Johns not mad - An Analysis

Johns not mad - An Analysis

I am going to analyse the documentary 'Johns not mad'.
This documentary focuses on a sixteen year old boy with a 'tourettes syndrome', I am going to speak about the observational footage, the voice overs and the interviews presented throughout the documentary.
     'Johns not mad' is in the format of a tv documentary that is in third person.



Observational footage
The main focus in the documentary is on the subject (John) we see various scenes in which John is in a public place with his tourettes on show to everyone. With these scenes we can see the public's view on the matter. The maker of this documentary did this purposely so that we see the subject in various environments, almost like watching animals in different habitats and recording the evidence.

One place that we see John is at the supermarket, this is one of the most populated places we see him. John is shown having various ticks and outbursts of curse words here and people are having trouble listening to the 'foul language' because they probably think it's directed towards them, it is obvious that the subject can't control or help himself here.
     The next seen we see is John fishing by the river, where it's quoted that he is 'oddly quiet' when alone. The subject says that he is relaxed here and he secludes himself from other fishers on this river so that he doesn't have to be looked at or have attention put on himself.

The third place I've chosen to speak about is John's home, here John has a family that help him cope, apart from his father and grandmother.
Johns father avoids dinners at home sure to John's newfound tick, spitting. The fact John's father never joins has often broken the family a bit. Johns grandmother however, believes that John's condition is of the devil and he is 'possessed' from a scene like this, the audience tends to feel a lot of sympathy.




Interviews
Through the documentary we see a series of interviews that consist of views of the subject John, the witness John's mother, the expert Dr Oliver sacks and the second witness John's teacher.
When interfering each person we get a head-to-head shoulder and head-chest shot of them, we call these 'close ups'. The documentary's creator gives these shots a black background to give a sense of drama. Interviewing John we get quite a sympathetic feeling from what he says, and we get sense of how this effects him.

Next we interview John's mother. She is the main witness to John's condition, she speaks about how this condition has had an effect on her and others in the family. This is generally a dramatic interview because it shows the effect that tourettes has on people other than the main victim.

The second witness, John's teacher, speaks about how she deals with his tourettes, this helps us gain insight into the syndromes effect on people around the subject.

The last person interviewed was Dr Oliver Sacks, an expert on the tourettes syndrome itself. Dr Sacks spoke of the syndrome, telling us symptoms and giving demonstrations on ticks that John possibly had or may develop further in life.


Voice overs
Throughout the documentary we hear narration by a female figure, she gives the extra detail in the documentary and gives explanation towards John's tourettes syndrome.
     I think that they picked a female to narrate this because she has a soft, slow voice and the voice can give sympathy to the subject of the documentary. I also think that it is because females have more empathy, sort of like a mother figure, they make the situation better.


Conclusion
As a conclusion I think that the documentary's creator decides to make the documentary as interesting and emotional as possible to both give awareness and pull at heart-strings of the targeted audience, they made this happen by using emotional music and scenes.