Panorama: Episode Analysis

Panorama is a expository documentary. A documentary such as panorama includes voice overs, explanations, music, facts and opinions.

Before the title card shows up on-screen there is a moving montage of close up shots and a informative voice-over. This is intended to grab the audiences attention. This is also know as "the hook".

During the main feature they are presenters describing the situations and conflicts in Syria. When danger is discovered the shots become out of focus and music increases it's tone rapidly. When the more dramatic scenes take place the music is softer, but becomes louder and over rights the rest of the audio.

In this expository documentary they are several issues that are covered such as, War, Lifestyle, heath care and politics. This documentary also covers elements of a journey documentary because the presenter discuss her opinions of the war since she has been in Syria.

The presenter uses an emotional one-to-one approach to get the important message across to the audience from her own perspective. This is used as part of a fly-on-the-wall method because the viewer is seeing the presenters experiences for themselves.

Despite this being a expository documentary, all the information told about the Syrian War is one-sided; the side being the general public. The governments decisions are not explained and their reasons remain untold.

This documentary does not use many interviews, but when included the interviewer uses a semi-structured format, this is so the interviewee explains there life and experiences in the Syrian war.

All these are parts of quantitative and qualitative research and help turn this into a deep insight of life in war, and is what makes panorama a successful expository documentary.

Comparison Of The Audience

The Audience: BBC's Panorama, has a target audeince of people aged 30-70, but is targeted for both genders, the classes targeted are skilled working class up to upper middle class, I have calculated this by using the 'National Readership Survey's social grade scale. The target audience would also be people who had grow up in a simuler culture, This makes the program relateable.  This program may also be targeted for modern historians, health care workers, and politicians.

B.A.R.B: is an organisation that calculates audience measurement and television ratings within Britian. The viewings for 'BBC's Parnorma: Syrian Crisis' speical were 5.14 million and was rated 16 out of the weeks top 30 most viewed shows. This was a great sucusses for the BBC, considering having a smaller target audeince than other programs and achiving four times as many views as rival programs such as Channel 4's Dispatches, which achived 0.98 million views and ITV's exposure with only a disappointing 0.68 views.

Critical Reception:  The critical reception for this epsiode of panorama was generaly posative, the Telegragh gave the episode 4/5 stars and commented 'A a disturbing, but powerful edition of Panorama . While the reception was mainly positive the guardian criticised it, saying ' she finds out that Syria is a secretive, dangerous place. Now I'm no expert but I think we knew quite a lot of that already. Still, it's not a bad time to be reminded.'