During weekdays, Channel 4 offered a three minute slot during prime-time to encourage budding directors to preview their work. Screening times began at 7.55pm; these quick yet effective documentaries were given the name 3 minute wonders. The scheme was opened to anyone that had a unique and intriguing story and anyone chosen was given a fixed budget of £4000 per episode and the support of Channel 4.
I really love this 3 minute wonder. I feel that it captures a sad and touchy subject perfectly. It features a 17 year old girl called Gemma who is undergoing chemotherapy to fight her cancer. I love how the director captures her making jokes about the hospital food and how she laughs and jokes with the other patients. It shows that she is a very strong individual. I feel that this gives hope to everyone suffering from the illness. If this 17 year old can be so positive and insert herself into a whole new world of people, so can anyone.
The director uses sped up footage to show the journey through the city to the teenage cancer ward. I really love how this is done and feel that it shows how everyone can just get on with their day when some are at a complete stand still. The music is light heated and makes the documentary much more positive than it seems.
Karl Pilkington has created this documentary focusing on his own thoughts as he walks around the natural history museum in London. His thoughts come across quite comically as he truthfully reflects on history. I like this documentary because I find it to be funny. The thoughts make me laugh but I can also relate to them. By watching this 3 minute wonder i have actually found that I agree with his point of view. He comments on how there is too much of one thing in the museum, such as the dinosaurs, which makes it less impressive. Also how animals are going extinct but nobody ever cares about animals such as the dodo so why is it any different now. I feel that this documentary is quite effective and makes you think deeply about certain things.
This 3 minute wonder follows the world record holder for laughing as he tries to cheer up Great Britain. He expresses his own troubles when he lost his business but from, that point decided to live on laughter. From this footage you can see how much happier he is as a person and how easily one man can make a whole shop, pub or street collapse with laughter. It truly expresses the point that laughter is contagious which is why I like this documentary. It shows that there is hope in the unhappiest places, we just need to let go and relax a little bit more to realise that life isn’t all bad.
On Thursday the 6th of June 18 different factual programmes were aired on Channel 4 during the course of the day including Grand Designs, The News and 999:whats your emergency. Almost 55% of the programmes shown on this day were factual programmes making it the most popular and showed genre on Channel 4. Again on the 18th of June 16 different factual programmes were aired on channel 4. This is almost 49% of channels aired this day. Going by the average of these values an estimate of 52% of programmes shown on channel 4 are factual. On the 18th of June, BBC One presented 27 different programmes, 21 of these were factual based programmes, this is a staggering 77% of programmes on this day and 42% of these factual programmes were the News or weather. In the UK peak time television is roughly 5.30pm until 8pm. On the 18th of June the BBC broadcasted 4 factual programmes around this time whereas channel 4 broadcasted 2. According to BARB viewing data, Documentaries were the third most viewed genre in April 2019 in taking 14.51% of all television viewers. This is much higher than the 11.39% that it had gained in May 2014. on the 16th of September 2018 channel 4 presented viwers with the great British bake off, in one week the programme had been viewed 7.97 million views. This is almost four times the amount that had watched 'Celebrity Island with Bear Grylls' on the same week.
https://www.channel4.com/tv-guide
