Wednesday, 20 April 2016

3 Minute Wonders

Three Minute wonders are short spaces on channel 4 that publicly broadcasts first time directors three minute TV programmes in the middle of the weekday prime-time schedule. They give an opportunity to small time directors to air their documentaries across TV, getting them recognised by a wider audience, this makes them take their first steps onto the UK film industry. Some directors may even go on to entering documentary competitions such as; FourDocs and Channel 4 Sheffield Pitch. The purpose of three minute wonders is to give people an understanding of a certain story or topic, all information is really short and concise meaning they are easy to follow and stay engaged with. Most three minute wonders are lifestyle related as they are commonly a story from someones previous experiences or something they are interested in. There are other topics that are covered in these documentaries but they are not as common. Karl Pilkington is an iconic character for these documentaries, giving a short insight into his opinions of life and his thoughts. There are fairly humorous but still give some good points and views across on the subject he covers, this is why his documentaries are seen as the most popular three minute wonders.

I would definitely say that in my top three, three minute wonders would be a selection of Karl Pilkington's documentaries; Holidays and Health. I would consider these as my favourites as I think the comedy makes it more enjoyable for me to watch and stay focused to. I also felt that because I could relate to the things he was talking about, it made the documentaries more interesting for me. I have also watched Karl Pilkington on other various programmes before so I already know that I would be more engrossed with his three minute wonders than anyone else's. Karl always speaks his mind in every situation which gives across some dry humor which I really like. Although always speaking what he believes and feels about society, he does it with offending anyone or anything.

My other favourite would be "Pure evil" which is based on an adult street artist that paints walls with spray paint that makes them more appealing when parents with kids walk past. He said it's good because instead of being looked at as if the police are going to come and tell you to stop, parents come up to you and asks for photos with their kids. I would say these are all performative documentaries as the camera is remained focus on the main person throughout the whole thing. It also shows their thoughts towards the topic they are talking about creating an emotional element to the documentary.

Pure Evilhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ5ygSiCWtA
Healthhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJya1KxN4HA
Holidayshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjjWJYn2qxQ

On channel 4 there were six documentaries shown on 14th April 2016, two of these were of the same series and shown at mid-day peak time one after another. After these two documentaries, two more back-to-back documentaries of "A Place in the Sun". So here we can see a total of four documentaries spread across a total of four hours covering all of the mid-day peak area. This shows that channel 4 prioritize documentaries at peak time as another documentary isn't shown until 8:00pm later that night.

However there were seven documentaries shown on Quest and only 1 of them were shown at mid-day peak time, compared to channel 4 which broadcasted 4. There are some documentaries shown later and two back-to-back episodes shown at 11:00pm.


In February 2016, 13.04% of people that watch TV in the UK watched documentaries which is 3rd from the top of the list, showing that people do take a high interest in watching factual programmes than what we may expect. There has now been an updated version of these statistics from March 2016 and we can see barely any change overall. The documentaries section has dropped by 0.4% which is literally nothing, they are still the in the 3rd rank for the most viewed across the whole graph, meaning they dominate most of any other channels. We can expect to see documentaries remain the same position for many months to come.

No comments:

Post a Comment