Genre: Documentary in itself can be classed as a genre, as it seperates itself from the other types of films as it's often based on reality and features opinions of real people instead of actors. The official defintion is "A film, television or radio program that provides a factual record or report" and this is no exception. Spurlock keeps to the common conventions of the documentary genre as he provides us with archive footage, a constant voiceover throughout, interviews with professionals, vox-pops with ordinary people on the street, graphs and graphics, and titles which all help to demonstrate his point about what McDonalds is doing to America and young people and what will happen to him personally. There is sometimes an element of comedy in this documentary as there are vox-pops in which people give comical answers or times in which Spurlock makes jokes to move away from the feature becoming too serious.
Style - Textual Analysis: The documentary begins with a black screen and we can hear the diegetic sound of children singing "The Fast Food Song" by the Fast Food Rockers. This then fades into archive footage of a large group of children singing at what appears to be a summer camp as the camera tracks backwards as the children do the arm actions to the song. This then fades out and white font fades in, showing a quote from the founder of McDonalds, "Look after the customer and the business will take care of itself", this is crucial as it sums up the message of the whole documentary, McDonalds is famous, as it attracts customers easily, provides a service and keeps them coming back for more.
We then hear non-diegetic pan pipes as an image of the American flag appears. This is where Spurlock begins his voiceover for the documentary, explaining that everything is bigger in America, as we see jump cuts of footage of things such as cars, houses, shops and obese individuals. Then we see a graph image of Obesity Trends among US Adults changing over a series of years, helping to demonstrate how the rate of obesity has risen since fast food increased whilst also being a convention of a documentary. We then see photographs of Spurlocks mother overlap each other as he explains food in his childhood.
Archive footage of a fast food restaurant is shown as the camera pans horizontally. More achive footage follows of obese indivduals and then a close up of an old man smoking as Spurlock explains smoking is the leading cause of death in the US, followed by obesity. Slowly, a number for total numbers of deaths per year rolls vertically up the screen, followed by a long shot of a crowd. We then see a cartoon of Ronald McDonald in court on the front of a magazine as lawsuits are explained in voiceover.
We then see an animation about 2 girls who filed a lawsuit against McDonalds, the animation allows us to see how their body changed over time due to eating so much fast food. More achive footage follows along with a mid shot outside a McDonalds franchise as the footage is sped up as people walk past, but then people who walk into the franchise are highlighted, this shows us how many entered the store. Newspaper articles slide onto the screen over the archive footage. This jumps to a animation of a map of the world as McDonalds symbols (representing their locations) appear all over the map at an alarming rate so areas are packed tightly with symbols, showing us that there are so many of them. These turn into dollar signs and we're told that McDonalds serves 46 million people a day, so they must be making a large amount of money!
Archive footage follows but these images are mainly of McDonalds franchises and jump accordingly to the pace at which Spurlock talks, we can still faintly hear the pan pipes in the background, these different stores are to show us all the locations in which the stores can be found.
We see a long shot, vertical pan downwards of a law court as newspaper quotes glide ontop of the image, along with sheets of paper where Spurlock highlights certain sentences in yellow or red colours (keeping with the colour code of McDonalds) and reads them out so we can get an idea of how a lawsuit against a franchise is possible.
More images of other franchises are shown aswell as a pile of fast food. This leads to Spurlock appearing on an empty street, addressing the camera as he asks what would happen if he ate nothing but McDonalds for a whole month. He is dressed casually in a red shirt, jeans and a green jacket stood in natural daylight. After his speech, he utters the words "Supersize Me", a clear link to the title. Here is where we hear the non-diegetic sounds of an electric guitar as the title images appear of different burger pictures fading in and out at the top of the screen, this is where Queens track "Fat Bottomed Girls" begins, a comical link to the issue of the documentary.
Throughout the documentary that follows, Spurlock sticks to the conventions of a typical documentary; having opinions from both professionals and ordinary people, testimonials from ordinary people, archive footage, graphics / animations, voiceover, technicality of realism (natural sounds and lighting) and use of text and titles, all to create a documentary which relays a very real and important message about what can happen if you're careless with your dieting choices and how the population may possibly end up if things carry on as they are, just by using these features and one handheld camera over a month.
Form: The form in which the documentary takes is that of a narrative style. During the documentary we are following Spurlocks personal journey as we see how the fast food effects him on a daily basis, both mentally and physically. We watch the narrative unfold as we see Spurlocks health deteriorate over a period of time as he uses himself as his only participant in a potentially dangerous experiment on the human body.
Audience: The audience for this documentary is anyone from the ages of 15-50, this is a very broad age range. I think this is because its relevant to anyone, as the company McDonalds caters to all ages, such as including play areas and loveable characters for small children, but offering cheap deals and the ease of fast food for adults. Young people will be able to see how big the corporation is and what eating this on a regular basis could do to your body, hopefully teaching them life lessons about eating the right foods before they gain any significant health problems. Also adults will be able to see how McDonalds targets their children with advertising and toys in their 'Happy Meals' and stop feeding this to their children and reinforcing that fast food is a good thing as it is known to cause obesitiy, diabeties, increased risk of heart attack, aswell as other problems.
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