voiceover was sometimes used. This was to explain what was happening at certain points in the documentary and to help the audience understand it. It also engaged them as they were constantly being fed information. There was a few different sounds that were used in the documentary. For example, there was music being played during the opening titles of the documentary. This was to help catch the audience’s attention and to make the documentary seem more appealing and interesting. There was also music played at different points to make what was happening seem tenser and this added suspense to the documentary.

 

The type of language that was used varied due to the peoples backgrounds. Such as Lois Theroux was English so his language varied to the inmates and to the people that worked there as they were mostly American. The inmates sometimes used bad language towards Theroux.